How Did We Get Here? - by Maslow

You may have noticed that I am not a big fan of the supermarkets and cars but that is not to say that I blame them or their owners. No, like so many other annoying things, they are just a symptom and not the cause.

But is it a sign of general apathy or something more sinister and insidious?

Personally, I blame house prices – which themselves are a symptom of over population, and we all know what causes that, so I am probably just as much to blame as anyone else.

Here is my explanation and I felt a lot better after getting it all down. As with most of my pictures - you can click to enlarge it and see more detail.





Maslow's Hierachy of Needs - Applied to the Uglification of Britain

  

There!

I feel a LOT better now...

The Phantom Limb Fruit Picker

I have been designing fancy, new fruit pickers for the children, in readiness for the cherry and plum season. The cherries are looking fatter and redder every day, so it won’t be long now. I’m salivating like Pavlov’s dog as I type...

The simplest picker I have made is for blackberries.

Blackberry Picker

It’s just a metre of thin PVC pipe sawn off at an angle at one end and cut back into two prongs. The prongs are then curled back using heat, and set like two crooked fingers. This is great for young kids, to help them reach inaccessible fruit. Attach a bag to the end of the pipe with an elastic band and the fruit rolls down the pipe to fill it up.

If you are feeling ambitious, you can try something a bit more dramatic like this...

The Phantom Limb Cherry/Plum Picker!
Who's shoes are those btw?

I scaled the original idea up to make new a cherry/plum picker. I used a prosthetic hand, which I crafted out of PVC by drawing round my own and cutting it out with a coping saw.

A Flat PVC Hand Shape

Then I moulded it into a functional shape and attached it to a small bore gutter down-pipe. I think the kids will love using this, and the hand came out better than I expected; it is actually quite spooky.

Moulded Over the Gas Hob (when I was foolishly left alone in the house)

Wait until the captain of the galley is out of the way before trying this shipmates!  If you are a child, get a responsible adult (if you know one) to do this next bit for you...

If you carefully heat PVC up, on a gas hob it becomes pliant and can be set in a new position as it cools. You can also use an electric (paint stripping) heat gun for the same purpose, the same warnings apply to either method.



The Finished Phantom Hand, Spooky!

I say carefully - advisedly because...

1.       The PVC gets very hot and you can burn your fingers on it.

2.       If it gets too hot PVC catches fire, melts all over the cooker (and you potentially) and gives off highly toxic smoke and fumes.

So be very careful, and then you can make great stuff out of it.

This Is Real, Not PVC. A lovely Stag Beatle I Found it in the Garden...
Look Out It's Coming Right At You!

Cordial, Beer and Champagne

After spotting that the Elderflowers were out, we decided to have a bash at making Elderflower cordial and champagne. I also fancied making some Ginger Beer – something my mum always used to do when it got warm.

Elderflowers

My son was great at picking the flowers (it’s always best to pick fresh ones without bugs on them) and we soon had a big bagful. On the way home we grabbed the rest of the ingredients, which was mainly sugar, yeast, oranges and lemons from the shops.

Elderflower Cordial being prepared

These are all really simple recipes and we made 2 Gallons of Ginger Beer, 1 Gallon of Elderflower Champagne and a couple of litres of Elderflower Cordial in one afternoon.
For Recipes, Click Here

Elderflower Champagne prepping - this smelled delicious

You need bottles that can withstand high pressure; otherwise they can explode and make a bad mess, so be careful what you use. I wanted swing top Grolsh type bottles but this would have been expensive and I couldn’t drink it quickly enough. In the end I used sparkling water and a couple of old coke bottles, which worked fine and they can be used again.



Lloyd, the Yeast Arab



Most shops now have a cheap home brand of sparkling water and I obtained 4 packs of six 500ml for about a fiver. If I had thought about it before, I could have used the water in the recipes too.

