Some years ago, we started guerrilla gardening some of the convent land to make it into a food forest. This included nine different varieties of apple trees.

Much to our surprise, the trees started flowering after only a year, although they produced a very small amount of fruit. (All of which was attacked to death by the fruit flies that year.)

So the apples above represent our very first harvest. They’re not the biggest of apples, and frankly, they’re not the best. But they are ours 🙂

It’s been a tough year for the trees. After a very wet summer, we then went into 6 months of drought, with less than 50mm per month. (Until the skies opened up two days ago, dumping 150mm on Sydney.)

The ground was parched, and even the weeds were brown and dying. The trees only survived by weekly bucket watering, which is far from ideal growing conditions.

So we’ll enjoy these first apples, and look forward to an even better harvest next year 🙂