It's a good life - sometimes

Enough of this mawkish, maudlin, sentimental, nostalgic claptrap about the so-called good life on the farm.  Time to get back to the real world where the vegetables come already washed and nicely wrapped in polythene at the local supermarket.

Nah, those readers who have virtually (or even, in one case, really) known me for any time will remember that I am prepared to get my hands dirty and I do occasionally make some sort of feeble attempt towards self-sufficiency by growing a little fruit and veg.  I have been known to attempt such exotic delicacies as potatoes and broad beans.  There was one year when I grew, or rather, tried to grow Chinese gooseberries.  That's the name by which I know that cherry-like fruit, actually a little larger than most cherries, orange in colour and usually served with a couple of dead leaves attached to the stalk.  (I see it is also known as a Cape gooseberry but it's proper name is physalis.)  I have, over the years, tried all sorts of things in my miniscule vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden overshadowed by one neighbour's laurel, another neighbour's sycamore and a third neighbour's sumac.  That sumac is a wretched nuisance as it sends new trees up from the roots which, needless to say, stretch across my garden and those new trees are real buggers to dig out.  I get my own back in a small way by sending raspberry canes into her garden!

I have now settled on the vegetables I will attempt to grow and sow the same ones each year.  We have runner beans, peas, onions, garlic, parsnips.  That's it.  But in addition, we also have the raspberries, rhubarb, a gooseberry bush, a blackcurrant bush, an apple tree, a cherry tree, two pear trees and two plum trees - and blackberries growing wild in the hedge between us and Tom.  This year only about half the peas germinated, giving enough for three or four meals, the runner beans were eaten by slugs, the parsnips failed to germinate, the onions rotted, I forgot to buy the garlic.  I picked two sticks of rhubard as thick as my thumb and about six inches long - that from four crowns! - and they had absolutely no flavour.  The arthritis was too bad for me to harvest the gooseberries or blackcurrants.  The birds ate all the cherries (as usual).  Neither plum tree has any fruit, nor does the apple, as the bees could not pollinate the blossom due to the rain.  One pear tree is bare though there are some pears on the other - but fewer than usual and the jackdaws keep lunching on what there are.

BUT he autumn raspberries are delicious and plentiful.  We keep eating huge bowls of them with cream for dessert.  The blackberries are also doing very well so there will be a good supply for flavouring apple pies and apple crumble - and for baked Alaska.

At least something is turning out well.

~~~~~

I got slightly side-tracked with yesterday's pictures as I had started out on a set of arch photos.  These arches are in the grounds of the château in Châteaubriant, a town in France almost on the borders of Brittany and Anjou and which is proud to fly the black and white flag of Brittany.

[Trivial fact:  Brittany and Cornwall are the only two places with an official flag which is black and white.]