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Showing posts with the label harvest

September sunshine

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The mornings are misty just now.  Not a grey, damp mist but a pearly sheen of mist with the sun somewhere behind it, silvering the sky. It has been a perfect September day.  We have been working in the garden, Ian cutting some of the hedges and a lot of grass while I have cut back what feels like thirty wheelbarrows full of the self seeders which we like to have here but which take over the world if you let them seed: campanula, artemisia, alchemilla, feverfew.  I love them all but left to seed all over the place they squeeze out practically everything else. The whole garden is overflowing with harvest.  This summer has not been one for the garden as you can probably tell by the way it has not appeared in the blog.  But just now it doesn't seem to matter that we lost it under the demands of other things.  There has been a fantastic harvest of damsons. There are now twenty six jars of jam on the shelves, waiting for winter.  Damson jam is one of ...

Coming back to the end of month view of the garden

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For the last few years I have taken part in the End of Month view series of blogs, hosted by Helen at Patient gardener .  It has been an interesting exercise and, for someone who is trying to make a new garden where there was field before, a really useful way of looking back and seeing that there is progress. Even when I feel that everything is taking so very long and nothing is coming to fruition as I imagine, a look at the end of month photos since 2009 shows me that I am quite wrong.  Things are settling and maturing.  It is very cheering. This year the garden has very much taken second place to the rest of my life.  I had a big crisis of confidence with it last year and, although I recovered myself as spring returned and I fell back in love with my garden, I have had more time away from it than usual.  I have felt this year that I was running to catch up with myself, falling back through the door from a week in Devon with my parents, gathering myself, wand...

Harvest

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Harvesting is a two sided coin: on the one side, the satisfaction, the pleasure at the gathering in and the putting into store and on the other the tyranny of the full basket of courgettes or beans, or whatever is this year's glut, crying out to be transformed into something which will keep while the garden sleeps. It is also the time to take stock of how the year has been. What grew well, what failed, what was far more trouble than it was worth, what was wonderful and will go on the list for next year? It has been a good year for apples for us. Yesterday we picked wheelbarrows full from the Howgate Wonder and there is more to come from the less sunny side of the tree. These are not a problem. They store wonderfully and slowly sweeten so that after Christmas they can be eaten by themselves although now they are a cooker and need sugar. The trickier apples are the ones on the old trees in the kitchen garden. They are smaller and sourer but we can't bear to throw them away. This ...