Our First Ever Apricot Harvest!

Hooray! Hooray!
The apricots are ready.
We traipsed over to our "allotment" (Pendlebury Hill) yesterday to work on the rose garden and we were pleasantly surprised to see little orange dots all over the apricot tree.

Below is the tree last year - overgrown with grass and weeds.
Lots of newspaper and lots of pea straw and this year we have around 15 kg of fruit!

Apricot grading has commenced,
to be followed by jam making, cake-baking and preserves.

Recipes to follow over here
Cooking with Freefalling.


Photos:
first 2 - iphone - 28 Dec, 2011
no. 3 - Nov, 2010
no. 4 - 29 Dec, 2011

My Helper

It's funny - at home, Buster is my helper around the garden.
He's always hanging out with me.
But when we come over to Pendlebury Hill, Skeeter is the one who keeps me company.

Here Skeeter and I are picking the Granny Smiths off the apple tree.
These will become Green Apple Jelly which is the base for many of
Christine Ferber's jam recipes.
I'm going to attempt two of hers this year:
Apple Jam with Caramel
and Apple jelly with Ceylon Strong Breakfast Tea.

In the above photo we have some weeds.
A bit of a climbing geranium.
The northern side fence.
A half dead Photinia tree - (who knew they were trees? I thought they were just hedges).
Two new wild plum bushes - I cut one tree down and got 2 in its place!
And some bulb type arrangement.
Anyone know what it is?
A Nerine?




Photos: 28th March, 2011