Harvest

This time of year our garden is overflowing with fruit to be picked - it can get a little stressful when you are faced with baskets of produce looking to be preserved, pickle, or baked. I feel guilty for letting some go to ruin on the tree but I guess it'll be picked up by the wildlife, if not now, then later when the snow arrives.

We had no idea that we even had fruit trees until the first summer here. When we viewed the house it was late November and the first snows of the year had arrived that morning. The mountain was shrouded in thick cloud, obscuring the view of the valley which we also didn't fully appreciate until we'd already agreed to buy. We only remembered the owner mentioning the large walnut at the bottom of the garden as a guide to the garden boundary before we all retreated back indoors to the log fire.

So it was the following summer when we decided to spend time tending the garden that we realised that we had:

3 apple trees
3 peach trees
2 plum trees
2 Hazelnut trees
1 quinze tree
1 cherry tree
1 pear tree
1 walnut
gooseberry, blackcurrant, raspberry bushes and flowerbeds full of wild alpine strawberries.

Last, but certainly not least, is the huge grape vine that runs the length of the house, although our attempts at winemaking have been nothing short of disasterous to date we are hopeful this year to make something at least drinkable :)

So tonight we'll have a rustic peach tart.....tomorrow, for the arrival of family, I will make a tipsy pear tart and get started on some peach chutney.

Nigella who?