How many more buckets like these will I see in October?
Recent rains had weighed down the big bonces of my dahlias and quite a few stems were hanging low, bent double by the weight, but they still form great dabs of color against the fading autumn backdrop of the allotment.
As ever, I did not manage to knock off all of the tasks on my to do list. Indeed, the apples were so abundant that after filling two huge plastic bucket/trugs, cutting two buckets of dahlias and picking a kilo or so of beans, there was no time to do anything more than ferry my bounty back up the steep hill to the main gates in multiple arm-wrenching trips. The slugs have had their potato-feasting time exteneded until the weekend it would seem.
I'm still dealing with my harvests today - in the kitchen, apple and mint jelly is straining drippy vinegariness through a jelly bag, an apple and raisin cake lies in half-demolished ruins following its joyous breakfast-time reception by my children, a gooey toffee-esque German apple cake lurks in the fridge and I have apple slices drying in a cool oven.
Despite giving away a shopping bag full of apples to a neighbor and squeezing about 2 litres of juice to put in the freezer, I still don't seem to have made a dent in my bucketloads. Will store some in the cellar for the coming months, and will doubtless get fat on puddingising the rest - needless to say, my children love this sweet-toothed time of year.
