Heatwaves and Premature Fruit

Blackberries Ripe and Early

Yes, Blackberries have arrived early, almost everywhere, go and gather yours or simply gobble them straight off the bush. We always get ours form the lovely Southampton Common, and the South facing sides of bushes ripen first and taste the most sweet.

Ripe Plums

Plums are also ripening on the trees, I spotted sweet yellow Plums falling into the road on my walk to work. The picture shows a reddish orange variety, equally tasty and also falling onto the road in Highfield.

Hazel Tree

The sizzling heatwaves we have been experiencing this year seem to have forced many trees fruit approximately on month early this year. Hazel is almost ready to shed its nuts. Still not quite ripe but near as damn it.

Hazelnuts (Early but Still Unripe)

Where hazelnut harvesting is concerned, you need to be quick of the mark or the grey squirrels will beat you to them. The signs are very easy to spot!

Competition with Squirrels

Another interesting tree that fruits around this time of year, is the magnificent Mulberry. This marvellous specimen is on the Salcombe estuary in Devon, where we were lucky enough to holiday this year.

Mulberry Tree

We had one eye on the exciting dingy racing - and one eye firmly under the canopy of the tree, as we hunted down the delicious, ripened, juice filled berries.

Delicious Mulberries

Here's a micro quiz for you all! Keen followers of the blog should find the answer quickly. What are these mysterious yellow tentacles on this garage roof? Finding them like this or on the ground should indicate a tasty snack later in Autumn. Answers in the text below.

What are These Mysterious Tentacles?

The tentacles are the discarded flowers or catkins of the Sweet Chestnut tree. Identifying these trees early in Summer will lead you back to a hoard of Sweet Chestnuts, ideal for roasting on a BBQ later in Autumn. 

Sweet Chestnut Tree

Incidentally, nobody should be using disposable BBQs in the middle of the heatwaves! I find it difficult to believe that they are even on sale. Wildfires are a serious danger to life when the ground & vegetation is so tinder dry. Intelligent people know that they shouldn't be burning square holes in our precious landscape or leaving litter and glass on the ground.

Plumb Line

Around this time of year, you might find subtle clues as to the location of highly forage-able fruit, such as Wild Plums, Mirabelles, Damsons, Cherry Plumbs & Greengages.

These tasty plumbs are best eaten straight off the tree. Although they come in many varieties and colours, you can tell they a ripe when they will fall lightly into your hand, just as you touch them.

Quite apart from the juicy joy of immediately eating these beauties, they can also be turned into pies, chutney, wine, puddings, jam and hundreds of other delightful things.

I tend to eat as I go along during my lunchtime wanderings, then I pick a bunch and take them home for the family to enjoy.

Bluebells Blossom & Beltain

I once before wrote a post here called Blossom, Beltain and a beautiful game. That was quite a while ago and then Saint's were moving from the Championship into the Premiership. Since that time they have just about stayed up.

The Bluebells are looking magnificent this year and it's well worth taking a lovely, long walk through a local wood, simply for the pleasure of gazing on this wonder.

I have spotted early Elderflowers, waving their blousy, citrus blooms to herald the onset of Summer. Yes, that's right, the warm season will soon be upon us and I'm already wearing my shorts in preparation.

Plums are gradually fattening on the branches, Hawthorn is flowering in the hedgerows and everything is growing like crazy.

This year, as normal, I will be visiting Butser Ancient Hill Farm, with the children for Beltain. The celebration culminates with burning of their truly massive Wicker Man; the kids have been, quite literally, looking forward to it all year.

Spring Blossom

Spring is definitely here now, and my lunchtime walks are filled with wonder. Everything seems to be happening at once. 

I spotted a lovely pair of kestrels, soaring above in the azure. I decided to take some photos to remember the day.

Blackthorn, spires blooming and towering skyward. Pretty but also prickly.

A delightful and very old ornamental Cherry blossoming by the roadside.

A healthy looking cluster of Plum blossom in a hedgerow.

Elder, buds breaking through already, getting ready to begin flowering any day soon.

More Cherries

We have been picking more Cherries. It seems to be a very good year for them and we are spotting trees filled with fat fruit all over the place.

We have a small tree in our garden and the weight of the cherries plus the obese pigeons attempting to gobble our fruit had even snapped some of the branches.

I duly attached a sheet of wire netting, like a roof over the top of the tree, to protect it from the marauders. The smaller birds could still get underneath but it defeated the largest ones until the Cherries were ready for harvesting.

The tree is not even as tall as I am but the fruit was plentiful, sweet and juicy. 

The next thing to ripen will be the Plums and they are also going to be prolific. If you want to share in this bounty, keep an eye on this blog to join us for a Plum Picknik (tba).

Immature Fruit, Blossom and Wild Garlic

Bluebells and Wild Garlic are flooding the woodland borders with colour and pungent aromas, Apple and Pear blossom is filling the trees. If you pop down to the Mansbridge Community Orchard, you will be able to see where all the trees are located.

