Harvest time

This evening, we will be holding our Harvest Thanksgiving service. I made the harvest loaf last year and I was asked to do it again so I spent yesterday morning happily rolling and pulling dough to produce this:

I will have a basket of homegrown goodies to take, too, unlike last year when I had to buy everything from the greengrocer. I have  a good crop of potatoes, tomatoes, aubergine and sweetcorn to take and there may even be a few raspberries left if the birds don't beat me to them. I love this opportunity to bring the summer to a fitting close.

! ! Harvest Festival

When on a glorious day – one such as this –
you’re overcome with awe and wonder, praise,
and part-formed gratitude… which seeks some one
to thank for this, by laying at their feet
all that the world has brought us unannounced
as seedcorn turned to golden harvest wheat –

then who would hesitate, to draw in light
a greater One as whom to kneel before,
to make of our humility, a ‘One’
as if we were some grateful ‘other’; we,
less worthy, painting pure duality..

..don’t hesitate: praise is beyond a ‘two’;
what now we praise, becomes our very self;
in praise, name radiates as kingdom, come;
and kingdom hallows all, as all its own;
so, glory in that sound of praise so fine;
for when you shine with praise – then all things shine.

Michael Shepherd

 

 

A lovesome thing

It has been something of a tough time here in recent weeks.  My poor husband has been undergoing various therapies for his back problem, each of them causing him more pain and decreasing his mobility. We have  spent a great deal of time in hospital and doctors' waiting rooms but now, having eventually made our way past what my son calls 'the gatekeepers,' he is being treated by an excellent spinal consultant. The NHS works really well once one gets into the system, it is the frustrating period of procedure-following that lets us down. We are now waiting for lots of test results to come together and  then the consultant should come up with a solution or at least a plan.

My respite from all the anxiety and frustration has been my garden, which may not be the biggest or the best in the world but it is my 'lovesome thing' and the glorious weather that we are enjoying has made it possible for me to spend most of my free time out there. I'm afraid that I haven't been able to concentrate on writing or even reading; I'm sorry if I haven't called in on you for a while but I will catch up eventually.

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot—
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Thomas Edward Brown

 The white lilac is the highlight of the garden for a very brief time. I love to go out at night to see it glow in the moonlight. Alas, it has already turned brown but the birds love to sit and sing in it and it is now covered in honeysuckle so its glory changes rather than fades.

I don't have a rose plot but there are a few lovely roses, each with a particular memory attached, dotted around the garden. These three were given to me by my pupils when I retired.

 As it is a cottage garden, I can have anything in it and I do! Here is just a fraction of what is in bloom just now, there is no order or planning, I just put in what I like!

I keep a lot of pots by the kitchen door so that I have easy access to the salads, tomatoes  and vegetables; just enough for our needs, I have to buy more when we have visitors.

In the few days that have passed since I took these photos, everything has grown at an amazing rate. The tomatoes are in flower, the peas and beans are producing a daily crop and the potatoes are ready to pick.  If I get to them before the birds, I even manage to add a few strawberries to my breakfast cereal. The  pots of flowers are for my pleasure and for the local bee population to enjoy. I planted up a number of pots with Sarah Raven's pollinator friendly seeds last year and this year they have produced a splendid array of wild flowers.

'When the eve is cool,' I walk around my garden with watering cans in hand and I feel the peace and appreciate the beauty of this lovesome place.

A late arrival

I have been humming a certain tune under my breath for many weeks as the winter dragged on and on and on. I usually think of versions of this song by Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan but, following news of her death a few weeks ago, I'd like to play Deanna Durbin singing Spring will be a little late this year.


I thought that the garden would never recover from the long months of rain. I watched in dismay as the topsoil was daily washed down onto the yard below, forming a sludge that had to be removed quickly before it could get into our narrow drains. Local farmers said the crops this year, if they could ever get them planted, would be poor in quality as well as late because the soil's nutrients had been washed away by the floods. Imagine my happy surprise, therefore, when I returned from my peregrinations to find the sun shining and the garden bursting with blooms!  Cue another song:


Here are a few of my garden delights:

 The last of the camellias sit next to the first signs of the magnolia and lilac flowers against a remarkably blue sky.

 Spring flowers are coming into their own at last.

 and the shrubs and apple tree are all in blossom.

