u/DuckMagic

Hi! I'm planning to eventually put in several apple trees onto my new plot. However, I have no knowledge of apple varieties beyond what you can get in a supermarket (bramley, braeburn, jazz, gala, golden delicious, granny smith, pink lady). Gala and granny smith in particular do nothing for me. I like the idea of planting heritage varieties rather than the ones commonly found in supermarkets! Part of my desire for an allotment was to grow things that I can't easily buy.

My allotment site has no specific restrictions of tree heights (in fact my plot already has an old apple tree that is likely to be 100+ years old from when the whole site was an orchard). I am in Yorkshire.

As a kid I grew up in Eastern Europe eating typical Soviet varieties like antonovka and beliy naliv, which have a pretty different flavour and mouth feel- if anyone can recommend me something that might scratch that itch, that would be great too! Can't really get those shipped from mainland EU nurseries any more.

I like the idea of having some late harvest/ storage apples too.

Bonus if self-fertile!

My all time favourite supermarket apple is a braeburn. I also value a good cooking apple as we do a lot of jams, crumbles, pies etc.

If anyone can point me to a good resource on understanding root stock, that would be really appreciated too.

Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry for all the demands!

It's 11 am and I'm sat at my desk at home doing work, I've got a deadline this morning. I'm running on 4 hrs sleep and several cups of coffee. Suddenly there's a quiet soft knock at the door, it's a pretty distinct pattern, where do I know it from?

I stomp downstairs- we're constantly getting deliveries, the neighbours' kids like to come over to pet the dog even though they know I'm working, the landlord might have finally sent a repairman, plus cold calls aren't unusual. I walk past the frosted door to get the key and my heart skips. That's how my mother knocks.

There's a fat shortish figure to the front, wearing a navy jumper. That's my father. Some steps behind him is a second figure, wearing the distinct lilac fleece she's had for at least the last decade, stood with her arms crossed. That's my mother.

I've been stalking my mother's facebook to keep tabs and I know that this week they've been visiting the National Park on the edge of my city. I was preparing myself that this might happen. It's been two years since I went no contact and they've never tried turning up at my house before. But my father has tried to ambush me in other places.

I stand like an idiot between the door and the window, trapped just out of sight, not knowing what to do, scared to say anything. But they know I'm there because they've seen me walk past. They know it's my house because they can hear my dog barking, and if they look through the window they will see my cat.

The knocking continues. I decide to silently walk back upstairs, tell my husband that my parents have turned up, sit back on my office chair as the tunnel vision comes in, my hearing goes muffled with my heartbeat and my eyesight is going blurry. There's another knock. I tell my manager and my teammate that I might need to dip out as I'm going into a PTSD episode because my estranged parents have turned up. My husband tries to subtly peek out of the upstairs window to get a view of them. He's only met them three or so times, several years ago. He can't see them clearly. He tells me the woman is wearing a lilac scarf.

They've posted something through the letterbox and appear to have walked away. My husband tries to take a picture of it without going downstairs, but it looks too abstract. I say it's probably a birthday card (my birthday was last week). I go to take a look.

It's a bloody Jehovah's Witness brochure. It wasn't my parents at all. I've been trolled by cold calling preachers. Why the hell do they keep knocking for so long? I'm simultaneously massively relieved that it was a false alarm, but also embarrassed to have spooked my manager and teammate. Thankfully my husband is very understanding and gets me a cup of tea. And just like that, I'm back in my own body and mostly fine. Gotta love living with CPTSD.

Just had another knock for a delivery and it made me jump!

This would have been around 2010-2014. I could only watch VH1 while on holiday in Latvia as a teen. I've tried looking up VH1 Europe idents on youtube but can't find anything close.

This would have been a very short clip that's part of a montage being repeated every hour or so on the channel.

All I remember it was a very good snippet of rock (could be anything 1980-2010), dapper/ maybe Victorian-styled man tipping a hat (possibly a top hat?), red tinted visuals. The man tipping his hat is the thing that is stuck in my brain, I can't remember the song at all, just that it was very good.

I've been wondering lately if it might have been something by Tom Petty, but I've not found any music videos that feel right, and I seem to remember it was heavier rock than him.

Long shot in the dark but thank you!

2 years complete NC with my parents.

I have them blocked everywhere, but every so often I will search their names and see if Google throws up anything interesting (this is how I found out they've sold my childhood home). I just can't help myself, I guess in a way I still want to know how they're doing.

I guess I hit on a good set of keywords today- not only was I rewarded with a bunch of insane anti-vax facebook comments from the height of the pandemic that reminded me of the moment I started seeing my parents in a new light, but I also got a search result for a comment my mum left on an instagram reel for some psychologist's video on parental estrangement.

Unfortunately I can't see the full comment as I have her blocked, but the search result caption says (I'm translating): "there's too many psychologists showing up who insist that parents are bad, didn't love their kids enough, didn't raise them properly..." . That's all I have, but it's enough to confirm to me that even two years on, she's fully convinced that someone has brainwashed me against her. She can't possibly have been a shit mother.

This is a lady who screamed at and beat me when I was 6 for daring to ask how to spell a word. Told me to not show bruises at school or I'd get taken away. Beat me again because I brought a friend home with me after school (didn't tell this friend she can't stay- no- let me have her over for an hour, then beat me when she went home). She abandoned her 8 & 13 year old kids for two years on the other side of the continent to carry on living alone without adults - we didn't even have relatives living with us during the week. She thought it was a genius plan to entrust a bank card to a 14 year old boy to buy groceries and was enraged when of course he spent the money on something else and I was left without food for weeks, relying on a neighbour's generosity to feed me.

She called me a little bitch and my brother an undercooked bastard to our faces if we disagreed with her. Wasn't opposed to dragging me around by my hair. Thought it was completely fine to leave her 10 year old home alone 9pm - 6 am 5 days a week after my brother ran away from home. Home alone, almost every single night for the next 9 years. Didn't attend a single parent-teacher meeting or award ceremony, never as much as looked at my school work despite being a former teacher. Shamed my having heavier periods than her, growing armpit hair, having a bigger chest, me not wearing make-up, me wearing make-up, having acne. Told teenage me to not bother having friends and made it a personal mission to poison my relationships with every single other member of my family by telling me distressing things about them from when I was 4. Had vile nicknames for everyone because using people's actual names was beneath her. Not even for her own husband or son.

Made it my task to book her doctor's appointments, call the police, fire brigade, the council, insurance companies, handymen because she couldn't be bothered to learn English. Yet didn't care a hoot when I had serious health issues as a teenager, or when I had a cancer scare in my mid twenties. Laughed when I told her that I had anxiety and depression, insisted that doctors are charlatans and my pills will make me kill myself. But would scream at me if I refused to write a sick note for her work, way into my 20ies. Demanded to be taken to the doctors for every ailment she had.

I'm a little sad I can't see her comment, as the rest of the comments on that post are very much pro estranged kids, pointing out that parents who rage about their kids estranging are generally missing the aspect of control, rather than genuinely mourning the relationship loss. That ultimately you reap what you sow.

I know it's ultimately self harm to keep googling the parents, but in a way it does help keep me on the path of no contact. Just two days ago I was sat pondering in the kitchen if I'm being too harsh and if I should ease up. Lol.