Early Autumn Fruits

Early Autumn Fruits 






Summer heat makes an early Autumn! Hawthorn hedges heavily laden with berries have been reddening since mid-August. Pendulous plummy fruits dangled bright yellow and red. I had despaired of fruit from the Cherry Plum in Green Lane which was thick with white blossom (265) Read more

in February


Four Wood Pigeons, day after day, had methodically picked out the flowers and subsequently guzzled incessantly on the swelling green fruits... but it did turn out ok. By the end of July (5) yellow bounty duly arrived and after such a season of blossom and extremes pigeons and people finally had so many fruit choices that fruits lay in profusion on the ground – the first time in decades! Strange that passersby, foragers included, ignored them in preference to misplaced optimism for some overhanging unripe apples – sour cookers! (Cherry plums are nice stewed with a little sugar!) ... But somewhere there was a creature gathering them up and gorging in a quiet place. 30 m. up the hill I came across a neat cache of disposed fruit stones. Photo 

taken on the same day as 5, shows the remains of the feast - walking stick for scale! I suspect a squirrel as they were carried and stoned before eating.

A month later and garden and farm harvests were under way 



... more sun and now rose hips 

are ripe and red, and in such a year of pollination plenty, bunches of shiny black elderberries still remain heavy with promise. Pigeons have had their fill for now. Again, these fruits (as long as care is taken that no unripe green berries are consumed) are on the human menu as wine or anti-viral cordial (James Wong, Ethnobotanist).


 - While autumn spider webs are beginning to clothe leaves, twigs and vacant spaces, nectar and pollen flowers are still flowering and delivering food for insects, carrying them through the lowering temperatures and increasing rain 

– Mrs Sam Mcgredy rose). 



Lavender ‘Hidcote’ and 

Osteospermum have done well in the heat and dry extremes... conditions that hark back to their wild origins – the Mediterranean and South/East Africa respectively. These are becoming the plants of our future...

Wildlife Gardening Tips: Birds seem to be fewer but many are foraging wide on all this plenty! They will be returning soon for regular meals! Good time to get all the feeders and bird baths pristine – RSPB research is showing garden feeders etc can be a source of rapid spread of bird diseases. RSPB and other bird food suppliers also have bird-safe disinfectants. Thorough weekly washing is a good start. Water is a key essential; in hot countries, it is water rather than seed that is put out for the birds...

All the fruit shrubs/trees pictured above are easy garden plants, but assess space before planting.

Photos: Nicolette Scourse.

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