I got up early enough this morning to catch the pink sky. This is the view to the west, the sun hides behind the big mountain to the east for an hour or so longer. In this photo you can also see the orange tree, the blood plum in flower and the pears and walnut not yet blossoming. With a potential bounty of fruit in season you will understand my choice of book for the week.
A book I have read recently
A Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise -- how to make your own delicious preserves all year round. I live in a back-in-time house and do things in the slow lane these days so a book like this is good for dreaming of what I could do but not what I actually do. I draw the line at preserving other than the very easy task of freezing the excess. It's citrus season, I could make marmalade. But truly when you actually make jam you realise how much sugar is in it and hence know it is to be eaten sparingly. If I made jam I would have to give it away. Why do that when I can just as reliably be the recipient of someone else's largess - case in point my sister-in-law dropped off a bottle of three fruits marmalade on the weekend. So instead I use up the oranges by being totally extravagant each morning and have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from fruit picked straight from the tree.
Mum and I made marmalade from her cumquats back in February. It's managed to last through the winter!
ReplyDeleteGreat. I am always impressed with people who do make marmalade. It's just not me.
DeleteNice to have fresh fruit on your doorstep.
ReplyDeleteCertainly is nice - and the citrus is the best. I have trouble figuring out what to do with fruit fly for the other fruit crops.
DeleteA beautiful outlook for your orchard. We don't have much in the way of fruit trees, not many survived the drought unfortunately. We do have a pear tree (that has never yielded fruit) and a couple of almonds.
ReplyDeleteOur almonds get eaten by the birds well before they are ripe so I have never harvested those. Our pear tree fruits, there are two different varieties, perhaps for cross polination. I hope all of my trees survive the drought. I have a feeling the drought is the reason why my daffodils have refused to flower this year and there are usually hundreds of them.
DeleteThe drought has killed our orchard. We will have to get all the fruit trees removed. We will not replant because when the fruit is plentiful the cockatoos get them before us!
ReplyDeleteWow. You are in the mountains and the drought has not affected our garden there too much at all yet. I may have lost a couple of small maples but it might be that they ar being slow to leaf up. It is certainly less severe in my garden than the millennium drought at this point. As for the cockatoos it is either them or the possums who get all of the plums. The numbers seem to be growing in the mountains.
DeleteBest time of the day Joan Elizabeth, gorgeous shot.. the fruit and blossom trees look wonderful in the early morning light ✨
ReplyDeleteMorning light is wonderful but I have trouble agreeing that dawn is the best time of day. I am just not an early morning Personš
DeleteOh, what a beautiful spot! I made lemon marmalade just once when we lived in California and had a great tree. It was a lot of sugar...and a lot of work of the sort that I don't enjoy.
ReplyDeleteHa ha. We are birds of a feather on this one then.
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