Fruit frenzy but going quieter on the bug front

It's certainly harvest time and that means time to preserve some of this bounty, especially the fruit. I'm only spending time jamming and chutneying the fruit that needs to be cooked from fresh, so raspberries and blackberries are in the freezer and can be made into jam and jelly respectively later on. Freezer space is at a premium at this time of year so I also had to make some tomato sauce to make a bit of room in my chest freezer. I've still got three huge plastic bags full of frozen tomatoes and loads more ripening, despite the cooler weather.

I'm keeping busy..... the Mixed Fruit Chutney has damsons in it as well as tomatoes,
and the Sweet Aubergine Preserve is a middle eastern recipe and amazingly delicious.

The rain that came over two weeks ago was just in time for the plums; however many of them split open or completely burst because they'd been dry and were then subjected to rather a lot of moisture all at once. Of course that's letting in rot so the greengages are spoiling at a rate of knots, but I managed to make my jam and it's the first time in three years I've had enough fruit for jam from the tree. The purple plums have also started rotting but there's only so much one can eat or preserve anyway, and just when you need some handy neighbours to take some off your hands, they all go away on holiday!

Greengage, known as Reine Claude here in France, and an unknown purple dessert plum.

Autumn fruiting Raspberries 'Zeva' and thornless cultivated Blackberries (with a Dock Bug).

Everyone loves blackberries! Dock Bug (Coreus marginatus) nymph left and (I think)
the Cricket is a male Speckled Bush Cricket (Leptophyes punctatissima).

We usually see juvenile Green Woodpeckers in summer pecking away at the ants' nests in the lawn, and since taking these photos recently I've been seeing and hearing them regularly. They are loud!

A male juvenile Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis).

Male juvenile Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis) again looking a bit fluffy.

It was time for my OH to do some varnishing but when he went to unhook the bedroom shutters he found about a dozen bats roosting behind one of them. Some flew off but he had to close the shutter carefully to protect the rest of them, so no varnishing for that shutter that day! Now I missed what came next but I'm kind of glad that I did. As he was varnishing the window frames and the other shutter, a bat came back and started circling around. My OH retreated slightly and started to close the windows so that it could go back behind the shutter, when all of a sudden out of nowhere came a Sparrowhawk who caught and flew off with the poor bat! Oops.

I assume they are Pipistrelles which are common bats but they look bigger in the photo, but I think there were several of them all grouped together here. I couldn't do any better than a silhouette and was trying not to think of the drop as I leant out of the window!

Bats roosting behind the bedroom shutter!

Here are a few tatty creatures seen recently. Summer feels like it's really coming to an end with the cooler, more cloudy weather and there are far fewer butterflies than I'd expect at this time of year. Hopefully it will pick up in September.

I'm not sure what the bee is, possibly a Bombus sylvarum.

Most of the butterflies I'm seeing are Browns or Whites - here's a Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus)
 feeding on my Garlic Chives - another odd thing about this year because this plant is usually
covered in bees, flies and some butterflies, but it seems fairly unpopular this year.

And still the only 'Blue' I've seen here in my garden this year - this is a female Holly Blue
(Celastrina argiolus). They don't normally open their wings when resting or feeding,
so I was lucky. Apparently they only do this in weak sunshine.
Weak sunshine is what we are grateful for right now!

Female Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus).

I nearly didn't take a photo of this bug as I thought it was a Sloe/Hairy Shield Bug - luckily I checked because I'm wrong. I then spent half an hour IDing it only to find when I was keywording my photos that I've already seen and logged this species this year - it would have been quicker to do a search for shield bugs in my photo library! Judging by where I live in France, then using this guide I would hazard a guess at Carpocoris purpureipennis, but it's too difficult to say, so let's just say it's one of the Carpocoris species.

Carpocoris sp., an interesting bug with little info about it on the internet.
Obviously it likes running around on hairy arms. :-)

Carpocoris sp. doing the 'biz', seen back in June.

There appears to be an exchange of fluid going on here -
looking at my other photos that droplet disappeared, so I hope it went where intended! ;-)

The eight day weather forecast looks dismal for the next week, although I will appreciate whatever rain we may get today as the garden is already drying out.

