seasonal fruit
This is the start of our summer season so English strawberries are ripening and are lovely. Meanwhile, the season of one of the imported fruits that I like has already closed. I mean the blood orange which we import from Spain and Italy. It looks strange inside - probably you would think that it had gone bad!:
The skin on the outside can look entirely normal:
but, when you cut into it, you realize that it is not just an ordinary orange.
Pressed, the juice is dark, cloudy and an uneven colour (as the flesh often is):
The taste seems less acidic than other oranges and more currant-y, perhaps even slightly raspberry-ish. Nice, anyway!
On a different theme, here is a pot of lilies which was doing very nicely in my garden until today the squirrel decided that there MUST be nuts hidden in the pot and went full pelt for a dig. Fortunately, I'd taken this photo yesterday.
I like the neat shadows of the middle of the flower on one of the petals to the side.
I have been working quite hard in the garden when I can, re-balancing some of the big shrubs which have finished flowering for the year - rhododendron, camellia, Nevada rose, waging war on the weeds, potting on treasures bought at the Oxford Botanic Garden plant sale last weekend and trying to prevent the happy plants from swamping the strugglers with their enthusiasm. Some plants, such as the tree peony lutea ludlowii, are reputed to be hard to propagate but I pull up seedlings by the handful in this garden; one can have too much of a good thing!
The skin on the outside can look entirely normal:
but, when you cut into it, you realize that it is not just an ordinary orange.
Pressed, the juice is dark, cloudy and an uneven colour (as the flesh often is):
The taste seems less acidic than other oranges and more currant-y, perhaps even slightly raspberry-ish. Nice, anyway!
On a different theme, here is a pot of lilies which was doing very nicely in my garden until today the squirrel decided that there MUST be nuts hidden in the pot and went full pelt for a dig. Fortunately, I'd taken this photo yesterday.
I like the neat shadows of the middle of the flower on one of the petals to the side.
I have been working quite hard in the garden when I can, re-balancing some of the big shrubs which have finished flowering for the year - rhododendron, camellia, Nevada rose, waging war on the weeds, potting on treasures bought at the Oxford Botanic Garden plant sale last weekend and trying to prevent the happy plants from swamping the strugglers with their enthusiasm. Some plants, such as the tree peony lutea ludlowii, are reputed to be hard to propagate but I pull up seedlings by the handful in this garden; one can have too much of a good thing!