I have started to plant up my patio pots, only five weeks later than usual! I had this little companion throughout, almost pushing me away when he caught sight of a worm.

Today, the rain has come back and the temperature has plummeted; gale force winds are forecast for tomorrow. Perhaps our late spring will have lasted for just a few days but it was worth waiting for and perhaps the garden will survive yet again.

Hints of spring

At this time last year, the garden was a mass of blooms and we were eating all of our meals on the patio. Spring and summer rolled into one glorious month and then were washed away by months of unprecedented rain. The floods have now cleared but winter, apparently, has not yet ended. More rain, followed by icy winds and wintry showers are to come BUT today the sun is shining and the temperature is a very mellow 11 degrees (51 Fahrenheit).

When I went out to fill the bird feeders this morning, I noticed lots of signs of spring emerging and, knowing this might be my last opportunity for a while, I fetched my camera and recorded a few of them.

The dwarf daffodils have been open for a week now but today I spotted the first of the regular daffodils.

The camellia shrubs have also been in flower for a while, the earliest harbingers of spring in my sheltered garden. Lots of the outer flowers have fallen but I spotted one deep in the foliage and a whole lot of buds waiting to open and delight.

 Another early show comes from the pulmonaria, which I call pandemonium because of its tendency to run riot in the garden.

 I am reluctant to pick spring flowers because I know the early bumble bees need them but I know that these beautiful tulips will be eaten by mice overnight if I don't get them first, so I'll be out later to gather them:

If you look carefully at the next picture you might spot a dragon. He is one of the pets we have for the grandchildren. He's rather fond of hellebores and snowdrops.

Spring was the theme for our writing group this week and we heard a selection of poems, each of them inspiring but we did not use my personal favourite so here it is:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The lushness of Hopkins' spring hasn't arrived in my garden yet but there are definitely some early hints of what is to come.

A wan winter landscape

As I drive around the Devon lanes at this time of year, I often think of these lines from Robert Graves: a wan winter landscape, hedges freaked with snow. There was no snow yesterday but the landscape was certainly wan. The last thing, you might think, to tempt me to visit a Royal Horticultural Society garden but that is exactly what I did. The MM and I drove to Great Torrington to  RHS Rosemoor.  The garden, for the most part, looked quite wan, waiting for spring to bring it to life but there were some early plants to enjoy: masses of snowdrops, hellebores, a few narcissi and some miniature crocuses.

Aren't these glorious? I don't have much success with snowdrops in my garden, possibly because little visitors nibble the bulbs at night. I do have lots of hellebores, which I love, but not a yellow one like this beauty

The real reason for our visit was to see the Winter Sculpture Exhibition. It was a really cold day and my gloves did nothing to stop my fingers from aching but I just had to take pictures of the wonderful pieces of stoneware, stainless steel, ceramic, bronze and glass sculpture strategically placed against the backdrop of grasses, evergreens, trees and perrenials. As the exhibition brochure says: "Each piece has been carefully placed within the garden to enlighten, amuse and inspire our visitors this winter."

There are 60 sculpures in all, from 20 West Country sculptors. I can only share a few of them here but I would encourage anyone who is in the area to go and see the exhibition for themselves. It is on until Sunday 24 February.

Small hanging dragonfly by Katie Lake

Female red kite by Ama Menec

Aerviator by Michael Kusz

I like it like that by Penny Hardy

A close-up of one of those amazing dancing figures

Pair of courting cranes by Colin Andrews

A walk in the garden by Melanie Deegan

I am troubled by a great many snails in my garden but nothing like this one!

Big Cyril by Tony Smither

All of the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them. These are just a sample of the delights in the exhibition. Visitors are asked to choose their favourite but my husband and I couldn't settle on one, we both agreed that, if we had a bigger garden and a much bigger bank balance, we would love to have them all.

Hints of Spring

We had several days of warm sunshine last week causing the garden and blackbirds to think that Spring had arrived early. I went into the garden with a borrowed camera and took a few photos. The weather has changed and the garden is covered by a hard frost but I have these reminders of last week's promise:

The last of the snowdrops

First daffodils

Celandine

Purple hellebores

White hellebores

I will be away for the next two weeks and I hope to return to find the garden full of spring flowers and blackbirds' nests.

