Strange Fruit

Here are a few photos I took in Chester recently, of something as simple as apples yet possessed of a strange, singular and remarkable beauty in the specific context in which they were observed, unique to my experience.

I had noticed this particular tree on a previous occasion, alone in itself in being bare of leaf, as one would expect given the time of year (mid to late Jan, in the UK), yet still bearing a substantial load of fruit, and resolved to capture this unusual phenomenon should it persist until at least our next encounter. It did, and here is presented the visual record. Given that one would expect such a tree to shed its fruit before its leaves, and during the autumn, it presented a strange, unseasonable sight indeed: I even wondered if perhaps the fruit was real or, rather, some form of art, and had been attached to the bare tree as a work of such, in order that we should question its existence. However, close inspection revealed the fruit to be real, illustrating that nature can often be stranger and more inexplicable than art or other human creation: for whatever reason, a substantial proportion of the tree’s bounty had yet to drop and remained attached to its branches, liberally scattered over its form. A few apples had fallen, as subsequently illustrated, but enough remained in situ to present a beguiling, fascinating spectacle.