Our latest chilli plant. It was Clare who christened it ‘Tuco’, after Tuco Salamanca, the ridiculously fiery Mexican in the first couple of seasons of Breaking Bad. Only we have already eaten one of the three fruits it has produced so far, and it turned out to be very mild, so perhaps it’s misnamed. We should call it Jesse Pinkman instead, perhaps.
The plum tree is bearing a heavy load this year, and needed help. Banyan trees have worked out how to do this kind of thing for themselves, but not yet this species. The working week started with a trip to the builders’ merchants in order to acquire some long, stout bits of wood to prop up the most creaking branches.
This is not an eventful period of my life. This is nothing to do with the Great Fear, it’s just how the wheel is turning at the moment. But at least the wild strawberries are out, and waiting to be found.
This little stand of apple trees outside the Ellen Wilkinson Building on campus sees its crop go mostly to waste even in a normal year. And as it is right now, the whole campus is neglected and starting to rot away. Such a waste.
Ahhh. Rubus plicatus, one of the countryside’s great free bounties. They have found evidence in the stomachs of prehistoric peat bog victims that we’ve been eating these beauties for thousands of years. Who am I to go against such tradition.
Late July, a time of year when certain things are fated to happen. I have time off work and do as little as I can, and the garden begins producing fruit. Fate has done its duty with both in 2020, despite everything.
Hard to caption this photo as anything much other than ‘APPLE!’. For appley (apply? Apple-y?) it most certainly is. Not that it’s sitting comfortably on this tree any more; it was definitely picked today.
Always a good culinary moment. The first ones just seem to taste so much better. The act of peeling allows the anticipation to build pleasantly, before that opening bite allows the sweetness to cover the tongue. Well, it was the best bit of an otherwise very mundane working day.
So many blackberries. So little freezer space. This clump dangles tantalisingly off the wall at the end of Victoria Road, ten feet up; no one can pick them. But then again so much of this free bounty remains unharvested at the end of a summer; and so in November, the shops feel it’s OK to sell the imports from Guatemala. What a waste…
Wilfully ignoring the political developments of the day — let’s photograph some food instead. Two days after being picked, these blueberries have darkened to become indistinguishable, colour-wise, from the blackberries tossed in the bowl with them. Add some sugar and cream, and eat to forget.
Being 42 