Lean bean pickings

I love borlotti beans but I have only ever been able to find cans of them in the supermarket. This year, however, I found packets of seeds in the garden centre and I decided to grow my own. The instructions on the packet were in Italian, not my forte but I think I did all the right things. Actually, I treated then just as I would runner beans (US pole beans) and hoped for the best.

They were very slow to get started but shoots appeared eventually and I watered and watched them daily as they snaked their way up the wigwam. And then they stopped! They reached only about one third of the way up the poles. Still, flowers appeared in abundance so I carried on watering and watching. The first pods developed and, treating them like green beans, I picked them to encourage more growth. If only I were further on in my Italian lessons! I think I made a mistake. No super abundance of pods grew. In fact the crop was very meagre indeed.

I cooked the first pickings, which were delicious. Then I waited patiently for the rest of the pods to develop their beauteous red/purple hue. When I arrived home from my trip Up North, I found that a number of the pods had dried on the plants so I decided to harvest the crop this morning. All those months of loving watching, waiting and watering produced this:

Not enough to feed the world but did you ever see anything more lovely? Actually, had you been in the kitchen with me,  you would have seen much denser colouring but my camera has not fully recovered from it's adventure on the beach and I haven't replaced it yet.

I found that the beans inside the pods that had dried were a very deep purple  colour, the less mature pods had beautifully speckled beans and the younger pods had pale beans. Here is the full bounty:

I usually have enough runner beans to feed us right through the summer with enough extra to give away, to freeze for the winter and to make lots of green bean chutney. I have enough borlotti beans for one meal!  I have learned a great deal, though, from the experience:

1. I should have read up on growing borlotti beans and not guessed at the Italian instructions!
2. I should have planted my runner beans as well.
3. I should have allowed all of the pods to turn a deep shade before picking them.
4. I should have expected an exiguous crop (I've been dying to use that word in a sentence and this is my first opportunity and the only reason for making this point).

 
I will definitely grow them again next year for their sheer beauty but I'll carry on buying canned beans for cooking.

A plethora of plums

The extraordinarily hot spring and the wet summer have combined to produce bumper crops of fruit. I have an abundance of apples, a slew of strawberries, a teemingness of tomatoes and a richness of raspberries. After making jam from the berries, I thought I had time to relax until the apples and tomatoes are ready for picking but a friend had other ideas.  She arrived with four enormous bags of plums and a box of jars. What could I do but get the preserving pan out again?

Stoning and cutting up 20 pounds of plums was quite a task and it was more fruit than I needed for jam. What to do with the rest? Fortunately, I was about to visit my son so a big bake up was justified.

I decided to try out my resurrected tuna quiche recipe on him. That's the result on the left of the photo. It was a great hit with him and with little Brit.  I also made a roasted vegetable quiche and a plum tart and then I made some jam tarts with a jar of the plum jam. The other item in the photo is a plum crumble cake. I have had the recipe for many years but this was my first attempt at baking one.  Here is the recipe:

I used a 10 inch/25cm springform cake tin, lined with baking parchment.
Ingredients
5oz/150g butter at room temperature
5oz/150g caster sugar
4 eggs at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5oz/150g plain flour
1teaspoon baking powder
2lbs/900g red plums, halved and stoned

For the crumble topping
4oz/115g plain flour
4oz.115g light brown sugar
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
3oz/75g butter, cut into pieces and refrigerated

Method

1. Make the topping by combining the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon powder in a bowl. Rub in the cold butter pieces until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Leave to one side while you mix the cake batter.
2. Cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold into the cake mixture.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin. Arrange the plum halves on top and sprinkle with the crumble topping.
4. Bake at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for about 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Leave in the tin to cool.

Result

I will be using the recipe again with apples when they are ready. I am sure that pears and raspberries would work as well.

The red cliffs of Devon

Whenever I drive to the south of the county, I try to spot the point where the soil changes from black to red. I would love to find a farm with both types of soil but to date I haven't seen one. I love the beautiful red sandstone of South Devon and I spent last week enjoying the sunshine and spectacular views along the red cliffs near Exmouth.

We have had exceptionally warm weather for early April and returned home to find the apple blossom, magnolia and lilac filling the garden with colour and perfume. I rushed out with the camera to record them because we are told the weather is about to change. Last year the apple blossom only survived for two days before high winds arrived to demolish all hopes of a good crop of apples. I am hoping that this lot will survive a little longer.