Out of synch

Evening mist down in the valley

We’ve now slipped into autumn, with evenings darkening earlier and temperatures gradually starting to drop.  The mellow fruitfulness is here, along with the mists.  August was a little drier than previous months, and there were some warm days, but there’s no sign of an Indian summer. 

August always throws me off balance.  I've always thought of it as ‘summer’, but increasingly I find it more like ‘autumn’ – the garden starting to wind down, with plenty of produce in the veg plot but the freshness of early summer gone and the greens starting to turn to gold.  It’s also the time when my planning goes out of synch.  I know that the first eating apples will be ready later in the month, but I always buy supermarket ones ‘just in case’, to bridge the gap between the early Discovery apples and the Greensleeves that come along just that bit later; then I end up with too many apples in the kitchen.  Usually there are also plums to eat our way through at the same time, although this year we had hardly any, so that particular problem didn’t arise.  At least there don't seem to be as many wasps this year.

Then there are the blackberries.  Surely they’re September fruit? But the ones in the hedgerow across the lane fruit in August, and I find myself with bought-in blueberries to use up rather than picking the free blackberries.  Out of synch again.

Blackberries across the lane

A good pea (Early Onward) crop this year, but that wasn’t so much out-of-synch as all-at-once.  I must get better at successional sowing.  And my Alderman peas resolutely refused to climb the trellis I built for them, and sprawled across the bed; but at least I’ve managed to save some pods for sowing next year.

The butterflies here are also out of synch.  The Big Butterfly Count run by Butterfly Conservation finishes in the first week of August, but peak butterfly time in this garden is at least a week later.  Not that the peak amounted to much this year, but a few red admirals turned up to bolster the low numbers of peacocks that had been around before; I spotted one painted lady and one tortoiseshell, and we now have a few brimstones (and of course the whites, which have mostly been kept off the brassicas by judicious netting this year).  No commas, yet; they might come along as the apples ripen, as they like overripe fruit.

Speaking of fruit, the fig tree (bush?) has produced several rather nice fruits this year, despite its rather shaded position.  I have good intentions of clearing the weeds around it ….