Summer Fruit

I used to really hate summer in the garden. Everything just goes to seed and dies. It can be pretty depressing. Even though we haven't officially made it to summer yet it has already started here in Perth with a few hot days stressing the garden. We have well and truly eaten the last of our lettuce, celery, carrots, broad beans, sweet peas and barassicas. Any veggies left in the ground have pretty much bolted, all apart from a stoic kale plant a few beans and leaks.

But this is just a part of the cycle and I'm learning to embrace it. I've harvested a good stash of poppy seeds which Ads makes into his famous orange and poppy seed cake, and of course we need to keep what ever seeds we can for next year. We are just learning these skills and still find it hard to resist picking the best specimen for eating, rather than keeping it for seed.

But the truly fantastic bit of the garden at the moment is all our fruit!  We have just finished our apricots. This was our fist harvest of apricots and they were a little bit orgasmic. It was all quality, not quantity. We picked about 1.5 kgs, but they tasted like gold.

The apples have just started and are delicious and fruit fly free, all tucked up in their exclusion netting. And our mulberries have also just about finished. 

Ads made some delicious apple and mulberry leather - to be the subject of another post. Our boysenberries are just starting and we should have a good crop. But they are still too precious for making into leather. 

And no sooner have we eaten our last banana - see the empty stalk...

Than another flower appears! Its a near perfect cycle. We will be away in UK while these ones ripen, so hopefully we will come home to a big thick bunch of bananas.  

 I've just had a quick look at previous posts on Sustainaburbia and noticed a very similar post at this time last year with very similar photos. Maybe it's a little boring to read, but I can tell you that its exciting to experience. The love for a garden just grows as you see it go through its cycles each year and as we as gardeners grow too.