Done and dusted

                 Another year closing with a light dusting of snow

Tweet

Allotment birdsong, May - October.

Forward planning

                   Boxing Day Seed Sale: 20 packets @ 30p each

Season's Eatings

Horseradish root: grate and blend with white wine vinegar and cream

       Sage: add onion, breadcrumbs and an egg for baked fritters.

Rogue Brussels

Timely harvest, but not quite as firm and uniform as shop bought brussels. Not sure where they came from - never sowed any.

Scrub that

Hard to compete with the uniformly straight and washed supermarket ones - time to get busy with a brush and some wire wool.

Borago Officinalis

Borage, aka Starflower, flowering in the last few weeks of the year.

Jasminum nudiflorum

    Winter jasmine providing a bit of colour at the end of the year.

Rage against the dying of the light

One final bunch of nasturtiums and even a late sunflower, before the temperature dips too low. The cabbages, chard and lettuce cope a bit better with the cold, as does celery, parsley and spinach, so there's still some food to harvest. Carrots and parsnips become sweeter after a frost, so there's an underground carbohydrate store too.

Unripened on the vine

 

The last of the outdoor tomatoes ripened indoors. 

Shroom Season

Mushrooms have been so ubiquitous this year (probably due to a warm, wet August) that there's even a plotline about magic mushrooms in The Archers at the moment. These unidentified ones appeared overnight, next to an old tree stump and quickly disintegrated, only to be replaced by another crop a few days later.

Late veg box

                A final colourful harvest before the frosts arrive.

Nest lining

Globe artichoke flowers keep on giving long after the blooms have faded. Softer than a shaving brush, the bristles make good material for building nests.

Cage fighters

The late sown kale's coming on but needs protection from hungry pigeons. Some late spinach refuses to grow; it might be a summer variety that notices the dwindling daylight hours.

Colour bed

Some autumn colour in the flower bed; the antirrhinums (snapdragons) are random in height and colour, the cosmos is hanging on and the rudbeckia is uniformly marmalade. Un unhappy dahlia dislikes the heavy soil and would probably rather be in a pot.

Blooming late

The sweet peas are still producing flowers this late in the year (one plant's only just getting going) but the late ones will remain unpicked, hopefully to provide seed for next year.

Jam, the freezer

                        The autumn raspberries keep on coming.

And finally

The Jerusalem artichokes finally flower after reaching ten feet. Not as impressive as sunflowers, but similar and related (Helianthus) hence the name 'Jerusalem', which may be a mishearing of the Italian for sunflower, 'Girasole'. The edible tubers below ground taste nutty and give you wind; an autumnal ritual usual only observed once. If left unharvested they spread and can become invasive. Their value as a natural screen is somewhat diminished by their habit of growing too tall and requiring support and tying-up.

Nicotiana alata

Lime green flowers and a lovely smell in the evenings from this tobacco plant. The slightly bristly leaves repel any predators.

The present's orange

Nasturtiums, almost the identical shade of orange as the pumpkins.