Fading flowers

A misty autumn morning heavy with dew...

 

With flowers fading away... 

I was quite struck by how beautiful decay and mold was! It was quite a revelation to see the garden in this way, instead of feeling sad about the beauty that's passed. Though maybe rays of sunshine make anything look beautiful. As I write it is now pouring with rain, so I'm very grateful to have captured some of this beauty before it gets washed away...

Autumn trees

 

 

Copper Beech with their beautiful leaves and abundance of nuts.

Horse Chestnut with their prized conkers ripe and bursting from their shells. A good shake of the branch and they all come raining down. I was a hero in the boys eyes for a while after doing this!

Hedgerow foraging

As the leaves begin to turn and summer comes to an end, it's time to grab the basket (or cardboard strawberry punnet as I tend to use!) and go out into the fields to scour the hedgerows for berries.
Blackberries are the first to be sought after - a little late this year, but so plump! I don't think I've ever seen such big juicy ones. Most of them were popped straight into the freezer for pies and crumbles.

 

Next was elderberries. I just love elder trees as they are so productive and beautiful. The deep colour of elderberries and their scarlett stalks is stunning. They were put into the pan to make elderberry cordial. Flavoured with cloves, it's a really nice drink made with warm water - perfect for when you're suffering with a cold, though maybe you'd be better off drinking it before hand to prevent you getting a cold in the first place!

 

Soon after the elderberries come the sloes. Last year there were none, so it was with some relief to find some this year. They are now in a kilner jar full of vodka and sugar, slowly infusing to make the most delicious liqueur, Sloe Vodka, or Slodka as we call it.

 

Whilst exploring local hedgerows in search of sloes, I made the happy discovery of not one, but three damson trees! And they were weighed down with fruit - a beautiful sight to behold! Boxes and boxes were picked, most now in the freezer waiting to be made into Damson Vodka (Damka... can you spot the theme here!)

 

I did use some of the damsons to make chutney and to make a start on that dreaded Christmas present list!

And finally, just when I'm starting to flag with all this picking, boiling, straining and bottling, come the rosehips. Sons 1 & 2 were really happy to hear that rosehip syrup making day had arrived, as they love drinking it neat from a spoon, like medicine. It was lovely to hear their enthusiasm for it! Rosehips have huge amounts of vitamin C, so hopefully this syrup will see us well through the winter months.

All of this foraging has inspired Littlest in doing his own gathering of leaves, pine cones and in particular acorns and a result is getting very good at spotting oak trees - fantastic!

It's been a wonderful year for berry foraging and the store cupboard is very well stocked. A very satisfying feeling indeed. Bring on winter - though not too soon!

This year's allotment season

As I'm busily harvesting produce from the allotment, I've been reflecting on how this year's allotment season has been. It's has been a funny old year for growing. The season began well enough in March with shallot planting and the garlic, which had been in all winter, beginning to grow well...

But then the snow came... in April! Somehow the shallots survived the bitter cold and went on to grow well with a reasonable harvest. The garlic however was mediocre with generally small bulbs. That may have been down to the variety, as I'm constantly changing which I grow!

The cold spring meant that I was late sowing my seeds in the greenhouse. Tomatoes and cucumbers were sown very late but they started off well and I was optimistic they would catch up.

The boys (apart from 'the teen', who rarely comes to the allotment any more!) enjoy seed sowing time and love trying to grow some crops of their own, particuarly son #2 who likes to grow extra long runner beans, round courgettes and red carrots - anything a bit different! A frequent past time in the allotment is to make soup and various other concoctions from leaves, flowers and mud...

Over the years I have refined the amount of different things I grow and now concentrate on tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse; courgettes, parsnip, garlic, and runner beans, with a few other little things if there's time and space, such as peas, leeks, carrots and lettuce.
I grow more and more beans each year and this year, as well as runner beans, I have grown borlotti and purple climbing French beans. They have been a fantastic success this year and have the most beautiful purple flowers.

After the tomatoes and cucumbers germinated they promptly stopped growing, it was most bizarre. They ended up on the compost heap as no matter how much I fed and watered them they just refused to grow. So the green house this year has been a complete fail.
However, the courgettes have been producing really well, enough to make courgette chutney and to be in almost every meal for the past two months!

 

The fruit trees are heavy with fruit, which is a stark contrast to last year, when we only had 2 apples! The small plum tree has been incredible with branches snapping under the weight of all of it's fruit. It's such a delight to feast on plums freshly picked from the tree and the cupboards have been well stocked with plum jam.

 

 

There are a lot of 'wild' areas in the allotment (i.e. where I just don't have the time to do anything about!) and these are great for birds, butterflies and bees. I really enjoy spotting these as I'm working. This summer has been fantastic for butterflies and the allotment has attracted Holly Blue, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Speckled Wood, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, the three Whites and much to my delight a Small Copper.

Looking back it has been a season of extremes... bitterly cold, baking hot... plants not growing at all, others producing a bountiful harvest. 

It is hard to make time for the allotment, but it is worth it when I do. Having at least something home grown each day, even if it's just a clove of garlic, or a spoonful of chutney is rather satisfying!

Once I plant next years garlic, in a few weeks time and have a bit of a tidy up, my allotment season will be over. The Allotment gets no direct sunlight during the winter months, so I don't grow any winter crops. But the break is very welcome, with just the occasional trip to the compost heap!

The annual Bilberry haul

Nipstone Rock

The Stiperstones

Mountain Ash

Broom

One of my favourite foraging outings is bilberry picking. Probably because you have to go high up in the  hills to go bilberry picking, and that's where I love to be.
Our regular bilberry spot is Nipstone Rock, which is part of the Stiperstones just over the border in Shropshire.
The pink of the heather and the deep purple bilberries in the late summer light...
The boys enjoying the juicy feast, and searching for the plumpest berries. When they tire of that, they enjoy practicing their rock climbing skills on the (lower!) craggy peaks.
K and F use a berry picking comb to reap their harvest, while I carefully pluck mine by hand. My method is incredibly slow but without the twigs and leaves that the comb also seems to collect! K does deserve the credit for picking 90% of our haul with remarkable speed and efficiency!
On our return, the berries are put onto trays and picked over, (by me!) to remove any of the said leaves and twigs, and popped into the freezer. The bilberries are bagged up the following day. This is a great way of ensuring we have lots of bilberry pies, crumbles and muffins over the coming months.
Not all are frozen though, as the fridge is full of bowls of fresh berries, for a week of bilberry delights!

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Friday's Flowers... I must change this title!

 The colour of the garden has moved to a more vibrant pallette with the Helianthus (a perennial sunflower) coming into flower. The plants grow steadily from ground level in the spring, to at least 1.5 meters high now. They do rather shade out their neighbours at the moment, but they do shout out 'summer'... and the bees love them too.

The oregano is also in full flower and when I walk into the garden a cloud of butterflies (mainly Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns) rise up from it. I love the red stems too.
Both of these plants were given to me, so I don't know the exact varieties. They do give the garden a new lease of life, when a lot of plants have done their thing by now.