I know I shouldn’t wish the rest of summer away, but when it’s dark and raining outside it’s hard not to get discouraged sometimes. I’ve got a late summer holiday coming up in less than three weeks now, and I’m sure a week of Spanish sunshine and lounging in the pool is going to be bliss, but I’m secretly really looking forward to autumn now.
It’s no secret I love autumn, anyone who’s followed my posts here for any length of time will know that already, and I’m starting to see lots of signs that it’s just around the corner now. In my garden there are loads of fat blackberries already in the hedge, so I’m already planning a trip out this weekend with some tubs to get enough to keep me in homemade pies and crumbles ’til 2012. One of the walks we take the dogs on goes along a long lane lined with blackthorn which is already getting heavy with sloes, so there’s going to be a lot of sloe gin being bottled in a month or two :).
I tore out the dead pea plants and netting over the weekend which has made the garden look a lot tidier, although I’m going to miss eating them fresh. I guess that’s why I need to make sure I keep some seasonal crops in the garden. My corn fiasco didn’t kill it, and I actually have tiny ears of corn growing now, but my brocolli has gone crazy and is now covered in yellow flowers – I think maybe I was supposed to pick it before that happened, but it never really got to the stage of looking like heavy heads. The blackcurrant brushes are going strong, there’s a lot of new growth on the branches so I think I probably need to look at cutting it back soon (as if I know!), and the goji berries – despite growing like beanstalks – have had neither fruit nor flowers.
I can’t say I’m looking forward to the dark evenings and mornings again, those are the worst parts of autumn in my opinion, but watching the county quieten down again as the tourists go home and looking forward to Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night and everything else that happens at that time of year (I’m not going to use the ‘C’ word… yet). But first, holiday. These are going to be the longest three weeks at work ever.