Diary of a fruit picker

    It's that time of year again. Trees laden with apples, hedges laden with blackberries. My clothing is streaked with moss and my arms are peppered with bramble scratches. My freezer though is stuffed with bags of fruit and I have a plastic drum full of what will become the first batch of next year's new cider gently fermenting.
    The late summer here saw my first apple pressing in 30 degree heat, a first. A colleague remarked that we saw three seasons last week, I expressed the hope that last Saturday would then see cherry blossom, sadly a forlorn hope.
    Autumn always leaves me slightly sad, feeling that I've somehow missed the summer. Silly really, autumn is the most impressive season in itself, the countryside both laden with produce and beautiful in decay. I took a walk across the fields with my parents neighbour on Sunday, watching deer through the woodland and a poor buzzard being mobbed by some crows.
    The picture shows some very late blackberries. Losing flavour a little by now, but still worth freezing. Those will find their way into a pie sometime in January.