The sunflowers have a squirrel eating their faces; dangling upside down and expertly plucking, stripping and eating the seeds. I rescue a couple of big, round half-blinded suns for the children’s hamsters.
Without a garden, autumn is a sombre time of decline and death. The plants wither, the days shorten, the nights grow chill. Life moves from outdoors to indoors. It’s an altogether melancholy season.
With a garden, it’s a time of fulfilment of a season’s promise.
There are crops to be gathered.
The tomato plants are shrivelling, but I still picked 5lb of tomatoes today. We planted 40 of a variety we bought in Italy – Lilliput. They are low and bushy, the tomatoes not quite sure whether to be round or plum, and compromising with a point at one end. There are courgettes too – despite what that twat Monty Don was saying on Gardner’s World last week. He said “you won’t get any more courgettes so you might as well rip the plants up.” I picked seven today and five yesterday, and one vine, delayed by the summer’s drought, is only just coming into it’s own with strange bell-shaped fruit. Don’t remember planting that.
The Bramley apples have a worm in them, without exception, so won’t store. A neighbour dropped off a bag of plums, so I have the ingredients for Old Doverhouse chutney – apples, plums and tomatoes plus chillies, ginger, garlic and onions.
I’ve got raspberries which, with white wine vinegar, will make Raspberry Vinegar, and enough apples to make an apple, cider and chilli jelly. Normally I’d consider it just too heavy on the apples – a full preserving pan of 5lb converts to just a couple of jars of jelly – but this year there is nothing to be lost. I’ll have to work out how to combat the worm this winter, but fear it’s just the proximity of other trees and lack of circulating air that is to blame.
The tastes of the garden that will take us through winter.
