Extending the season

It's been a lovely autumn day here today, a chance to rake up some of the masses of leaves to make leaf mould and just to enjoy being outside. The beech tree we can see over the back of our garden looked especially lovely today. While clearing the leaves, we probably had our last little conker hunt of the year - and it was good fun comparing these 'tree seeds' with the exploding seed pods of the garlic chives:



Nothing if not educational, our garden. The borage is nodding its lovely, dreamlike blue flowers in the herb bed: there are plenty of flashes of colour still in the garden:



But everything's winding down there now, with the last of the cucumber, squash and marrow plants now uprooted and chucked on the compost heap. Next it'll be the turn of the beans. We're still getting plenty of runners, although we haven't done brilliantly this year. And the crop of borlotti beans hasn't been as generous as we'd hoped. Still, we'll be able to rustle up enough fresh to enliven some pasta and stews, even if we won't be looking at drying them for the winter.

Which brings us back to the title. One of the things people are most ingenious at is extending the fruits of summer and autumn into the winter. Sometimes this ingenuity is pretty crass and pointless, like the array of tasteless fruit on supermarket shelves all year round. But often it's brilliant, whether that's preserving fruit in alcohol, pickling, jam- and chutney-making, or taking advantage of polytunnels and greenhouses to extend the growing season where most appropriate. We're going for winter leaves this year:



The seedlings above include American Land Cress (a fab watercress alternative that doesn't require a babbling brook), a spicy mix and some Lambs Lettuce. They're doing well so, with a fair wind, we'll have some leaves to make wintry salads or to add to sandwiches. A little bit of summer through winter.

The cucumber pickles, preserving for the next few months one of our best crops this year, are nothing short of profoundly great:



When it comes to the beer, there's something about autumn and winter that demands something darker, I think, and something new, rather than the extension of summer's light, golden ales (although that's not a bad idea). My porter, to a recipe I cobbled together myself, is now two weeks or so in the keg and is doing very well. Another couple of weeks and this should be ready. Can't wait: