"Go tell the Spartans, strangers passing by....

.... that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

Thus the stone memorial to the 500 Spartan hoplites who fell in the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC.

This photo is a digital memorial to the dozen or so spartans which fell in the autumn of 2013AD in the Isle of Purbeck. You will find them at the bottom left of the photograph, still wrapped in their blood-red cloaks.

None will have fallen in vain.


I think the rest of the apples must be Bramleys. They look, behave and taste like them, anyway. Yes, I know that the Bramleys that you buy in the shops are green - but they change colour as they mature, their flesh is eventually very sweet.

Years ago I heard advice given on a radio gardening programme that the grass around apple trees should be left uncut during the late summer and autumn in order to let it just grow. This would reduce the competition between trees and grass for nutrients, resulting in a better quality apple and producing a soft landing for it if it were to fall.

This is advice well worth heeding. The soft landing reduces or eliminates bruising; the apples continue to mature in relatively low temperatures and protected by the grass growing around them. And I save both time and petrol for a few months.

Eventually the apples have to be located and collected. Such was my task today.