This afternoon I went out onto the top garden and was immediately assaulted by the damson tree with branches laden with fruit!!! I couldn't reach many branches, so I got what I could with the help of my stick!


I put the ones I could get onto the small wall, so I could collect after I'd gone round the rest of the garden....


There weren't many, but plenty for a lovely damson crumble or pie!!

I walked round to the bench to see the lovely Himalayan honeysuckle which has now grown into a superb bush, right outside my lounge....




The gorgeous bright vivid orange of the mombretia looked so lovely against the purple flowers of the honeysuckle.... but now the mombretia is flowering all over the place - it is such a pretty flower and totally wild in my garden!


I sat down on the bench and looked at the apple tree, which seems to have produced an incredible amount of fruit this year...


The apple tree has blackberries growing on it too!!

Also because I don't get out into the garden to prune or weed etc, the blackberries have managed to grow all over the place. I noticed that the brambles are fully laden with fruit too!!!


Oh boy am I going to have loads of fruit this summer/autumn. I can just imagine the amount of frozen bags that'll be full of my own fruit.

I just sat there, completely happy and content. The clouds started to roll in - we've been exceedingly lucky down here, we've had some wonderful weather whilst the rest of the country have been deluged with an excess amount of rain. Although as I sat there, the wind started picking up and even though it was a warm wind, it did look as if it might just start raining.

So up I got and meandered my way back into the house. It's quite a walk around from the top garden to the back door, well it is for me because, being disabled, takes me a long time. Still, I collected the damsons and came back indoors.

I washed the fruit and made a lovely nutty, crispy crumble topping. I halved the damsons, got the nut out and then covered them with soft brown sugar. The topping was heaped on the fruit and immediately put in the halogen cooker.

Forty minutes later........


A lovely damson crumble - but something was missing!!!!


Coconut custard just fitted the bill - and it was absolutely gorgeous.

So from tree to the table took around an hour - and they tasted so good too. I do feel that when you've picked your own fruit or vegetables, they do taste significantly better. Well no sprays or advanced growth supplements have been added, and what's even better - they're wild. I didn't plant any of them.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be busy preparing and freezing apples and blackberries - all free to me.

The wind did pick up significantly and it was only an hour later that the rain started. The weather people do say that we can expect strong winds and heavy rain over the next few days and even thunder tonight! I'll believe that when I hear it, they've been threatening us with that for over a fortnight now, and nothing has happened!!!

Okay folks, soon be the weekend - so I wish you all a wonderful weekend.