I’ve a habit of looking at everything in the garden as if it was food – the frost on freshly manured beds in January conjures images of chocolate brownies dusted with icing sugar, plump paeony-flowered tulips resemble toffee apples, and the whirled petals of Dahlia 'Penhill Watermelon' make my mouth water for raspberry ripple ice cream. In terms of real food, summer has provided beans, courgettes, salads and tomatoes by the bowlful, but September takes that link between garden and stomach and folds into the mix a good dollop of comfort, potential pudding harvests transformed from things to be scattered over yoghurt and granola to altogether stodgier fare. Some mornings, it feels like walking through a crumble, the last blackberries of the season overlapping with the first of the apples, yielding to a gentle twist. Thoughts turn to golden, sun-warmed pears, picturing them delicately poached with vanilla and brown sugar and warmly spiced with a hint of cardamom and cinnamon, or baked into some rich chocolatey sponge – would it be too much to add in the fat, swollen beetroot standing in rows in the veg patch? Or maybe a handful of cobnuts from the hazel tree, assuming the squirrels have left us any.
In an ideal world, there would be a jug of something hot and thick and sweet to pour. I’m reliably informed that the fully bletted fruit of the medlar bears more than a passing resemblance to custard but, notwithstanding enthusiastic reports from people whose opinion I respect, I remain a little reticent when it comes to sampling the rotten, soupy flesh of a fruit that looks like a cat’s arsehole. I should probably live a little – ask me at Christmas, I’ll be living on nothing else.
September is harvest time, we plough the fields and scatter – well, we direct drill and keep cultivation to a minimum these days, but where’s the poetry in that? And though we might be inclined to roll our eyes at yet another invocation of Keats’ ode To Autumn, the oft overlooked genius of this ditty is the way in which the poet links the garden to the delight in anticipation of food by getting the reader to go mmmm within the first two lines ...
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the maturing sun ...
You can hold this lip-smacking up as a masterly example of alliteration, but I choose to believe that little Johnny K was just wandering through a garden, thinking about crumble.
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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, writer, photographer, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking this image.
