Autumn Colours and Parsnip Wine

I missed writing my blog last week and yet the time has flashed by. So here I am again with all the latest.

Lovely autumn days, which are sometimes wet and windy, fresh mornings and early nights, are upon us. The garden is full of changing leaves, seedheads and berries. The asters are just beginning their show of purple shades while the rudbeckias are still a blaze of golden glory.

A few hangers-on are giving me a glimpse of pretty colours.

The fungi have been fascinating. First, smooth white forms, later flaring out to give a canopy over the stems. Fading now to dullness among the scattered leaves.

The glowing colours of autumn are developing by the day. Some leaves enhance the plants and others fall on the ground in a pleasing bundle. Here are some which caught my eye.

We have a very friendly robin this year. He’s following us everywhere. He even goes inside the shed to see what’s going on. I managed to capture his beauty as he posed obligingly on a post next to where I was working.

We even had a heron visiting. Sadly, for the heron, our pond is just an empty hole right now. It’s a project waiting to be tackled. At least we could rest assured that our frogs were safely tucked away under stones around the garden. The bird was a magnificent sight, standing on top of our woodstore as we ate breakfast and watched through the kitchen window. I couldn’t take a photo through the wet glass but here’s one I caught a few years ago from an upstairs window. I was lucky that day.

The plums are ripe and falling from the tree. Allan gathered as many as he could reach. I froze some and made a plum pie with the rest.

They are sweet and delicious raw. I also like them cooked but they do become piquant and need an awful lot of sugar. Not really healthy but a tasty treat even so. I put breadcrumbs underneath the fruit in the pastry case to soak up the juice. A nice idea passed on from my lovely sister.

I’m making some parsnip wine. A warming winter drink and easy to do. Although I have parsnips in the garden, mine need a lot of cleaning up which is very tiring when you need two kilos of them. I prefer to buy the supermarket ones for this because they’ve had a preliminary wash. I only need to give them a light scrub and top and tail them before chopping and cooking.

It’s been fermenting in the wine tub for just over a week. Now it needs a further period of time in a demijohn with an airlock to release the gas. A very pleasing process watching it bubble away. It looks very cloudy at this stage, but it will clear beautifully as it matures. No chemicals used. If you do it properly, they’re unnecessary.

The cooked parsnips don’t go to waste. When I’ve strained off the juice for the wine, I cool them and freeze in small tubs. Great for adding to winter soups or casseroles.

The recipe for my parsnip wine, with step-by-step instructions, is in my Earthy Homemaker’s Cookbook. Find it with this link. https://geni.us/eANQu

Looking ahead, I’ve planted next year’s garlic in the polytunnel. Best put in around now because it needs a cold spell to stimulate it into growth. Fingers crossed that the dreaded allium leaf miner won’t find it in a few month’s time and wipe it out like my leeks. Gardening is always a bit of a gamble, but the rewards outweigh the problems.

Still some jobs to do in the garden before Winter. I hope you’re finding your own way of keeping busy and enjoying what the season has to offer.

Bye for now. With you again soon.