The Ripening Garden

apple and spider web

Along paths covered in wild bramble, in the back of our cottage, in a nearby walled garden or by a village school ripening fruit appears. It’s July so they’ve not reached their peak of perfection or maturity. Spider webs grow alongside them as they ripen in the rays of the summer sun.

sun rays on appleFrom the lines of The Odyssey by Homer translated by Alexander Pope:

Close to the Gates a spacious Garden lies…

The reddening Apple ripens here to Gold,

Here the blue Fig with luscious Juice overflows…

The branch here bends beneath the weighty Pear…

figs ripening

pear tree growing on wall

pears in walled garden

I did find one sole peach all ready to be picked in a garden watched by a cat.

ripe peach

peach and cat sculpture on wall

And wherever we walk we see fruit ripening on wild brambles. Sometimes just blossoming flowers as in this garden.

bramble flowers

Or growing with abandonment in the shrubs of the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

Unripe blackberries in Ashdown Forest

As well as by a path leading up to a village school. But we’ll have to wait to the end of the summer and start of autumn before gathering blackberries in baskets for a fruit feast.

Ripening fruit on bramble

Meanwhile in the back garden damsons change colour.ripening damson fruit

damson tree

They’ll be picked later and made into damson jam…and gin!

So I say – sun keep on shining this summer, both for us and the ripening fruit, whether in ordered or wild gardens. Autumn can wait!

 

 

 

14 thoughts on “The Ripening Garden”

  1. i love your post i feel like i stepped into a fairy tale with the poem and the peach ditty we just finished reading james and the giant peach, i wonder if you left it would it get any bigger.

  2. What a beautiful sight, isn’t it? Seeing these photos of ripening fruit makes me feel so hopeful and filled with a certain elation.

  3. Your first photo with the spider web and then the photo of the damsons moved me enormously. The first photo is my favourite photo of the year. The damsons are just beautiful. Thank you for sharing. #hdygg

  4. I chuckled to myself when I read about the cat watching the peach 🙂 Lovely photo of the rays of sun shining on the fruit. You’ll be swimming in fruit once everything is ripe!

  5. Alice @ Outdoors in London

    Can’t believe how far advanced everything is this year blackberries have already been black – though v sour! – for a week and our damsons look almost ready for picking.

  6. Oh I love this time of year, everything feels so productive. You’ll be up to your eyeballs in fruit crumbles and pies before you know it now.
    I love the brick wall too, which might sound odd, but I love an old brick wall in a garden!
    Thanks for joining in again – see you Monday!

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