Crunchy Cabbages and Crispy Apples

The Apples on my two small trees are slowly ripening and hanging grimly on through these gales we are having, they are nameless - I sent for them from a newspaper advert - and originally started growing them in containers, keeping the roots trimmed back every year.  But I got fed up of watering them, so planted them out in the garden.  This is the first year I have really had fruit of any quantity so I am dead chuffed.  The top one looks as if it may be a 'Braeburn' type and the other a 'Golden Delicious' - I really ought to get an apple identification book - but I'm not too fussed, as long as they taste alright.

I have another apple tree in the orchard part of the allotment which definitely is a 'Golden Delicious'.  The tree has become huge and pruning it only seems to make it grow huger (is that a word).  So this year, after the leaves have fallen I am going to go armed with a saw and take it down to a reachable level.  The apples suffer from 'bitter pit' which leaves brown marks on the skin - I think that this was due to my chickens droppings giving the roots too much neat nitrogen (that's just my theory), but now I don't keep chickens, hopefully they will improve (I feed them to the blackbirds in winter and they don't mind what they look like).

As for the Cabbages, well, they are doing splendidly, with not much caterpillar/slug damage and the nets have kept the birds off.  But yesterday, when I was slicing one for Sunday lunch, a whole host of earwigs trotted out from between the leaves.  That is the worst thing about fresh veg - you never know what is lurking beneath.