Season of mists & mellow fruitfulness…

…but it’s not supposed to be autumn yet! However it’s pretty cool and there’s quite a nip in the air in the early morning now. I’m planning to upload some pictures of an awesome & inspirational garden I visited yesterday – I now have serious orchard envy – but here are just a few from around our own little patch to keep you going until I find the correct lead for the little camera!

Around the wildlife pond – two cats and a brontosaurus…

You always kind of know that a garden is never altogether your own, that you share it with all manner of shy & unseen creatures. Or not so shy & unseen, in the case of Felis Sylvestris Catus… Which probably explains why the wild birds are leaving the blackberries alone:

Loads of berries ripe now, more to come, and still flowering…

The plums are at that tantalising stage where they look absolutely ripe & delicious:

Plums next to rowanberries, neither of them fully ripe…

…but they’re not ready to part company with the branches just yet! Some of the tomatos are ready to pick:

The label said, Gardener’s Delight – looks like Moneymaker or even Tigerella to me!

…but I’ve actually snipped off about half of them, ripe or not, as the cool rainy weather forecast for the next few days is a recipe for blight. They’ll ripen up on the conservatory windowsills. And there are still a few flowers going strong: Montbretias, fuchsias, the hydrangea, and these little troupers scattered around in old hanging baskets & windowboxes:

You can’t go wrong with a pelargonium or three!

I’m pretty busy picking & preserving right now; blackberry jam and mango & apple chutney are already made, and 2.2Kg more blackberries were picked today, from the garden and the riverbank. Also a small bag of crab apples, mainly for their pectin; interesting to see that that tree also has a poor & slightly-manky-looking crop this year, so it probably wasn’t anything we did or didn’t do that’s caused our own trees to fruit so poorly this year. Blackberry vinegar will be started off tomorrow, and blackberry & crab apple jelly. If I can find enough of them, Apple Butter’s high on the to-do list too, but finding more jamjars may have to come first!

A walk on the wild side…

Well, you can’t really call our riverbank wild, but it’s hardly tame, either. I do tend to treat it as an extension of the garden; now we’ve finished our dog-walking duties, I could take the camera down to show you all why we love walking down there, dogs or no dogs! If you click on a picture, it’ll take you to a bigger version; just click “back” to return.

Reflections…

On a calm day, the reflections make you wonder if there’s a whole other world down there…

So many different colours of comfrey…

…and there’s so much comfrey, it’s like a sea of green with multicoloured flowers.

First elderflower of the season!

Almost time to start planning elderflower cordial and champagne…

Garlic Mustard or jack-by-the-hedge…

…maybe to go with a nice wild-gathered salad?

Another pic of the hawthorn

The little hawthorn tree is just heart-stoppingly beautiful when you stop to look closely at it.

A few yellow flags popping up now…

Some yellow flag irises are starting to show their pretty heads in amongst the comfrey.

Buttercups in the boggy field

Further down, in the boggy field, continuing the yellow theme, the comfrey & yellow flags give way to buttercups & clover.

Pussy willow tails in the setting sun

And you can see why they’re called “Pussy Willows” – you kind of want to stroke them! But the seeds are drifting everywhere.

Deadnettles dotting the shorter grass…

The shorter grass is dotted with pretty little deadnettles. And I’d love to know what this shy little beauty is:

A pretty thing – but what is it?

Anyway, two pics to wind this post up; firstly, one new flower in the garden, a rose of unknown provenance:

A rose by any other name…

My lovely neighbour spotted some more-than-half-dead rosebushes going for pennies when our local branch of Woolworths was closing down, and snaffled them up for me, knowing how much I love them. Two of them are still with us, but we’ll never know what variety they are! This one is similar to the Paul’s Scarlet, but with a more open flower. And last but not least, one of the reasons why we appreciate the riverbank so much is because it gives us lots, lots more than just beautiful views:

Comfrey fritters, in cider batter – yum!

Cheating a bit…

Can’t resist posting a pic of my third-favourite flower, after apple blossom & roses, although this is from the nearby riverbank rather than our own garden:

Pretty, pretty pink may blossom!

Still awaiting more buds to open, in the garden – jasmine, kiwi and more roses imminent!