Neighbourhoods
The orchard nobody planted
Nobody on the Kestrel estate remembers who planted the pear trees, because nobody did. They were nursery stock, left in the ground when the Hollins nursery closed in 1987 and the land was forgotten. The trees grew anyway. For years their fruit fell and rotted in the long grass. Then, four autumns ago, a retired teacher called Win Abbott put up a ladder and a hand-written sign: Take what you can carry. This year the street picked more than a tonne.
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