We Made Buckets of The Stuff

When my wife came home the next day, she said the house smelled like a brewery – but Ginger beer and Elderflower Champagne always remind me of Gingham and wicker and English summer picnics!

This looks a lot but I don't think it will last long, my daughter is sampling it already!



I also saw nesting Housemartins and Swifts today, so summer is on the way for sure...

For Recipes, Click Here

No Fruit Without Flowers

Even though blossom spotting keeps you engaged during early spring and is a good way of identifying trees, there is no guarantee that fruit will follow flower. So, after dancing round the May-Pole you can go back over your previous observations and check for signs of young fruit.

Baby Apples

I popped out this lunch time to see how the young cherries and plums were looking. I was pleased to see that many of the trees are looking very healthy already and I am hoping that we may be able to get some fruit in time for the school summer fayre.

Baby Cherry Plums

I also noticed that the cherry trees that had the frillier ornamental blossom rarely have fruit on them. Perhaps they put so much effort into their foppish flowers that they have no strength left for the more essential act of reproduction, or making cherries.

Baby Cherries

Cherries, plums and damsons may actually ripen be a bit too late for the fayre, but I will be keeping a keen eye on them. I was pleased though, to spot my first elderflowers of the year and elderflower cordial should definitely go well on the stall. Elderflower champagne on the other hand, will go well down well in our kitchen.

First Elderflower of Spring

Spring is always a good time to start a ginger-beer plant, we always used to help Mum make and consume this when we were kids. Although ginger is not strictly foraged, we are here to have fun and celebrate, not to be pedantic.
Recipe link Cordial

Recipe link Champers

Fruity Fascism



Cherry Blossom Gives Way To Daisies

I recently received an interesting comment from a foraging friend in South Africa, this spurred me into thought about the nature of the native, or aboriginal arboreality (perhaps).

“…Sadly here in SA we don't have fruit-trees, vines etc. in public places unlike the UK and all orchards are protected by razor wire or gun-shot! You live in a different world to me. Just about the only trees on roads etc. are oaks = acorns, not sure what you can do with them. They are on a witch hunt to get rid of all alien vegetation too, so have cut down beautiful old trees. You must realise most properties here are behind high security walls. Even parks are not safe to walk in alone. People get robbed hiking on the mountains etc...”

I know that we are very lucky in UK to live in such green and pleasant surroundings. Lots of my favourites, like cherries are native trees, and as a result, they are literally all over the place. Unfortunately for the safety and peace of foragers this does occasionally mean, beside the busy roads that criss-cross our allegedly tranquil landscape.

April Showers

But what really constitutes a native tree?

Apple trees and orchards are a part of English heritage but they were actually introduced by the Romans! Before that we only had crab apples, and I don’t know how that would have inspired Newton, or indeed changed the legend of William Tell. Yet, if someone were to suggest that we ought to get rid of all our alien apple trees, I would be most upset and consider it an act of arboreal Apartheid (no offence intended to my S. African friends) or Fruiticide perhaps.

(British) Bluebells - Lurking, Suspiciously - Somewhere Near You

On the other hand, I am all for reintroducing species that have been hunted into extinction. I think a few wild boar, wolves and bears would make a picnic more interesting and a walk in the woods or camping far more exciting!

This Spring I have heard a lot about the veritable armada of Spanish Bluebells, which are apparently invading our countryside – they are described as less delicate and less pretty than our native ones, other than they are not quite as good in some vaguely brutish way...

(Spanish) White Bluebells Coming over Here, Stealing Our Woods?

In the end, I think that invasive or alien species, as they are termed, are generally no more harmful than slang or txt language. It annoys the pedants, but that is never a bad thing.  Nature, as with language, is in a constant state of flux and change, things do get naturalised. It is fruitless to try to control nature; even gardens need ramshackle areas, left to be wild.

What Time Is It? Springtime!

If you really want a very flat, sterile, bland, moss and mole free lawn with no variation, weeds, animals or anomalies – then go and play golf, but I don’t think that is natural either.

