Lemon a day

Trying to key apples, they have to be cut up.

 size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

Yesterday I went to collect my aunt so that she could visit us and then the intrepid soul is off for a week on the Norfolk Broads with my mother and sister. They will be hiring a motor boat , she has packed more thick jumpers than I own.My mother has made a Fleetwood cake which was the cake which went with us on any journey when we were children. When we went to the Broads as children the standard was an 8”x8” cake and a catering tray of homemade bread pudding donated by my grandmother. We also took all our Easter eggs as it was always just after Easter that we went. Sometimes it was lovely the reedbeds were coming alive after winter and the primroses were out. Some years it snowed. I remember being in a dinghy when the snow started falling and the wind dropped to nothing , the belly of the sail filled with goosefeathers of snow as we watched and grew colder and colder. I think we got back in the end by using the sail as a great bit flapping wing. Hot tea and slabs of cake restored us.

I had a very frustrating attempt to get the apples from the community orchard identified. I tried to spread the apples out over the day and had got one identified positively when I queued again. I finally got to where it seemed to be my turn and a woman from Storrington pushed in with ten samples of apple and I couldn’t keep my aunt and the rest of the family waiting any longer.

So it now requires another visit to another apple day or some tentative guesses with the online apple key. Slow work,an expert will recognise features which short cut the process.

#134 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog