Slow Summer Days

Hello again. It's three weeks into the school holidays now and I've been enjoying a much slower pace of life here at the House with the Blue Door. 

Term time gets busier as the summer approaches, but as the six-week break comes into view I can feel my shoulders dropping and think of the time I'll have to do all the things I want to do (often an unrealistic expectation, as it's impossible to fulfill all my creative ambitions, as well as all my house-and garden-related plans). So I thought I'd have a little look back at what was going on here since I last posted. There were a lot of berries. An awful lot of berries. Almost every evening I went out with my colander and picked first of all the redcurrants. I don't think there have ever been so many! We only have one bush of each currant, but they have grown huge, as tall as me in fact. I gave the currant bushes a good prune yesterday and the garden is looking a lot less jungly now.

It was a very bountiful harvest, and they are now sitting in the freezer waiting to be made into jelly.

Then came the wild strawberries. Anyone who grows them will know that they love to send their suckers around the garden into every nook and cranny. I do love them for that. Such a pretty little plant, and the fruit are delicious. 

I took them to work in plain yoghurt for my lunch each day.

Next came the blackcurrants, always a week or so behind the redcurrants. The foliage has a delicious curranty smell, but was absolutely covered in ants. Picking them was a tricky business as I picked a handful of ants each time, most of which decided to march up my arm and into my clothes. Ugh.

Then raspberries, one of my favourite berries. They were yummy, and it was lovely to pick them outside in the evening through the hot days of the heatwave.

I decided to make these lovely fruits into a summer pudding. I'd only made one once before rather unsuccessfully, so I thought I'd have another go. I followed this recipe and used ordinary sliced white bread as well as frozen blackberries, and although it didn't hold its shape very well it was delicious with cream. A very summery treat.

Another harvest which I always enjoy picking is our lavender. We have one huge bush and a couple of small ones, and I pick and dry it it to make into lavender bags. The heavenly smell as I collected it is so relaxing.

I always leave some flowers for the bees though.

We had a heatwave here in the UK, with no rain for weeks on end and temperatures around 30 degrees. The grass turned brown and crispy and we watered the plants a great deal, but the endless sunshine has been fabulous. Clover has enjoyed it enormously, but at times has sensibly found the coolest parts of the house to snooze in.

How she can sunbathe on the roof of the shed in all that fur, I can't imagine.

The odd glass of fresh mint tea has cooled me down when the heat is too much. I snip it from pots outside the back door and take it out to the garden to drink.

This year I've got my act together and actually managed to feed the pots and hanging baskets weekly, and they have rewarded me with so many lovely flowers and herbs. There are scented pelargoniums - this one's called 'Orange Fizz' and its leaves have a deliciously orangey smell.

These pelargoniums over-wintered in my shed and are looking vey floriferous indeed (love that word).

This year our hanging baskets finally look full and flowery instead of a bit limp and sparse. Must remember to feed them next year.

This unusual peach-coloured verbena caught my eye at the garden centre. Such a soft shade.

Unusually for me, I've gone for pale shades on our windowsill, and I rather like them. It wasn't intentional, just what I bought on impulse in the supermarket.

However, out in the garden things have been hotting up, both in temperature and hue. Another supermarket purchase was a couple of packets of lily bulbs. I've never grown lilies before. My, they grew fast. And when they bloomed last week they were enormous! Great pink stars exploding like mini fireworks.

Their perfume was intense too, and drifted around the garden especially in the evening. It mingled with the scent of the phlox which are now in bloom and the sweet peas which I picked, and made a very fragrant place to read my book in.

At dusk now the self-seeded evening primroses live up to their name and open their pale four-petalled flowers to the insects.

I love how they look underneath our wonky rowan tree which is dripping with fruit this year. Yellow and orange together is such a late summer colour combination.

I'm often tempted to make some rowan jelly, but can't bring myself to deny the birds those orange berries. They always get eaten very quickly.

The fennel is now in bloom and is a magnet for all sorts of buzzing creatures. It's always covered in hoverflies, wasps and little flies of all sorts, a very wildlife-friendly plant.

Well, that's the end of my round-up of the last couple of weeks. I hope that you're enjoying the summer so far and finding time to relax and smell the flowers. 

See you soon x

Summer Fruit

  The hot and sunny weather we've had recently has meant that our soft fruit has ripened quickly, and I have been out harvesting it in the very warm evenings that we've been enjoying. We have two currant bushes, one red and one black, and every year I am delighted to see the little clusters of berries becoming a bright, translucent red,

or a deep, purplish, opaque black.

The redcurrants are especially attractive and it's an annual thought of mine that they would make a very pretty set of necklace and earrings! Maybe a bit too sticky, though ...

Last weekend J helped me to pick the first crop of ripe currants and we sat companionably together on garden chairs chatting about this and that whilst carefully taking only the ripe fruit from each branch. My, it did take a long time - look how many there were, especially of the redcurrants!

A week later I sat and picked them on my own in the warm morning sunshine, and mused on what a meditative activity fruit-picking is. It forces you to slow down and concentrate on the task in hand, and cannot be rushed. While I picked, my mind wandered onto all sorts of topics but the repetitive activity of lifting each branch and carefully stripping off the little clusters of berries without squashing them is very engrossing, a truly mindful activity. Afterwards I felt calm and relaxed, and had picked all of these. As you can see, not only the currants have ripened. 

The raspberries are ready now too, and I love their intense sweetness. 

I can't resist eating them straight off the bush, warm from the sun, and love their soft colour somewhere between red and deep pink. Don't they go well with their green leaves too?

I love the way they come away so easily when they are ripe and leave this strange central stalk behind. Did you know it's called a torus? I discovered recently that you can tell if a fruit is a raspberry because when you pick it the torus is left behind leaving a hollow centre. If it comes with it, it's a blackberry (I love picking up little bits of information like that).

Meanwhile the blackberries are growing fast, hard, green and fuzzy at the moment, but they'll be ripe before we know it.

The apples are swelling by the day, a foretaste of early autumn. Apparently you should reduce the tiny apples to two per branch in order to have good-quality apples when they're ripe. Hmmm, not sure if I can bring myself to do it.

Here's something I've not seen before on our apple tree: a branch of blossom amidst the ripening apples. How strange that one branch should be so far behind the rest of the tree!

The raspberries made a good dessert for my packed lunch today mixed with fat free yoghurt. They were delicious at lunchtime and, in the middle of a busy day at work, a sweet reminder of time spent harvesting soft fruit in a garden chair in warm sunshine.

Before I go I just want to say 'thank you' for your lovely comments on my posts. I love to read them and am always delighted that anyone reads my blog. I often have to catch up on everyone else's blogs every few days, rather than daily because I can't always fit it in and I find that a bit frustrating, but I do get to them eventually and sit myself down with my laptop and a cup of tea for a good catch-up. Once the school holidays begin, I shall have more time to catch up properly - hooray! x