My sister pointed me to this link about recent scientific proof that my theories are correct (I always suspected as much) a month or two after my writing this post...

Science Daily Birds Fruit and Foreign species

Supermarketmantra

So, what’s the point of all this?

Haven’t I got more important things to do?

Time’s precious enough as it is!

Taken by my friend Gary in his back garden

Sure, time is precious, so I spend as much time as possible doing stuff I love, like climbing trees with my kids. I love it, they love it. Just connecting with nature, making sure they know stuff like fruit grows on trees!

Pussy Willow - you can't eat this but it looks great!



Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite. I write this on a computer and use the internet to reach you. I record all the fruit trees that I spot on a Google map and you can call me on my mobile phone, but I also have an idea what time high tide is tomorrow - and I know that plum blossom tastes like marzipan.

More from Gary's nice garden

In the same way, it does not matter much to me if the Earth orbits the Sun or the Sun orbits the Earth as long as Day follows Night follows Day and Autumn follows Summer, follows Spring, follows Winter….

Blackthorn gives us very pretty flowers and then Sloes for Sloe Gin

I'm not a big fan of supermarkets, even though I use them occasionally. They don’t have seasons, or souls or any mystery, only promotions. There’s no sense of wonder in unwrapping the cellophane from a pepper, even if it was picked last week by a peasant in Morocco. Lazy marketing is becoming more ubiquitous, and it is not benign.

When the gift becomes an afterthought, the person you give it to becomes someone you have not considered properly. We should make our cards, not buy them in the petrol station on the way home. Granted, I’d take a diamond encrusted Rolex over a biscuit, but you know what I mean.

A lovely Mother's Day painting by Gary's friend

A tree full of apples takes a year to grow and ripen, and when you have watched, and waited for it – you sure as hell will savour them. I love giving food as a gift and even better being given it as a gift. Last year I gave my friend Jill some pears when she visited, and this year she gave me a pot of pear jelly made from them – it was sweet, sticky and didn’t last long!

Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White

Today was another day not to be stuck in the office, so I made the most of my short sleeved shirt and camera during my lunch break.

I have been waiting for one of the cherry trees just outside to bloom fully, mainly because it looks pink and frilly, and I had the Modern Romance song, stuck firmly in my head.  I shot it in bright sunlight against the backdrop of an Industrial building. I’m not a great photographer but this jumped out when I got it home.

Wow, I feel like a pro!

It looked equally stunning against the bright blue sky.

None to shabby either.

I was hoping to find some apple blossom peeping through; I wanted to photograph some for a section on tree identification on the Urbane Forager website and had noticed the tiny pink buds last week. It was a fairly long walk but I figured I could make the round trip in the hour, even given a few dalliances.

Pink and Closed

I was not to be disappointed.

White When Open

I even located a gigantic new apple tree that I had never noticed before, next to a cherry (see Perez Prado / Mack David lyric below). Both were covered in full white blossom.

Blooming Heck!

While I was taking a close up of a flower, I spotted (ho ho) a tiny ladybird running in and out; I managed to photograph him eventually.

Almost too good to be true

On the walk back to work I noticed that the perfume of cherry trees actually does smell a bit like the fruit tastes. I also shot another frilly (but this time white) cherry, which looked rather nice illuminated from the back by the sun.

White and Frilly

Then sadly it was back to the grindstone.

Now though it is Friday evening, I am alone with a glass of red wine and the prospect of a sunny weekend reclines languidly ahead...

Lyric...

It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When your true lover comes your way
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
The poets say

The story goes that once a cherry tree
Beside an apple tree did grow
And there a boy once met his bride to be
Long long ago

The boy looked into her eyes, it was a sight to enthrall
The breezes joined in their sighs, the blossoms started to fall
And as they gently carressed, the lovers looked up to find
The branches of the two trees were intertwined

And that is why the poets always write
If there's a new moon bright above
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When you're in love