I may go quiet for a while and that's because I have a new desktop arriving this week - and not just any old desktop. I'm jumping ship so it's bye-bye Microsoft, and hello to the world of Apple and iMacs, which could be interesting for a few days weeks? until I get used to it! :-) 

Preserving frenzy and veg patch update

In between swanning about playing with butterflies, I've been spending time in the kitchen dealing with monstrous amounts of fruit and veg. No really, actually this year everything has been pretty well under control; I have managed to keep up with nearly all the veggies, and the fruit that can be frozen for later use has been bunged into my freezers until I had the time to do something with it all.

Raspberry jam. It was supposed to be seedless and I spent ages pushing
all the pulp through my mouli thing to get rid of the seeds!
Never mind, it's an acceptable level of pippiness.

The orchard is brimming with fruit and nuts. It's mostly an autumn type of orchard with pears, apples and walnuts planted, as well as wild hazels and elderberries. My two newish plum trees are about as rubbish as the other ones in the main garden though, but I've found over the years that plums and peaches are dodgy fruit to grow and succumb to disease very easily; that's if they ever get pollinated and produce any fruit in the first place. Apples and soft fruit are much easier! This year is probably the best ever for pears though (also a bit hit and miss) so we've been making the most of it!

Three different kinds of pears ripening at different times, thankfully.
On the left are Conference and the other two are unknowns.

Just to give you an idea of what I've been harvesting on a regular basis as far as veggies and soft fruit go..... this photo was taken at the end of August but the French beans have only recently finished, there's little left in the way of lettuce and the cucumbers are history now, but only yesterday I picked a load more strawberries and tomatoes, the courgettes are still producing and there's tons more beetroot. And we are so sick of raspberries because we've been eating them non-stop since mid June!

Note the two greengages!

Elderberries, different apples and Pear Clafouti,
which is one of my favourite desserts.

The next two photos (this is all rather random and in no particular order, date, fruit or anything else-wise) show me having a blitz on every courgette clogging up the fridge by making two savoury courgette cakes (recipe here from last year), a vat of courgette, basil and parmesan soup, with blackberries dripping through muslin in the background to make bramble jelly. 

The pic below that is yet more courgettes in a sort-of-ratatouille using the tomato sauce which I've already bottled, cooking down loads of frozen tomatoes to make said tomato sauce (method here from ages ago) and a spicy mixed fruit chutney which I usually add damsons to but this year just used tomatoes and apples. The recipe for the chutney is here but this time I used 2kg of tomatoes instead of 1.5kg damsons and 500g tomatoes - it's fairly easy and safe to adapt different kinds of fresh or dried fruits in a chutney recipe, so long as you keep to the same quantities.

I will get through these courgettes if it kills me!

Ditto the tomatoes!!

I have to mention something regarding the photo below of beetroot and apple relish from a recipe never tried before and elderberry syrup. I spent hours picking the elderberries off the stalks and my hands turned black. I duly made the syrup, the recipe for which I'd got from the great Greenside Up blog (later to find I already had that cookery book here!). So, bottled up the relish and left the syrup to cool because I was going to freeze it, then went off to do other things. 

A little while later a very sheepish husband came to find me and said "oops". He'd only gone and thought my syrup was the beetroot boiling water and tipped it all down the sink! And if that wasn't funny enough, I had to remind him that actually, I had boiled the beetroot the day before, and he had already washed up that pan! I guess I should just be grateful that I have a hubby who clears up my mess and regularly washes up my preserving pans..... but oh, I've just remembered, there was also the time he chucked my Tom Yum Goong (Thai hot and sour prawn soup) down the sink because it looked like 'dirty dish water' in the pan.... hmmmm. :-)

Beetroot Relish and Elderberry Syrup.

Back in the veggie patch for a few more pics. There's still plenty to eat and loads of colour from my various strips of flowers for pollinators or butterflies. I'll do a report on my Pollinator Meadow Year 2 at some point, because it's been a huge success both visually and for the bugs.

Various veggies with various flowers in the background.

I found a third, much larger Swallowtail caterpillar which I put on the same plant as the other two. Since then the smallest has disappeared and the middle sized one is the same size as the big one now, and they have chomped through most of a plant and I've moved them to another one. They have a tendency to just sit on a stem which they've eaten all the leaves off. Maybe I should leave them to it but I like to mollycoddle my 'babies'!

