I just ate one. It was okay.

It tasted, in fact, just like the ones I remembered and loved. The apples haven't changed. I have. Since then I have grown fonder of firmer fleshed apples, eating them thinly sliced with a little goat’s cheese, or drizzled with balsamic vinegar with a few walnuts.

Apple tastes do vary depending where they are grown. I fell in love with Cox’s Orange Pippins in Tasmania, but the ones we grow here are ... okay. We get cold winters here, but too much heat for Cox’s perfection.

The choice of apple varieties will be limited by your climate. Some apples taste best in cold climates, and bloom late so aren’t bothered by late frosts. Others need cold winters, but still taste superb in hot summers. A few apples tolerate almost any climate, while other have been bred for the subtropics. Your local nursery probably has varieties suitable for your area, but a specialist apple grower, found by hunting the internet, will also be an enthusiast who can recommend the perfect apple for you, or rather, pair of apples - most apples need another variety to set fruit (a few are ‘self-fertile’ and will fruit by themselves).

Cross-pollination can be tricky, as in some climates the cross-pollinating trees may not bloom at the same time, so the bees can’t transfer the pollen from one to another. If possible, use a local nursery or one that has a similar climate to yours, or that collects feedback from growers in other areas.

Our first apples to mature each summer are crisp fruited Irish Peach apples, in late December/early January, followed by rich red Earliblaze at Christmas, then Gravestein in mid-January. They are all apples for eating fresh - very fresh, as they turn floury if kept more than week or two. The true apple lover grows giant Twenty Ounces, or fat Bramley Seedlings that cook down to a gorgeous fluffy mush - perfect for apple crumbles - while a firmer-fleshed apple, like Granny Smith or Democrat, is best for a beautifully laid-out apple tart.

My favourite apples now are the late fruiting Lady Williams, a daughter (or should it be granddaughter?) of Granny Smith. She doesn't need much chilling and has firm, sweet, very white flesh. Lady Williams doesn't mature till May. Pink Lady, another close relative, is also at least close to perfect.

Late maturing apples have three great advantages over early maturing ones. Firstly, by and large, the longer a fruit is on the tree the richer its taste.

Secondly, you don't have to bust your boiler picking late apples - they'll hang on the tree for weeks or even months.

And thirdly, apples that don't mature till cold weather are far less prone to being struck by fruit fly or codling moth. I know that common sense says that the longer a fruit hangs on the tree, the more likely it is to be hit by pests. But fruit fly are attracted by sweetness and juiciness, and late apples don't turn sweet and juicy till hopefully the fruit fly have shut up shop for the winter.

Apple trees are tough trees - as long as there are no over-enthusiastic possums, wallabies or kiwi fruit vines. Once established they’ll tolerate drought, frost, and heat waves, though all of those may mean you lose a year’s crop.

Apples also need at least four hours’ sunlight a day; feeding at least once a year, and do best when well-watered and mulched. But as the wild apple trees by the side of the road show (have you ever met one that didn’t crop well?), apples also tolerate an enormous amount of neglect once they are established, i.e. are at least five or six years old with a well-developed root system.

Use fruit fly netting for those that ripen in fruit fly or codling moth season, or to keep most of the birds off. (I’m happy to share our crop with the birds: it’s part of the ‘rent’ for sharing their land.)

Try a hedge of dwarf apples along your front fence, so the branches tangle and they cross-pollinate easily. That way you can fit in varieties that will keep you munching from December through to Sturmer Pippins in August.

And now I will go and give the Jonathons a second chance. And maybe a third, this time with just a little goat’s cheese, to give it piquancy.

This week I am:

• Eating apples, and tucking them in my handbag for handy snacks.
• Crunching nashi pears.
• Slicing extremely large ‘once were zucchini’ marrows in half for the chooks to peck.
• Planning to heavily mulch the garden for winter, as I doubt I’ll be able to tend winter veg. The mulch will stop the weeds invading till I can hopefully do some planting in spring or summer.
• Watching the supposed spring-blooming rose that twines through the silver pear tree bloom again, with dozens of bright red flowers.
• Still waiting for a dahlia flower or 50 from the dahlia bed eaten by the wallaby. The bushes have grown again - and others in our garden flowered beautifully - but the ones in the front garden still seem to be in shock. But they still have three months or so to bloom.