Fruit From The Garden

 

Thankyou everyone for your kind comments on my last post.  I have now had a good rest and am feeling much more the thing!

Yesterday I even managed to do some gardening.  Son has been helping me get my small potted flower garden sorted out.  Too many overgrown plants, too many weeds, simply too overwhelming to even start tackling a clean-up job, so I’ve been very grateful to have his help.

Our weather has been settled the last few days but we had some rain come in late yesterday, and I only just remembered to gather some fruit before it arrived.

The grape, which was so severely knocked back in an unseasonally cold spring storm, came away again and is giving us a plentiful supply of grapes.  Nothing tastes quite like a sweet grape picked direct from the vine!

The blackberries are in full season, and we are getting a small bowlful from them every couple of days.  They are now quite sweet, unlike the early fruit which were so sour they left your mouth puckered up.

The strawberries, however, are at the very end of their season and the fruit is small and pickings are slim.  The bird netting has been removed from the beds so that the birds can enjoy some of this last harvest as well.

And now I had better leave my computer and go and do some dishes.  Son is wanting to bake a fruit cake later, and it is difficult to do any kind of cooking in a kitchen that contains a pile of dirty dishes!

Have an awesome day, wherever you are and whatever you are doing 😊

Margaret.

 

Foraging For Food

It is a bit of a dreary day today, one of those grey days with wind and rain that are perfect for curling up and devouring a book or two.

Foraging is something that fascinates me.  I am not into it large-scale, but I do enjoy finding and gathering food that is growing wild or that no-one is using. 

A loaded lemon tree, with fruit free for the asking

For me, this gathering can be anything from asking a neighbour if I can have some of the citrus fruit they have lying on the ground, through to picking blackberries off a patch of wild brambles beside a deserted beach.

A grape vine growing wild on an empty section

Of course, the biggest thing when out foraging in the wild is to correctly identify what it is you are gathering so that you do not inadvertently eat something poisonous, or gather something that could have an unwanted effect such as causing a miscarriage.

Fly Agaric toadstools are especially poisonous

One also needs to be aware of the environment the plant is growing in – never harvest from beside a busy road, for instance.  When gathering watercress it pays to be aware as to whether or not there are animals in the vicinity, as they may have contaminated the bed with effluent.

Watercress in a mountain stream

I have been browsing through the three books in my little library that deal with foraging in New Zealand:

Simply Living – A gatherers’ guide to New Zealand’s fields, forests and shores by Gwen Skinner

A Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand by Andrew Crowe

A Forager’s Treasury- A New Zealand guide to finding and using wild plants by Johanna Knox

I used to dream of owning a patch of wilderness where various spreading herbs, edible flowers, wild berries, and useful weeds could grow wild and run riot.  I fondly imagined going out and harvesting things as I wanted them, but in reality the untidiness of such a wilderness would probably drive me mad!

Enjoy your day J

Margaret.

Autumn

Autumn is my favourite season, only this year I must stay at home and I feel I am missing out on it completely.  So I thought a look for some photos in my archives might remind me what autumn was all about.

Firstly, there is the glorious colour of the trees as they prepare themselves for winter hibernation.  These beautiful trees are Aspens in Arizona, but you get the idea.

Harvest is another great aspect of autumn.  These Queensland Blue iron-bark pumpkins have very tough skins.  We harvested these out of our vegetable garden in 2004.

Autumn is also when the hot summer weather turns decidedly cooler, the nights grow longer, and the first dusting of snow on the mountains appears.

Once harvest is completed, the big Garden Clean-up can begin.  Shrubs are pruned, dead leaves are raked up, weeds are gathered together – and the fun of garden bonfires begins!

One of my favourite activities is walking through piles of fallen leaves.  They crunch and crackle and scatter around you, and they always seem to have that damp earthy smell about them that I typically associate with the autumn season.

Many plants have berries on them at this time of the year – these ones are the hips of a rose.

Finally, I found this painting I had done many years ago and it also reminded me of autumn – in fact, it is titled Autumn Leaves.  It was created using watercolours and fallen pin-oak leaves.

I know many readers are heading into spring with the hope of summer just ahead, but I hope you will forgive me for enjoying these last vestiges of warmth before our winter arrives.

Let us be thankful and appreciate the diversity of nature and the beauty of our different seasons J

Margaret.