Cattapilla Dreaming

The blackberries are ripening fast so every afternoon I take my containers and stumble about in the hedgerows gathering berries.  My fingers are sore with thorns and nettle stings and my legs scratched and bruised but it’s worth it.   But why are the best always unreachable?  They sit there temptingly in the sunshine ready to plop into you hand and yet they are the other side of a deep ditch or else surrounded by tall stinging nettles or vicious gorse.  Still I’m managing to pick plenty and this morning began the annual jam making sessions.

In mid-August  the wonderful flower-filled hedgerows which I wrote about in my last post  provide food for masses of butterflies.  They lie in the road basking in the sun, settle along stone walls and if you stand still for long enough, some will even land on your arms and head.   An enormous bush of  a pink  hebe, ‘Great Orme’,  outside the front door is alive with both butterflies and bees.  We’ve re-christened it the ‘whoosh bush’ as everytime  we walk past it explodes with a whoosh of feeding insects!

The Tortoiseshell is the most common and tame

and obviously enjoys being photographed

 The Red Admiral is just so beautiful

as is the Peacock.

Even the Large White, whose caterpillars tear through any brassica plant, is worth admiring.

And this beauty is either the Common Blue or Adonis Blue   

I think it should have the latter grander name with those colours and markings.

Neither blackberry or butterfly but what colours!

I’m picking kilos of these every day from the 46 tomato plants I planted out in the greenhouse.  Yes, I know, what am I going to do with them all?  I’m sure I’ll think of something!!

The hedgerows on Bere Island are beautiful in August.  They have never been sprayed with herbicides so are full of the wild flowers I remember from my childhood.  Yarrow, honeysuckle, the ubiquitous fuschia humming with bees, meadowsweet, purple loosestrife, willow herb, tufted vetch, birds foot trefoil -  isn’t that a wonderful name – knapweed, privet, montbretia,  the list goes on.  And with a bit more sunshine the blackberries will be ready.

I picked all these within a few hundred metres of home. 

In the garden the fresh early summer flowers are over but the follow up is pretty good. 

The high summer sun can leach colours so strong shades always win.

These colours are magnificent.

As well as providing  authentic Italian flavours to those pasta sauces, marjoram also provides nectar for the bees and is a great cut flower.

Mrs Finch, my absolute favourite rose which comes with a bit of  history.

Many years ago I was the head gardener – sounds much grander than it was – at a large garden in the south west of England.  The garden had been planted in the 50’s by the previous owner and in wide beds in front of the house was a musky-scented  pink shrub rose.  It had been bred by the then head gardener and named after his wife, Mrs Finch.  It was never registered so was never commercially available.  While I was working there I successfully took cuttings and the two I have flowering in the garden here on Bere Island are the grandchildren of those originals.  And last winter I took cuttings from these and now have great-grandchildren to plant wherever I may go.

Shouldn’t the treat of shelling summer peas be undertaken whilest sitting in the early evening sunshine with a cold gin and tonic to hand?

Ha!  I podded these sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, wearing a fleece and my magnificent new socks (now a pair) having had to don wet weather gear to harvest them.  I shouldn’t complain, I know, we didn’t come here for the weather after all, but…

A pair of young robins are sheltering in the greenhouse  – when Hercules isn’t sleeping in the thyme 

Horace looks at me in surprise whenever I suggest he goes out  to pick his way through the long wet grass and Rosie is glued to the sofa.  The young swallows have had their flying lessons cancelled due to extreme dampness;  the wind turbine is motionless and the solar panels have ceased to generate any power in the gloom.

But I spotted one creature enjoying itself!