Summer abundance.

The soft fruit harvest has been very good this year despite the Gooseberry sawfly  stripping the gooseberries and redcurrant bushes leafs,

the gooseberries gave us around twenty kg of lovely fruit, we have sold around half ,

Last of the Gooseberries.

the rest has been made into jam or just frozen for winter deserts. The Red currants have given us around six kg so far with around another four remaining to be picked, most of these have been sold to a friend who will eat red currant jelly with everything, even with a salad. We don't need any of the fruit this year as we still have several pots of jelly left from last year.

The raspberries keep on coming.

We have lost count on the raspberries, there has been two big pickings one of six kg and the other one weighed in at seven kg, plus what we have picked just to eat for desert, this is one fruit that we keep mainly for ourselves, we have sold a couple of kgs' but it is just about our most favourite fruit so lots of jam has been made plus bags of frozen  berries for the winter month. Next to be harvested will be the black currants, some will be made into jam but mostly they will be used to make Ribena, vitamin C  in a bottle.

The peaches should be ready in about a week,  they are looking very good, what we can't eat fresh will be bottled. The winter store cupboard is filing up.

First of the Sweetpeas.

Both Sweet Peas

First Dahlias of the year.

and Dahlias are now flowering so lots of flowers for the house, and we have had our first picking of garden peas, the French beans are flowering, so they wont be long. So far the potatoes seem to be doing well, no sign so far of slug damage so maybe the nematodes have done their thing, I shouldn't speak too soon but so far there has been no sign of the dreaded blight although there have been plenty of warnings on the local radio station.
I survived the coronary angiogram and it appears that all is well with my heart, nice to know that something is working as it should, however the angiogram is the most unpleasant procedure I have ever had, if I ever have to have another one they will have to sedate me or knock me on the head.
Hopefully I can now stay away from hospitals until my next check up in October.

The last few days have been spent re-making the rockery, it had become very overgrown with silver weed and the dreaded mares tail, we re-discovered the water pump, so once again the pond has trickling water,

Misty is fascinated with the water.

Misty, Freddie's sister is totally fascinated with this trickle of water, and for some reason prefers to drink from it rather than her own bowl of water. The work on the rockery is not quite finished yet, but Simon has incorporated stepping stones into the rockery so it should be easier to weed without stepping on plants.

There is now lots of Ladies bedstraw growing in the hedgerows.

 

Golden Rubus, now in flower.