The depth of summer is here, surely time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of one's labours?
Smile at the vibrant business of the flowerbeds, gloat at the netted and laden fruit trees, puff one's chest at the productive crops burgeoning in the veggie patch, sigh at the slightly disappointing crop flops of the season and relax the aching muscles?
The garden flora and fauna are at their best, everything is alive with the lazy hum of insect activity, the busy flit of feathered friends. The swan plants are stripped and those gold-banded chrysalides that my grand-daughter calls "catty-down pillows" that have been lucky enough to have survived wasp attack have turned into magnificent Monarch butterflies. You have fed, tended, watered, tied up, nipped back, sprayed and companion-planted to reduce pest attack, you've ensured bee and butterfly attractor plants are well established. Goodness knows how many times you have mowed the lawns and mulched the shrubs throughout this unpredictable mercurial summer but here you are and everything is quietly growing before your very eyes!
Rest time? Oh no! Dead heading is a constant daily task and cropping, harvesting and using this abundance of wonderful fare in ever more inventive ways now becomes the priority. I begin to understand the important skill of jam and chutney making, bottling, drying and freezing of fruit and vegetables, as I scan the day's harvest of green beans, rhubarb, plums and tomatoes of every hue.
Attempting to share the crop of the moment generally occurs when a worldwide glut is rampant, hence the need to learn the finer arts of the farmhouse kitchen. Research these days is mainly across the ether, but I prefer to delve into the brown dog-eared recipe books of my aged aunt to glean a suitable method to preserve some wonderful fresh grown specimen to pull out for June's mid winter Christmas gathering in a zealous moment of triumph." Oh, just a light slurp of passionfruit across the icecream and Christmas pud ... how delicious!?"
