gather ye raspberries while you may

Summer is having its last hurrah. The allotment  is .. how to describe it?….exuberant, wayward, full of colour, life and movement. Look a little closer though and it’s plain to see its youthful bloom has faded rather like a film star past her prime – a bit blowsy, a bit faded around the edges – more voluptuous Diana Dors than winsome Doris Day. There is still glamour here, the sunflowers in full bloom smile benevolently down on bean poles garlanded with scarlet flowers, pumpkin tendrils vie with each other in an exuberant race for ground control and tomatoes bow with the weight of blushing fruit. But the harbingers of autumn are here: leaves are dessiccated and yellowing, the sweet peas have faded and a certain luscious ripeness is present that says ‘times are a changing’. But it was ever thus and each season cradles the secrets of the next in its heart. In the same way the gardener, while revelling in summer rewards must look ahead to the future. How strange it seems in the heady days of spring and summer to sow seeds for winter cabbage, leeks and sprouts, how hard it is to imagine the bare trees and bleak aspect of December, January and February.  But to misquote T.S. Eliot ‘a cold coming we will have of it ‘. Certainly the time of cabbages and kale will soon be upon us. So amongst the flamboyant summer vegetation stolid rows of dark green seedlings are testament to the inexorable spinning of the world on its axis. Leeks, the versatile workhorses of the winter months are standing perkily in their trenches, swedes – a first for us – are modestly swelling, the cavolo nero are parading their dark green feather dusters.

Now as wonderful as fresh greens in the winter are they do lack the star quality of their summer counterparts and frankly, to my mind, some of them are downright charmless! There are of course Brussels Sprouts aka devil’s testicles … please don’t tell me they are delicious with butter and black pepper – I don’t believe you. And there is my spouses’ favourite – curly kale – so good for you he says … well as Marie Antoinette might say – let him eat kale.

So there they all are the next season’s crops and strange to think  in the chilly days when we are pulling leeks and digging up swedes we’ll be seeding tomatoes and courgettes ready for the next summer. And so it goes…  but really this is what makes gardening so interesting. Can you imagine the year without seasons? Each one with its own feel and flavour . Conjure up each season and you’ll find hundreds of associations often closely allied with growing, cooking and eating.  Autumn has its toasty aromas on misty mornings and rich earthy flavours: think butternut squash soup topped with mushrooms or caramelised onions, winter has its smoky, spicy qualities with chargrilled leeks, spicy stirfried cavolo nero and mulled wine around an open fire, in contrast spring has an icy freshness that chimes with the acid green of new shoots and we enjoy the bracing flavours of new season rhubarb and the brewing up of batches of marmalade. As for summer where do you start? The dreamy floral notes of elderflower, roses and sweet peas mix with the heady scents of freshly picked strawberries, the herbal scents of basil, rosemary and thyme drift along the smoke of barbecues and bowls of freshly picked blackcurrants  and strawberries languish in cool kitchens – a refuge from the summer heat. We need to go with the flow of the  seasons each one so individual and balanced with the workings of nature that the more we find ourselves in tune with them the more we enjoy them. Forget eating imported greenhouse strawberries and tomatoes in January – it will taste hollowly of bygone summers but relish the local produce – pink rhubarb and fresh green leeks and you’ll feel revitalised and in balance with the working of nature’s year.  So now when summer’s lease is expiring I’m going to revel in the last of its harvests and bask under the sunflowers and gorge on my soft fruit  - to misquote another poet … gather ye raspberries while you may as time is still a-flying.