Spring is my favourite time of year in the garden, but August and September comes a close second because of all the beautiful fruit we have. Our fruit season starts in June with strawberries. In July we harvest our Beauty of Bath apples and Stella cherries. The apples are small, red and a little tart. They do not keep very well, so those we don't eat, we juice. In August we get raspberries, blueberries and James Grieve cooking apples. We freeze our excess apples, raspberries and cherries. In September the Conference and William bon Chretien pears and Lord Lambourne apples are ready. This year our pears are looking the best they have for years. We also have several Kentish cob nut trees (a type of hazelnut), but our local squirrel, Harvey, has taken most of them for the past two years. I also have lemon, orange, lime and pink grapefruit trees (one of each). These are in containers and spend the winter in the conservatory. These often come into flower in winter and we pick fruit in summer, but this can vary and is a little hit and miss. The lemon is the most reliable.
If anyone has any recipes for keeping pears, I would be grateful. I'm thinking maybe in terms of preserving them in alcohol but other suggestions are welcome? A few photos taken this morning follow:
Lastly, my dogs Daisy, Monty and Oscar are enjoying the summer. They cannot stay in the sun for long as, being fair, they get sunburn very easily!
I hope you are all able to enjoy the summer!
Hugs
Sue
Сью, какой прекрасный медведь! Весёлого, солнечного лета !!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Zarina. I hope you are having good weather, too!
ReplyDeleteThis bear has such a beautiful shape and design. I love her. And your fruit trees, oh I wish they could be here. Nothing like fresh produce straight from the yard.
ReplyDeleteSue, what a sweet bear, I agree with Joanne! We have quite an orchard and we are yet to figure out what to do with pears! We need somewhere like a cellar to store them, they seem to dry out and go wrinkly before they ripen (well the long keepers do) The earlies we gorge on while they are coming thick and fast! Apples too, we juice and freeze. I love having all this fresh food from the garden. Last year possums got in while we were over seas and nipped off nearly all the blossom buds, so we had a very scant harvest. We are in the process of repairing the fences so that doesn't happen again this Spring!
ReplyDeleteI love Matilda, I'm sure she'll be snapped up.
ReplyDeleteI'm jealous of all your garden produce (except perhaps the pears and apples, not so fond of them), but there's a limit to what one can grow on a windowledge unfortunately!
I'm saying nothing about your weather, other than to point out that north of the border we didn't have one day of sun last week. It rained every.single.day :oP