Fruit and flowers - gorgeous July!

 The harvest in early July is so beautiful. Bright and fresh colours, new leaves and textures, nothing overblown and we are not yet saturated and spoilt with summer fruits. The excitement about pulling beets and digging up new potatoes is still strong - this is what all the planning and preparation are all about. We didn't need to add anything to this table for our meals today....there was enough from the patch....except cream, butter and olive oil.....

The first year for this redcurrant bush so not many fruit, but it was so exciting to see the tendrils of glistening red fruit hanging like earings from the bush....and then using the little pottery collander I made to pick them. The fresh green leaf was irrestible too!

 Meanwhile more fruit is forming. The autumn raspberry canes are shooting now with a promise for September fruit, the blueberries are green and fat on their willowy stems, and the new apple trees have their first fruit. Below is Fiesta, a descendant of Cox and in its first year it has produced about twenty baby apples. I have pruned some of them off to make sure that the tree is able to use most of its strength in establishing a strong root system, but couldn't resist leaving a few to try in the autumn...

And the flowers are beautiful too! The pathway to the greenhouse is lined with bountiful borage and bright blue cornflowers. Every morning the sound of the bees greets me as I open up the greenhouse windows. There must be at least fifty here at a time, flying in from the hive in our neighbour's garden. One day we will have our own hive....I long to taste the honey these little workers are so busy making, but am very pleased at all the good work they are doing pollinating courgettes and squash!

One of the most rewarding annuals to grow are sweet peas. I sow them in the autumn in pots in the greenhouse. They are growing in containers now on our deck and the smell is intoxicating. They are wildly climbing up our kabin and the more I pick the more they come. A good feed helps. So much pleasure from one little seed for months and months...

Here is a bunch of flowers I put together to welcome my daughter in law home from having her third baby. The rose is Joi de Vivre which seemed highly appropriate to celebrate another tiny grand daughter's safe arrival. It has been a fantastic rose, blooming its double apricot heads all summer despite the difficult weather conditions. The Cosmos is called Antiquity and is a very early dwarf variety which I planted into pots on the deck. I love its Venetian, crushed velvet colour and being dwarf it coped with our spring gales wonderfully. Add sweet peas, cornflowers and borage and it was a pretty gift. 

July is a fantastic month - some of the very best veg and fruit are coming in now and in abundance. But the best thing is the salad. After July it tales off a bit, maybe because I am not very good at remembering to keep sowing successionally. But in July we ate bucketfuls of fresh salad mixed with fresh peas and beans nearly every day. Here is a day's picking on the steps of our airstream waiting to be washed and dressed. Next month the tomatoes will be ripe and overwhelming and the courgettes, but July is the salad month and we loved it!