Swallowtail caterpillar, tomatoes, a strawberry and a late squash which I don't know if
it'll have time to ripen (I've already picked the two that had turned orange).

Physalis, a fruit I have never grown before. The jury is out really as I've
only eaten a few and I'm not sure this is something I would regularly grow.

I've decided to take out the peach tree that grows in the veg patch. I've kept that one because peaches need so much water that it has to be irrigated with a seep hose, and whilst it's got a bit too big despite pruning, it does provide some much needed shade for lettuce in summer. But two years in a row and no fruit at all due to brown rot setting in (which affects our plums some years too), and all the fruit has scab anyway. I already buy peaches and nectarines all through the summer season and if mine were good, they'd all come at once in a big glut at the end of September and I can't freeze them, and they are no good for bottling due to the scab. And the biggest problem with brown rot is that you don't know you've got it until the fruit is almost ripe.... so you can spend all summer nurturing and watering your fruit, and then the whole crop is lost, just like that. It's just not worth it.

Brown Rot or Monilinia on a peach. Not pretty.
The black freckles are scab.

Not my hairy arm.
This tatty old Peacock really did just land on my OH's arm
whilst we were standing in the veg patch!

You may have to look hard, but you never know
who is sheltering under your cherry tomatoes!

"Holy Cow Bertie, what on earth is THAT?!"

We had a good amount of rain yesterday and the weather forecast shows mostly sunny and still very mild for the next week, and my tomatoes continue to ripen. If only autumn was always like this!

Elderflower cordial and strawberry conserve

Preserving time has come around again! The elder trees are groaning under the weight of the flowers this year and there are tons in just my orchard alone, a far cry from last year when I had to scout around all the neighbourhood wild trees to find enough to make cordial last year, and later on to pick the berries for jelly.

I picked the flowers early at the end of May when the first ones were open and still the trees are full of flowers.

The tree in my orchard must be 12 foot high now

Mmmmmm there's nothing lovelier than the smell of an elder flower, yet in the blink of an eye that smell can change to something that resembles cat's pee. Anyone who has ever picked elder flowers or just had a sniff of the flowers on a late spring walk will know what I am talking about!

An open head of Elder flowers with one in bud behind it.

My trug full and ready to do the business. I follow Sophie Grigson's recipe here.

Picked elder flowers

I only added 50g of citric acid because that's the size of the packet I bought - but as I freeze the cordial in marge tubs there's probably no need to actually add it, as it acts as a preservative if you are bottling the cordial.

All prepped and ready for the sugar syrup to be poured on

This is where I hang all my jelly bags to drip!
(and no it was not me who chose tiled kitchen work surfaces -
I absolutely HATE that, just inherited it with the house.)

Et voila! All that needs doing is either bottling up or putting in small containers in the freezer. It's sooooo simple!

I also have a super easy recipe for Strawberry Conserve. That's a posh name for jam but it's what it was called in the recipe I use. This comes from a book called "The Art of Preserving" by Jan Berry (no pun intended, I am sure!). I'm probably really not supposed to do this with her recipe but I'm not going to type it out!

From "The Art of Preserving" by Jan Berry

Because it is done over 4 days it makes it seem easy as the work is spread out.

Prepping the strawbs on day one

I did boil for longer than the 8 minutes stated in the recipe but I was using 2 kilos which is rather a lot more than in the recipe. (Mine took about 16 mins and I did the saucer wrinkle test to check on setting point). I really would not bother with all this with a mere 250g of berries. That just wouldn't be worth the hassle and frankly I'd rather just eat the strawbs! 2 kilos makes 6-7 jam jars worth.

I love my Bonne Maman jars! They get reused time and again.
Can you see my reflection in the Le Parfait bocal on the right? :-)
(Don't know the English for bocal/bocaux! -
preserving jar with rubber seal and clippy lid is a bit of a mouthful)

Et voila again! I don't do any of this water bath business with jam - it's just not something that's done in Britain (I don't think the French do either). So long as you put your hot jam into clean hot sterilised jars there is absolutely no need, as all that sugar acts as a preservative anyway. Even when my jar lids don't go pop and seal as they cool down I've still never, ever, had a problem with mould, and I have made one heck of a lot of jam and jelly since I moved here!