Of wine and quizzes

 I think that most people have had a mixed year in the fruit and vegetable garden. Some things have done well and some have been nothing short of disastrous!. Clearly the weather .has much to do with this.

Crops that have done well this year are spring cabbage, climbing french beans, courgettes, broad beans, tomatoes,  kale, spinach, spring onions, lettuce, chilli and sweet peppers and sweet corn. For the first time this year the squirrels found the sweet corn and stripped the cobs, fortunately we had had many from them before the squirrels struck. The little darlings have also taken all the walnuts and stripped four cobnut and three hazel trees. I can honestly say that I don't feel a great deal of affection for them at the moment and struggle to subscribe to the words "The wildlife is entitled to its share of the harvest" 

The damson have done poorly for us this year, though someone only a mile away has contacted us to ask if we would like to help them with their glut! I have made pounds and pounds of Damson and (windfall) apple jelly, frozen a few pounds and made three gallons of wine, mostly damson but also a few elderberries and blackberries. I reckon that I really don't want/need any more, so will not take them up on their offer. I have suggested they offer them on freecycle etc, but they don't want anyone else at their trees. I understand this as over the years we have sustained quite a bit of damage to plants from people "helping" us with the harvest. Yes I know that sounds ungrateful;! 

Talking of wine, I ventured into our cellar.. not for the faint hearted....for wine to offer to a group of friends who have been meeting here once a week since lockdown (more later on this group) I bought up a couple of demi-johns, our wine NEVER gets into bottles, just jugs, and the wine was really good. One was a 2017 of a similar mix to the one made this year and the other a 2018 with a higher percentage of blackberries. When we were first married in 1966 we used to forage and make wines, but few people seemed to drink wine then and we were considered a little wierd and folk rarely took up the offer of a drink of wine. Things are very different now with wine being the  favoured drink of many of our female friends and relatives so it really is worth making it now.

I mentioned a meeting of folk here once a week. The local pub was struggling before lockdown and has now closed. Prior to this my husband, who is a keen quizzer used to meet with like-minded people who have become good friends. This group of quizzers has been meeting for 35 years now! At lockdown the group formed a facetime group and continued to hold the quiz this way over  last winter. Once the weather improved we put up a marquee in our family garden and have been meeting there ever since. The quizzers meet at 8.00 and I take out sandwiches etc at around 9.00 when the actual quiz is finished. ( I don't like Quizzes) Beer and wine is drunk and much gossiping and laughing is done with the last ones leave at around midnight. Last week we realised that we couldn't carry on like this throughout the winter and that we enjoyed talking to people in the flesh as it were, so yesterday we cleared the goathouse as best we could so that we could continue to socially distance and last night had our first Goathouse Quiz!

Anyway enough for now. Once I get started I don't know when to finish do I?! 

Back soon. take care all

Love Gillx