Vine seems to have an instinct to grow in the warmest place. When you’re trying to do your growing on English soil, it’s sensible to go indoors.
I’ve had to commit an amputation today, the weather’s so bad I’ve had to close the window.
Hugh FW provide pear recipes almost too late. I’ve had a plentiful crop this year, but they’ve almost all been eaten/frozen/given away/blown away. Which is a pity, because Hugh’s recipes look great, especially the fried spiced. 
The only reason I haven’t tried this yet is that I’ve been feeling so grotty that I’ve spend 50% of the weekend so far sleeping and most of the rest of the time lying about (The Ambassadors of Death is a great way to take your mind off being ill, but may cause the unwary - me - to add loss of colour vision to our symptoms).
The pear and blue cheese salad also looks very yummy. I’ve already been put onto pears and blue cheese. The potential was apparent with a piece of fairly indifferent Stilton so I went looking for ways of improving on this. The absolutely awsome Cheese Please recommended Cote Hill and Picos Blue. I tried both. The Picos Blue is the kind of cheese that should be kept in a lead lined box and I knew it could stand up to my fairly fruity pears, but to have them both marching around in your mouth is almost too much. The Cote Hill is equally assertive and extraordinarily creamy; I’m going back for more of that but it’s still not quite the perfect pear accompaniment. Hugh FW favours Dorset Blue Vinnie, so I’ll give that a try before the last pear goes soft; I reckon a better bit of Stilton has to be worth a try too.
A colleague gave me some quinces and the last of my pears were going very soft, so I boiled them down and made a quince and pear tart.
I’ve added the recipe to the wiki but I can’t get images to work within the wiki, so here’s another pic: served with creme fraiche.
This last crop brings the this year’s total to well over 100!
Not all the pears were harvested. Because of the bumper crop I’ve been picky, and chucked the blemished pears away, I’ve also been slow in getting to the ripe pears.
The pond-works completed this year have put the feeder pond right under the tree, and all the land now rolls down to the water, with the consequence that many of the pears that I hadn’t yet got to dropped in the water and immediately begun to rot.
It’s been good for the water snails, but not for the pond. There’s scum on the surface and it smells bad; I haven’t seen fish to know if they’ve survived, but I’m off now to get a large net to try and protect it all from the next threat to oxygen levels: rotting leaves.
Eating in Little Storping-in-the-Swuff
The village of Little Storping has only one pub, the Jolly Ploughman. Don’t be put off by the sinister barman or the strange locals. Head on over and see the new recipe wiki: read, eat, enjoy, contribute.
The wiki is powered by wikiwiki, based on erfurt wiki but using WordPress’s authentication. I’ve tinkered and hacked away a bit to make it fit with the theme (plus a modification to functions.php as described here). I need to hack away at it a bit more: I’m not happy with the English localisation (if you get some odd English, I didn’t do it - honest!), but I wanted to launch it right away, after adapting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s spiced baked desert apple recipe for my pears - for my adaptation click here.
I am allowing all registered users of Little Storping to be able to edit the wiki as I’d like to have as much user contribution as possible.
So go on, dive in!
The first picking, today.
In fact several of them are already going rotten on the tree. Any good pear recipes, anyone?
It’s time for the previously mentioned salad now the tomatoes are ripening.
The salad is entirely grown in my garden. As well as the tomatoes, there’s the basil (now outdoors), exceptionally spicey rocket (very nice!) and the leaves and flowers of my nasturtiums.
These are not “girly” flowers (you know who you are and I know you’re reading this). Eat one of these and then say they’re “girly” flowers, if you’re not too chicken.
Or pears drop, that should be.
The pears that have formed in the upward facing blossom are beginning to face downwards, thanks to the effect of gravity as they biggen themselves.
Almost all the flowers have turned to fruit:
This splendid little pot-grown plant is a bush tomato. The side shoots don’t need pinching out, in fact no pruning is necessary.
Just a little more ripening in the sun, and it’s time for tomato salad.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the next in our series of non-frog related garden photos.
This bountiful rhubarb is filed under “fruit”, another garden-related sub-category designed to ensure you have access to the posts most relevant to your particular requirements.
