The apple harvest from our two trees, one rosy, one green, is carried out with great care and respect for the wasps and hornets that share it. My daughter twists off a lollipop-red discovery that nestles against its half-scooped-out neighbour and the hornet inside. More docile than wasps, the caramel-and-amber hornet carries off a piece of apple the size of a plump grain of wheat in its jaws, its yellow rump glowing across the field beyond.
The rich, cidery smell and buzz are a sensory pause to anyone coming through the garden gate. Beneath the trees, windfalls thump and send brief flotillas of thistledown and insects into the air. A single peacock butterfly snaps its wings possessively over a pulpy green russet. We carefully fill baskets. One wasp-hollowed apple holds an entire rugby-striped scrumping scrum of 12. The skins of finished apples curve like discarded sweet wrappers.
There is usually a wasp nest annually in the loft, and we almost always manage to live with it. In this year’s greater depletion and absence of insects, there are two – one taking us by surprise after we’d been away for a week, announcing itself in rings of ochre staining around a light fitting. I take the ticking sound, at first, for a roof leak. In a narrow corner of the attic, the comb of the wasp nest is pressing beyond its space, the wasps solving their extension problem by chewing through the ceiling plaster.
The following day, several have broken through and we need to act. Rod, the pest control man, is refreshingly pro-wasp. “If you can live with them, do; they are wonderful beasts,” he says. “And hornets! I hate having to do hornets’ nests. Beautiful, gentle things.”
My daughter and our neighbour are in agreement to continue living with the attic one between their bedrooms. There is a whole September’s worth of building space above, and perhaps a frost not too distant.
My daughter falls asleep to the rhythmical scraping of female industry, as they add the last honeycomb cells to the intricacy of their paper lanterns.
• Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 (Guardian Faber) is published on 26 September; pre-order now at the guardianbookshop.com and get a 20% discount