The weather has changed here; we have even had flurries of snow and nights of frost, which has been a shock because of the unseasonably warm March that this year brought us.

Regardless of the chill that has been in the air, the early blossom is now developing into immature fruit. However, you will will be unlikely to notice this ripening bounty unless you are actively looking for it.

Even though the Plum flowers first, the Cherries will win the race to maturity and they will normally be the first fresh fruit that we pick in June, followed by the Plums in July. Needless to say, we will be keeping an eye on the progress of our favourite trees.

This weekend we will visit Butser Ancient Farm to enjoy a Beltain celebration and help burn a gigantic wicker man. I cannot think of a better way to welcome in May. Soon we will be spotting Elderflower and the sun will be warming our faces.

In the meantime, we have been reminding ourselves of last year's glorious Summer sunshine by making hot Mulberry compote, using our frozen stash, and drizzling it over ice cream!

Plentiful Plums to Pick

I was intending to organise a Plum Picknik, but it seems that life has conspired against me and, sadly, I will now not have enough time.
However, it is an easy place to locate and there are always a massive amount of multi coloured plums available for picking out of the hedgerows or collecting off the grass.

You can walk or cycle here or even drive and park your car in the War Memorial car park (almost opposite the Cricketers pub on Chestnut Avenue, Eastleigh). 
The plums can be found all along the hedgerows on the left hand side adjacent to the cricket field and bordering Chestnut Avenue. Picking on the field side is obviously safer and more pleasant than on the road side.

There are loads and loads of them - you can basically fill your boots, as they say. They can be eaten straight off the trees or saved to be turned into jam, pies, chutney, wine or any number of other delightfully delicious seasonal things. So, I encourage everyone to get on down there and pick your plums while the sun shines!
Everyone's favourite foragable, beautiful Blackberries are also ripening now too.

Early Spring? Make Mulberry Gin!

I found a big box of frozen Mulberries in our freezer yesterday. I gave a couple to the children as a chilly treat and then remembered that we had recently consumed the last of our super tasty Mulberry gin during the Winter nights. It was clearly time to create some fresh supplies.

My brother had given me a bottle of gin for Xmas and I was going to save it until the Summer months, but this seemed a project worthy of breaking that pledge. The decorative bottle that we had dispatched over Christmas was undoubtedly cute, but actually quite small, or so it seemed once we got a taste of it.

I filled too jars with the fruit and steeped it in gin; it soon took on a glowing ruby red hue. Normally when making liquors, I add a bit of sugar to help the process but Mulberries are so sweet, it did not seem necessary. I will test it in due course, just to be sure...

Spring seems to be arriving a full month early here in the UK. Plum blossom is blooming all over the place, snowdrops daffodils and crocuses are all flowering at the same time bringing a cheery flourish to the gloomy weather we have been experiencing.

Does this mean the Plums will be ripening a month early? Will they fruit before the Cherries? Perhaps February or March will turn dramatically colder and ruin the early harvest. Who knows? All we can do is wait and observe the changes as they occur. I remember a bad year for Cherries that I put down to high winds during the blossom season deterring pollinators.

Meanwhile, we can simply enjoy the florid display, allow it to lift our hearts and hope that it heralds a good Spring, warm Summer and prolific Autumn.

Millions of Mirabells

There was a whole lot of things to do this past weekend, a lot of events to take part in or watch and everyone was hoping for good weather. 

My son was camping with the cubs, my daughter was having an end of school BBQ with some friends, the Sky Ride was due in Southampton, there was a big canoe race in the Itchen river and we had decided to have a Plum Picknik and harvest some fruit with friends.

Fortunately, the Sun Gods chose to smile on us and it only rained a little in the evenings and during the night, which was very good for the parched grass. We got up early and zoomed down to Avenue Park in Stoneham. 

There we met several groups of friends who wanted to know where the plums were, they were not disappointed...

As soon as we entered to field you could see a carpet of bright yellow Mirabelle Plums under one tree and purple red Cherry Plums under the next. Closer inspection also revealed Greengages that bust, filling your mouth with juice and various other fruits all along the hedge. We set out the picnic rugs, while the kids gallivanted about filling various buckets and containers with tasty multi-coloured fruit.

We only took a couple of containers and have not yet decided what we are going to make from our golden hoard but other people said they would make chutney, plum jam, plum cake and even plum ice cream, which sounds positively intriguing!

After eating enough fresh fruit to last about a week, we scurried off back home to get on with the rest of our busy lives and as my daughter and I pedalled off over the bridge, canoes of every shape and size were slicing through the sun glistening water, up and down beneath us.

In case anyone missed the event and wonders if thee are any plums left - there are millions of Mirabelles, crate-loads of Cherry Plums and a positive glut of Greengages all along the hedgerows in the vicinity. 

According to my observations, it also looks like it is shaping up to be a record breaking year for Blackberries and Hazelnuts.