Fruit, fungi and flowers, I just can’t help myself with the alliteration! But the last 7 days has been a week of picking; both out in the wild and in the garden.

Free, foraged fruit

Summer fruit season has begun, and it’s a bumper year. I attribute that to the long, dry spell followed by the bountiful downpours. I’ve picked my full of bilberries and blackberries –  and it’s not even August yet. About a kilo of blackberries is currently residing in our freezer, and I’ve made a delicious fruit sponge pudding with the bilberries. I used my go-to upside-down cake recipe that works with almost any fruit.

Field fungi

Our Instragram feed has been lit up with photos of people’s fungi foraging exploits. We set out specially this week to one of our mushroom picking spots, in search of chanterelles. Alas, not a single one was to be found – perhaps in a couple of months time (which is when we’ve previously scored ourselves a paper bag full of the delicious mushrooms). I did, however, find and pick my first parasol mushroom of the season – it’s currently sliced and drying nicely in the kitchen.

Favourite flowers

Only a couple of years ago, our hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ was a half dead little thing sitting in the bargain box at a local garden centre. She consisted of 3 spindly little sticks and looked extremely sorry for herself. This year, she’s standing tall, proud and strong; producing a profusion of stems and blooms. We’ve put a handful of them in a white ironstone jug to enjoy indoors right now. A few other stems have been picked and are hanging upside-down, drying to display later on in the year.