In the garden - October/November

I realised, belatedly, that the titling of my garden posts was a bit stupid - when I'm writing "in the garden - November" what I actually mean is "it is November now and I'm writing about what happened in the garden in October." And theoretically I was going to be publishing them early in the month, whereas today is the 25th. Oh well. Here is what happened in the garden in October, and for good measure, the bulk of November.

An artichoke happened! "Artichoke", singular so far, but there is another one on there. We had it steamed with some olive oil and vinegar for dipping.

I have far more food memories of my maternal grandmother, Grandma, than my paternal grandmother, Granny, but one thing I associate with Granny is artichokes, as I ate them for the first time with her on holiday one Christmas. I also recall her giving us vanilla icecream sprinkled with Milo, or occasionally a spoonful of jam.

The blueberries have continued to do well - yesterday E took to kindy for morning tea a box of them picked entirely from our own plants. But the main fruit event of the month has been apricots. 24 of them to date! The combination of mesh and paper bags has been a real success this year - I obviously got them on at the right time. They have had a bit of ant/other insect damage and definitely look home grown, but not one so far has been fruit fly ridden.

They look particularly home-grown in this photo - the lighting is a bit funny  -
 they are actually much orange-r than they appear here.

We are saving the stones in the hope that Papa may be able to add a few trees to their collection, although I have read that growing apricots from stones is a bit of a production, requiring a nut cracker to extract the bit you actually plant, and them time in the fridge for them to germinate. We all love them so much it is worth the effort - although 24 is definitely our best haul yet (and there are still more to come on the other half of the graft) it is still few enough that I ration them out for dessert after dinner, one each and no more! C especially loves them and sits chomping away with her one tooth, beautiful orange juice running down her chin.