As the years draws to an end, winter has been setting in and we have gradually been putting areas of the garden to sleep. The produce from the potager has finally ended with us harvesting the last of the carrots and spinach before the frost wiped them out. The final fruit harvest was the medlars, a first for us.
This medieval fruit has to be bletted before it can be used so, when the time was right, we harvested all the fruit and set it up in the grange to soften (rot?) until it was ready. The preparation is similar to normal jams and jellies and a mix of bletted and un-bletted fruit gives the correct balance of pectin versus flavour. We were trying for jelly but ended up with a thick syrup, still very pretty and tasty. Quite a surprise from such an ugly fruit.
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| The French call the medlar ' cul de chien' or dog's arse! |
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| The jelly is the most stunning colour - and taste. |
The weather is quite changeable, it can rain a lot but when the skies clear the sunshine is wonderful, although the temperatures plummet. For two people with nothing to do we have certainly been very busy and look back on every day with wonder. We wonder what happened to it while we were out gardening!
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| Building anvil of a Cumulo-nimbus |
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| When the sky opens out we are treated to the most wonderful sights. |
We have a busy month coming up, the owners B&T are returning briefly with a tree-man next week to trim some of the oaks and remove some dead ash trees so we are making sure the property is nice and neat. If we never see another leaf or acorn again...
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| A very shy Ragondin at the bottom of the garden. The farmers aren't very keen on them though. |
After that, Charmaine is coming to visit us for a week and then Debbi and Ettienne are visiting for Christmas. We are certainly working our way through the alphabet.
We are loving being in Brittany (especially the cosy evenings snuggled with the cats by the fire), and have also started planning our Southern African trip next year. Here's hoping everyone who reads this blog has a wonderful festive season - stay away from the Christmas sillines (Black Friday sales are just a marketing gimmick..)
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