A few days ago, I sent my daughter out to pick all the remaining green tomatoes. The season has ended quite abruptly and it was clear that no more would ripen. I watched her for a while. She stood carefully in the muddy veggie patch and tentatively picked a couple in full view. Irked, I joined her and picked all the ones that drooped on dropped stems and hid behind leaves.
`If we lived 200 hundred years ago, we'd be reliant on every tomato we could pick!' I preached.
My daughter picked another tomato. `We would definitely survive,' she said, in a blatant attempt to make me feel proud of my efforts.
Well, no. If my veggie patch was the difference between surviving and starvation, I don't think the odds would be particularly good. There is, however, something enormously satisfying about growing and eating your own produce. At this time of the year, this satisfaction is augmented by preserving.
A bumper crop of tomatoes have meant that I have been able to bottle several efforts of jam, pickle and chutney, the last of which was made from the afore-mentioned green tomatoes. The green tomatoes are a particular triumph as, without the effort of making them into chutney, they would have gone to waste. And wasting all that summer work in getting them to grow in the first place would have been really irritating!
Recipes for green tomato chutney are easy enough to find and equally easy to adapt. This particular batch is extra hot, because I couldn't find my frozen chopped chilli (don't ask) and so added ground chilli and black pepper. Then I found where I had put the frozen chilli...
Never mind, I am sure it will add some (considerable) warmth to many a winter meal. When it has matured for a bit.... and maybe mellowed.
In the last week, I have also had my usual October skirmish with crab apple jelly. As mentioned before, crab apples are absolutely delicious as jelly, jam and gin, but they are a bit of a faff* to sort out. The making of jelly requires patience, which I am notoriously low on. Which explains why I will shortly be re-boiling my `jelly' in order to have it set. And this is ok - because it has become a sort-of tradition in my Autumn calendar.
Despite the colder days, I love Autumn. I have a soft spot for trees and the change of seasons allows such a gorgeous display. My absolute favourite is when the sun breaks through and the red and gold of Autumn leaves shimmer against a dark cloud background. Beautiful.
My own garden has an Autumn wonder of its own. The previous owners (or maybe the ones previous to them) planted two Virginia Creepers - one that creeps over the workshop and back hedge, and one on a trellis near the conservatory. My gardening-guru friend tut-tutted knowingly when she first saw them, advising me that it might be best to pull them out. And, in many ways, she had a point. The Virginia Creeper must have been the inspiration for the triffid. It grows at an astonishing speed from Spring to late Summer, colonising anything it can get its tendrils on. I spend hours every year pulling off errant tendrils that have invaded the veg patch, crept between boards and tiles and thrown themselves into the water butts.
But in the summer, it creates a dense roof to the trellis - so dense that we have eaten dinner in the rain beneath it - while providing a cool spot and a place for birds to nest. In the Autumn, it is simply stunning.
And the Virginia Creeper
Turns to flame –
Fire catching and falling
In a sun gone sparse.
Glorious,
It bleeds across trellis
And roof-edges,
Until the gusts
Send leaves sparking, falling.
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