About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I is for I'm Not Showing-off. But....

...the fruits of my labour!

Raspberries, a rather disappointing crop of commercial strawberries, red currents, a little taste of true wild or Alpine strawberries and four tubs of a natural cross.

The failure of the commercials (Sovereign - I think) is in part down to a rodent who carried them all off and piled them up to rot  in a corner of the cloche while I was away, annoying as I've spent 3-odd years getting the ground elder and bind weed cleared and they had a superb crop on before they went red, still; they say you are supposed to give some of the harvest to nature!

The natural cross are extraordinary, they shuck beautifully without a piece of green coming away, neither does the shuck involve half the innards - like the Alpines. They are the most fantastic tasting strawberries I've ever tasted (with the possible exception of the large - 1cm or so - Alpines we used to harvest by the side of the road to Tuttlingen when we were kids!), and just popped-up on the drive-way about ten years ago, since when they have spread over a large patch.

They have a very short season; about two weeks, and bruise very easily, as they are very soft (another trait they've inherited from the Alpines), so need to be eaten the same day or jammed, but the jam is sublime. I have seen very similar crosses advertised in the plant catalogues, so I guess the current apparent climate change is to their benefit.

Given all the other interlopers I mentioned the other day, the more fruity things the better I say!

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