Blackberry Time

Here's another gorgeous image from Herry Perry (see my Thimble Tea post below).  It seems the good weather has returned after a very miserable Bank Holiday Monday when the brambles at the bottom of the garden took a real battering from cold wind and rain.  Now the blackberries are not really worth picking but the garden wildlife still seems to be enjoying them so I don't mind at all.

And I've already harvested plenty of other fruits including cherries, plums, tiny strawberries, a few raspberries and of course there are apples to come.

However my favourite garden harvest this year is going to be the nuts from my Cobnut bushes.  I grew three bushes from nuts I'd forgotten about and found at the back of the fridge.  They had started to sprout so I planted them in small pots and three started to grow.

That was four or five years ago now and last year was the first time they fruited (or is it nutted?)  There were just a very few nuts.  But this year I've quite a good crop and I think there will be a bag full.  I've been buying cobnuts from Allen's Farm for years and I'm really chuffed this year I'll be able to eat my own aswell. That is if the squirrels in the front garden don't find them first.

I tried a couple last evening and they seem ready so I think I'll pick them today - sorry squirrels!  However they are already gorging on and hiding away beechnuts, hazelnuts and acorns from the front garden - not to mention the birds' peanuts!