It’s not just plums…. The apples are doing well this year, as are the leeks, and is that even a couple of beetroot poking up from the soil? Sure is. None of this makes a big dent in the food bill but it’s still satisfying.
In all the fuss about the plums this year, we risk forgetting that these equally scrumptious beauties have also had a very fine summer. I just wish that come November, our supermarket shelves won’t be stuffed with the identical product, but shipped over from Guatemala.
We have reached an officially measured total of 21.2kg/46.6 pounds of harvested plums. This is the all-time record haul since it started bearing fruit about fourteen years ago (we forget exactly). I think the insects can have their fill now, I’m feeling plummed out.
The insect was after the nectar. The flower wants its pollen moving on. I wanted the blackberries, the seeds of which will in turn be distributed. We all get something out of the transaction.
More plants, but there are a lot of them around at this time of year, particularly after the healthy mixture of sun and rain which has characterised the last three weeks or so. You were getting something from house or garden today in any case, as I never left the vicinity. But work is nearly done.
Another one of those recurrent, annual subjects. Our plum tree definitely has years off — and 2022 was one — but this year there’s going to be a decent crop. Previously I have referred to these as plumlets but for some reason ‘plumlings’ came to mind this time round, which I feel is definitive.
Let it be said that I find bananas to be possibly the most revolting of all natural foods: I really cannot stand them. If they were the only foodstuff that I had access to, I’d starve to death. Which is a shame, because bunches — literally — of them grow all over St Helena, including many in Gareth’s garden, as shown here. And I quite like their strange, purple flower/appendages, dangling down like strange alien tongues. But even after they ripen, I’m not going to eat any, I can assure you.
Cheesus being the name of one of the many eateries-stroke-café-cum-bars that are now, by law, the only kind of retail establishment allowed to open in Hebden Bridge. It served a fine grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and why not a Christ reference today — it is his birthday celebration tomorrow, after all. Enjoy tomorrow, however you intend to spend it.
Last day in Oxford on this trip. While having a cup of tea outside the museum (in the same place depicted on Tuesday), in more pleasant sunshine, my eye was caught by the profuse fruit on this horse chestnut tree. In my youth all these would have been harvested for the playing of conkers, but apparently Health & Safety has done for that tradition, at least officially. Mind you, all of these were some distance up in the air, so I guess they will come down in their own time.
On 6th October last year I was hauling myself up Yewbarrow in the Lake District and about to go to Canada for a week, but no similar adventures are taking place at the moment: this is the sixth shot out of seven to be taken in Hebden Bridge and the fourth in a row indoors. But at least the garden is producing. The monster fruits to the right may or may not be a function of these being pictured in a silver bowl.
