A, B and C

A

Can of course stand for Apple and indeed here it does; our James Grieve/Elstar tree has given up it's first fruit. They don't look great but if we nibble around the bad bits I have hope that they will taste nice. Elstar is definitely a favourite in our house so fingers crossed that the tree perks up and can go on growing and giving us more and better quality fruit in years to come. It seems to be suffering from a fungal disease, maybe scab but I'm not sure about survival rates. Send happy thoughts to our tree please!!

B

B is for Brambles, or Blackberries. The hedgerows around the plots are full to the brim with ripe gorgeous berries there for the taking. Plus there are many still to come and in some areas there are even flowers in bloom. I reckon we'll have brambles for some time to come. They are a little small in comparison to the blackberries you can buy as plants from the nursery. We have one, but it crops way back in the summer and the damn birds took most of them.

So Andrew and I couldn't help ourselves and we picked some, them some more....it became addictive. A lovely past time and we have done it twice now, even in the dark, way past twilight, I swear we couldn't see, that was the only reason we stopped. We even seriously thought about using the headlights to illuminate the hedges but we wised up! It sounds silly but it was very romantic, reminiscent of what I imagine a pre-war date would be and quite frankly doing that with your beau is nicer than sitting in the cinema not talking or even looking at each other.

We, sorry Andrew, made jam. It's more like tar but it was his first time and it is great in porridge. There's another big bag in the fridge for me to make jam. I took photos of Andrew's culinary adventure. Lovely! He is a fabulous cook by the way, tonight we had a chicken and lottie veg stir fry for dinner and it was delicious. At the weekend he also made a Lottie Soup too, with our borlotti beans - uuuummmmm. No pics of either - too hungry.

Plus Blooms ~ look at Mary's glorious bunch from her plot. Really beautiful and I am more encouraged to get on with my cut flower bed.


C

This is exciting! We got our membership cards!!!! Look at how jolly Andrew and Austin (the secretary)are and me, I couldn't wait to photograph mine. Now we can get discounts in various nurseries, horrah!!!!

I have loads more to tell but there is apple pie to be eating and somethings have to take priority, hahaha xx