Foraging for food in the garden

Fruit growing has been disappointing for us this year. The apple tree has precisely three apples on it, the crab apple tree hasn't fared much better, the pear tree only has around half a dozen pears and there's not more than a couple of dozen plums. We ate plums ad nauseam last year! The strawberry patch did manage to give a respectable haul during its month of glory, but the rhubarb, while tasty, gave up far earlier than usual.

However, there's an area of wild brambles across the end of the garden and the first blackberries are just ripe so we've picked a couple of handfuls to add some nice colour to a blackberry and apple crumble. We nipped out this morning, taking advantage of a patch of blue sky in case it decides to rain again all afternoon. It IS a Bank Holiday weekend after all! I can't believe it was May when I last made crumble. This one will be similarly made to the rhubarb and apple crumble recipe I already posted. There's lots more blackberries on their way too which is good to see. It's just a shame that so many of them will be dangerously out of reach but the birds will get to enjoy those.

We also have a fantastic potential harvest of grapes on the vine we planted I think about five years ago now. The vine was originally in a pot but it got very upset by our cold, damp winters. It remained stubbornly tiny and eventually looked as thought it had given up altogether. But we gave it one more chance and re-planted it directly in the ground and now look at it! If it wasn't such a long process, I would be tempted to consider making our own wine.