Worth Waiting For

I don't pick the flowers, but fruit is a different matter. The rain didn't put me off going out to pick this lot. They are late this season. I've been testing them almost daily for a couple of weeks, and at last they are ready. Here's the line-up-

Trevatt apricots, which don't have the rich flavour of my heroic apricots, but they are sweet and juicy, and plentiful. I like to eat them raw on their own, with my home-made cheese, on toast and bread rolls, which are also home-made. The excess I process into free-flow quarters, and blocks of puree for the freezer, to be used later in chicken recipes, muffins and bread.

Iona grapes, which grow in my little tunnelhouse. They are the first of my grapes to ripen and they are very welcome. I like them as soon as they are ripe, while they still have a tang. When fully ripe they are much too sweet. I like these better than apricots for cooking with chicken, but only when they are fresh.

Plums from a self-sown tree that came up in the flower garden and I kept because I liked the dark red foliage. I'd thought it was a bronze and that the plums would be too sour to eat, but these are delicious and refreshing. I don't preserve plums because they need sugar, which I avoid.

I also picked a few yellow cherry tomatoes, five weeks later than usual. The red tomatoes are weeks away from ripening.

Happy birthday, FirehorseMia!