Day 91 of the 100 day project

Not long until the end of the project now and suddenly it is time to pick things as well as to continue with the weeding and sorting.  It makes me realise just how long I have been doing this.  I started on 1st April 2018 at a time when things were only just beginning to grow after a long cold spring.  Now we are certainly in high summer and for May and June we have had a lot of hot dry weather.  When I look across to the hills on the other side of the valley the fields are brown and gold.  This is Wales.  The normal colour of my view is green, many shades of deep verdant green.

But this evening through my window shows a bleached dry world.  It is still beautiful but it doesn't quite look like home.  It has been wonderful though to eat outside every day, to sit in the shade because the sun is too hot and to come into the old house where the slate floors and the thick walls produce a cool retreat.  The garden really does need some rain.  Ian has been watering his edible crops every day and I am trying hard not to water flowers as there is just too much to do if it is done indiscriminately.  A handful of cosmos which went in as seedlings have had water but the rest of the garden must take its chance!

Today I have been picking gooseberries and blackcurrants as well as taking out some of the bindweed from the kitchen garden.  Gooseberries seem to have fallen out of favour as a dessert fruit.  I very rarely see them in supermarkets.  I imagine they are a difficult crop to pick in a mechanised fashion and the fact that they need topping and tailing and then cooking before eating means they are also not an instant fruit.  They seem to have become oldfashioned, like wearing hats and writing letters.  I like topping and tailing gooseberries, snipping off the fuzzy end of the berry and the remains of the stalk.  It reminds me of my mother.  When my parents came visiting us here after we moved to North Wales we used to sit and top and tail together, outside on the bench whenever we could, chatting about family and books and putting the world to rights.  I miss that now.

Gooseberries grow well up here and we have always had good crops.  I love the tart edge to their sweetness.  I adore gooseberry fool with its sweet, tart, creaminess and gooseberry crumble with cream.  I love gooseberry jam, sometimes with elderflower, sometimes without.

It is Ian's birthday tomorrow.  I am going to make a pavlova for him so just need to decide whether it will have strawberries and blueberries or whether to make a gooseberry one.  Might have to ask him to choose!