Hares and hedgerows as autumn comes early to the summerhouse
If the old saw holds about an abundance of berries heralding a coming cold winter then the Danish coast (where the summerhouse is) is set for another corker.
Have never seen the hedgerows bursting with so many brambles, hazels, crab apples, red and yellow mirabellas. But this being Scandinavia only the rugosa hips are ready to pick. Though if not yet fruit, then fungus.
You can see where the Noma guys get their inspiration as the woods and roadsides are a forager's dream. Here you see boletus of every description, though our favourites are still the ceps.
Short and squat with fat creamy bodies (the mushrooms, not me), we pretty much stick to eating them on toast, perhaps with parsley and garlic, though this year's first harvest made for a perfect omelette – the shrooms' sweet woody flavours thrumming in fresh, proper farm eggs.
Our few apples and pears are not ready yet either but our first blackcurrants made for a lip-smacking jam, cooked just this side of sharp.
Butterflies, beetles and dragonflies of every hue too, acid green dragonflies, for all the world like Apocalypse Now 'copters (you almost expect a Wagner or Hendrix soundtrack) mating on the wing.
Huge green flying beetles crash into the wondows and lie stunned upside down. Delicate blue butterflies and bees making the most of the heather and thistle flowers (we would cycle though clouds of thistle 'fairies).
The farmers are just starting harvest with oat, wheat and barley fields the colour of posh people's cords.
Tiny little spider webs in the morning grass like Thai fishing nets, with frogs and toads jumping happily arounds. In the evening, big raspberry and rhubarb skies with rolling sea mists colonising the hollows.
But back now and on to the allotment tomorrow with Howard. How is everyone and their gardens?
---- Guardian UK
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