Tutti frutti

Ripening plums

It’s fruit time.  Although the blackcurrants (very few this year) are long gone, and the gooseberries are past, it’s peak season for the raspberries and the little alpine strawberries that pop up in various places around the veg and fruit patch, and the plums are just starting.  After that it’ll be the apples (no pears this year).  The raspberries are easy to deal with; they need picking over twice a day, as they’ve been ripening very fast in the warm weather we’ve had recently, but, apart from one pot of jam, they are either being eaten for pudding or going straight into the freezer; they can be frozen as they are and then popped into freezer bags for storage.  Those plums that aren’t being eaten straightaway, however, need some sort of cooking: lightly simmered with spices, or made into tarts, before being frozen.  That means time spent in the kitchen when there’s so much to do in the garden! – but, after all, that’s the point of growing things, and we can then enjoy something of our garden in the winter months.

We are not the only ones enjoying our fruit.  A family of little blackbirds was brought up on the gooseberries, and are now helping themselves to the raspberries before moving on to the plums.  I pick and throw down for them the berries that aren’t of eating quality; I don’t mind as I like their company in the garden.  They have also been visiting the greenhouse to forage for ants, which I’m happy to encourage as the ants are a bit of a nuisance; most recently they (the ants) tried to nest in a pot of dianthus cuttings that I left sitting on the gravel floor, and made quite a mess of it.  There’s plenty of insect life in the garden – bees of various sorts, an increasing number of butterflies, and lots of smaller flies and spiders – which has been attracting other birds (and bats, in the evening).  A goldcrest has been feeding regularly in the trees, collecting insects and taking them up into the tree canopy for its (invisible but very audible) family of little goldcrests, and likewise a family of young long-tailed tits has been feeding nearby.  Other youngsters include blue- and great tits (one of the latter had to be rescued after finding its way into the summerhouse but not finding its way out), robins, starlings and greater spotted woodpeckers (two families of the latter, with at least three juveniles).  During the hottest weather our birdbaths were very popular, with a song thrush coming to bathe regularly.

Cinnabar moth

The weather has mostly continued dry, with a couple of days (today was one) of very heavy rain, and one quite spectacular thunderstorm with almost non-stop lightning.  Some days have been hot; last week the UK had its hottest day on record (38C), and even here we had 30C in the shade.  This has brought out the butterflies, with red admirals and peacocks starting to appear alongside the whites, gatekeepers, meadow browns and ringlets; a comma has been about, and a couple of weeks ago we had a beautiful marbled white.  Last week I found a cinnabar moth resting on the path; it stayed long enough for a photo op, then fluttered off.

Lily 'Pink Perfection'

There have been some tutti frutti colours in the garden, too.  Increasingly I’m putting plants singly in pots so that they can be grouped together, then moved aside as they die back; it also allows me to experiment with colour combinations.  The blue echeveria with its red and yellow flowers, blue-flowered penstemon and cerise-pink dianthus wasn’t a combination I would previously have countenanced, but it worked very well.  Other strong colours have come from the opium poppies, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Knautia macedonica ‘Red Cherries’ and lily ‘Pink Perfection’.  I’ve even found a use for Salvia ‘Pink Saturday’, reviled in my last post, as filler in a small vase with pink-and-white dianthus and the knautia.  

Dianthus, knautia 'Red Cherries' and salvia 'Pink Saturday'