Autumn Transitions

It's an in-betweeny time at the moment: as much a time to look forward as it is to enjoy what's going on now. As everything starts to give up the ghost, we need to think about what comes next - what we'd like to have going through the winter; any winter green manures for improving the soil; things like fruit; and all the seeds for next year.

There's something particularly lovely about autumn when everything starts to fade, the light is especially beautiful and both of these seem to show the late flowers at their best. The picture at the top of this post is a flower of a bronze coloured sunflower we've grown this year. The radicchio which has seriously bolted we've left alone, not least because the little blue flowers are gorgeous:



And we have no idea what this is - we rather butchered it earlier in the season as it was taking over. And that seems to have prompted it to produce a great display of flowers:



There's also lots to enjoy still from this year's crops. The Indian Summer that we've been enjoying for most of September has meant that we've had lots more tomatoes ripening than we were expecting. Today we made a lovely soup for lunch with garlic, our fresh tomatoes, rosemary, ham stock and some brown Basmati rice. Just whip up a tomato sauce, water it down with stock (or water, I guess), add 1/2 to 2/3 of a cup of rice and cook for 40 mins or so. Lovely.



The blackberries just keep ripening up - we've had to start freezing them now, because we can't use them. The cucumbers are continuing to do well too. We should get another three large ones and another crop of gherkin sized cucumbers for pickling. And our huge squash is still going strong:



And yet another marrow!



We're also hopeful that we can coax our remaining chilli plants to come to fruition in the greenhouse. Particularly the fierce Scotch Bonnets:



Finally, one of our winter crops that's doing really well as long as we manage to keep the slugs off it. It's survived the cabbage whites' onslaught at least! Really, really hope that the cabbages grow ok as I for one cannot have too much cabbage:



It's nearly next month already.. Some good things about October - the new season of apples, especially if you can find any more unusual varieties. It's Apple Day on 21 October. I'm not sure there's anything happening near us, but we'll hopefully get some cider at least. October is CAMRA's cider and perry month, the month of the Stoke-on-Trent Beer Festival and, just next Friday, the Stone Food & Drink Festival just down the road from us.

Great time of year.