The prolonged heatwave is doing wonders for my fruit. I've not long come in from 1.5 hours of picking soft fruit - namely 1.3kg of raspberries, wild strawberries and blueberries. It could well be a full time job out there. But I'm not stressing, if something goes to seed from lack of watering, or if a few raspberries go over, so be it. I'm doing what I can.
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| Stinky nettle and comfrey tea |
I love compost and feeding the garden, so it's been worth putting up with the stink of soaking nettles and comfrey for a few weeks. The new neighbours said they didn't notice the smell, but I made sure to keep them happy with a fruity breakfast, picked with their help.
There have been countless mistakes made, and lessons learned. I should have thrown the net curtain from the downstairs loo over the cherry tree, but by choosing privacy I lost the much-anticipated crop to blackbirds. And my Dad wasn't too impressed when I gave him a marigold to eat, when it should have been a nasturtium flower.
I loved watching a bunch of three year olds pulling off the pea pods. I've been less impressed by the broad beans... black fly has spoiled most of the pods, despite taking the growing tips off. On one stalk I got one pod with four beans in it. Disappointing. And I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a dead hornet. Not sure what would have happened had it been alive, but it's kind of nice to see unusual wildlife in the garden!
And whatever the stinky smells, pest-ridden crops and supersized wildlife, there's always more fruit to cheer me up. Always.
