nectarines | organised castle

It is about a week since I picked the first of the nectarines from our tree. For the first few days it was a matter of picking 2 or 3 at a time.

However, the ripening process is speeding up and I picked enough this morning to fill a large bowl.

The slightly firmer ones are in the fruit bowl and we will have them to finish our meals.

I sliced up some of the others which had some slight marks or need to be eaten quickly. These will be the fruit I add to my cereal for breakfast each day.

There are still many more that are yet to ripen and be picked so we are going to end up with a bumper harvest. It will be much better than last year when the birds probably ate more than we did. The netting that we added about 2 months ago has made a substantial difference and was definitely worth doing. You can read about it here.

I have been fully occupied for the past few days doing some writing that was not blog posts nor in any way blogworthy. It was administrative work for a local voluntary organisation that I belong to.

Today we ventured out in the garden to do a few jobs and one was to net the fruit trees to keep the birds at bay. Last year was our first summer in this house and although we harvested a bounty of fruit we did lose a portion of the crop to our local feathered friends.

We have 3 espaliered fruit trees near the side of the house – a nectarine and two nashi pears. They are now suitably enclosed for at least 3 months while the fruit mature out of harm’s way.

The raspberries are thriving in a patch near the back fence and we did cover them last year which resulted in most of the crop feeding us rather than the birds. Last year it was a pretty simple matter of throwing some netting over them. I have some slightly grander plans this time and will get onto that later this afternoon once it is a bit cooler.

Meanwhile, the building work in the pantry is complete and GMan is finishing painting the new wall and cornice. I have started rearranging some of the cupboards and shelves and I should be able to unveil it soon. Watch this space for details and plenty of pictures.