In the garden

Yesterday afternoon, on my fortnightly binge of "gardening" - which means, hacking back brambles and uprooting rampant buttercups and other weeds, ready for the garden waste collection the following morning, I found and ate a ripe blackberry. Just the one, in a sheltered, sunny position (under the kitchen window), but even so, this is very early, isn't it? I think of blackberries as an autumn fruit, and July 25th as the beginning of the summer holiday season (because it was Grandma's birthday, and often coincided with the start of the school holidays).

It's going to be a good year for blackberries: the brambles in the garden are heavy with fruit, and although I am cutting back yards and yards of new growth, that's not where the fruit is.