Fruit - A new discovery

One of the things I love about living here is the abundance of fruit. The cherries kick off the year and we then have fresh fruit right through to about late September. The strawberries this year were abundant - for three weeks we were picking between 500gms and 1 kilo every two days. Then came the raspberries; again three weeks of picking a huge amount but I didn't weigh them (difficult when they are already eaten!). Now we are eating mirabelles (both yellow and red) - not quite so abundant this year but never mind - and the figs have just started to ripen (shhh - don't tell anyone!).

In the vegetable patch I have water melons with golf ball size fruit - I planted 20 seedlings and about 15 are doing well so we'll be feasting on water melon later in August. I also have 15 regular melons but they were planted late so are still developing.

The peach tree is heavy with fruit which will be picked shortly and the pear trees also promise a good harvest.

But the biggest surprise this week was a new discovery - bear in mind we've lived here for over 10 years now. Two days ago I was inspecting the bees and suddenly noticed that the tree behind the hives was full of a small plum like fruit, green/yellow in colour. Definitely not a mirabelle and the taste is delicious. I'm guessing a plum of some sort and am not too bothered which sort so long as it tastes good! Harvesting them will be fun though as they really are a metre from the hives!

Last night two friends came for supper and I had approximately no notice. The joy of being able to go into the garden to find supper. We feasted on French beans cooked with onions, salad and cucumber. We decided that courgettes would be too much. For pudding we feasted on ice cream and honey straight from the comb. Perfect!