Harvests and history (3-9th August)
The weather this week
The week started hot and sunny and drew me into the garden first thing, motivated to make a difference to our monstrously overgrown veg patches. After a few hours toil it all looked more or less the same, except for our topiary chicken (something we inherited from the previous owners) which I’d restored to avian form after its brief stint as a hedgehog.
At home
I managed to do one of the only domestic things I’ve done all year with our own fruit and veg, and made some simple pickled gooseberries. I had intended to make chutney, but the prepping, collating umpteen ingredients, boiling seemed a dull prospect - perhaps because normally I’d invite a friend round for wine and a natter while we made it and that’s just not possible these days. The pickled gooseberries only involve making a pickling syrup with sugar, vinegar and whatever spices you want, then after putting the fruit in the hot syrup for a minute, popping them in jars and topping up with reduced, cold syrup. You can also use the cold leftover syrup to make a kind of shrub (syrup and sparkling water) which is really tasty.
In the garden
My autumn raspberry plants are huge, but have yet to show any signs that they are willing to be productive. Although all the sunflowers that I planted were eaten by the rabbits, one rogue sunflower has appeared - probably a remnant of a bird’s lunch - in the middle of the raspberry canes, which makes the barren patch more endearing.
At the end of the week we felt the need for a bonfire, so out came the scythe to clear a spot in the paddock. I took the opportunity to cut down a lot of blackgrass (I realise that simply cutting it isn’t going to get rid of it, but its firm, upright sward makes such a crisp, satisfying crunch when cut that I can’t help myself ) and made a safe area for us to build a decent fire from a lot of accumulated brush and branches. As the fire was dying down, the owls came out, as did the stars. Our clothes smelled pleasingly of smoke the next day.
Out and about
We lunched at my parents bigger, wilder but inevitably more organised and appealing garden. As with many summer lunches, we began outside in the sunshine but were chased into the greenhouse, mid-bite, by sudden rain. Their greenhouse is home to an expressive old grapevine that is currently laden with green bunches. The wall of the greenhouse was built around the vine, which likes to have its roots outside while the upper vine is trained across the inside of the glass making a lush indoor bower - the kind of garden feature I aspire to having some day…
Seasonal change is making itself known across the landscape. The green fields around our house have been cut and the contours of the hills are accentuated with pleasing stripes of hay. Monstrous machines deftly transform it all into neat bales – a mesmerising thing to watch from the upstairs window. Our neighbouring farmers appear to be working long into the night – presumably to get things done before the weather changes - and we’re frequently woken in the wee hours by the boom and whine of tractors zooming past our house, lights flashing. This woke me with a start at 2am one night, and while trying to get back to sleep I suddenly remembered I’d left all the polytunnel doors open from the heat of the day. Nightmare thoughts of sneaky rabbits eating all my tomatoes eventually got me out of bed and I found myself outside in my dressing gown, under a sky full of stars and warm, still air holding the scent of harvest. I reluctantly went back to bed out of a sense of propriety, but as I drifted back to sleep I found myself regretting not taking a starlit walk up to Watchknowe.
We did make it up there the following evening for a sunset-aperitivo – sitting on the very top of the Watchknowe knoll (a spot I had earmarked for summer aperitivos just after we moved in) with an almost 360degree view. Jim has been reading the Alistair Moffat book on the history of the Borders and as we pinpointed the places we knew on the landscape before us, we tried to imagine the skirmishes and feuds of the past being played out. The Borders appears to be such a quiet place now, with only a fraction of the population and commercial activity it has had in the past. It is only sweetly beautiful, having none of the drama of the Highlands, and Borderers haven’t learned how to boast about the places of interest and intrigue. As a result, we haven’t yet been subjected to the same tourism industry Disney-fication as the rest of Scotland. But perhaps our lack of development is less about modesty and more about a self-defence strategy established over centuries of being invaded, pillaged, and fought over.
