Gardening

#Waldsee

September 19, 2023

This weekend, it was time for some gardening.

On the lake side, there wasn’t too much to do. Anything with a blossom stays, because they’re all still full of bees and other fluttery and buzzy things, so only a couple of finished hollyhocks to be cut, and there was some desperately required pruning of the extremely enthusiastic wild rose (back) and the ivy (back right).

View along the path towards the lake side gate. Both sides lined with lots of green, with many late flowers; at the back, wild rose and ivy are stretching out long feelers in search of new fences to overgrow.

So not much changed, but a bit tidier (and the greenery beside the gate less grabby). Also backlit, because late afternoon:

Same view of the same path as before, but the hollyhock is gone, and there are no plant tentacles in the background.

The garden side, however, was a more involved story. Not only was the summer furniture still all over the place, but so was the vine, proudly displaying its quite copious crop of tiny grapes. Which are lovely, but part of the problem: a tablecloth underneath got purple splotches within an hour. Sooner, if nobody was outside and the blackbirds and insects came to harvest.

View of the garden patio. A vine has grown up the front roof support, and made its way more or less everywhere under the roof beams and joists. It all looks quite serene and beautiful, but also tangled and messy.

Step 1 was, of course, to harvest the grapes. I was really rather wasteful about this, keeping only the large, pretty clusters and dumping the tiny ones, the ones with visible unripe grapes, and the ones that had been visited by the local birds and insects straight to the compost.

I left the clusters along the front edge of the roof, because a) it’s pretty, b) I don’t begrudge the animals the food, I just also want clean tablecloths.

View along the roof and drain. The vine wrapped itself around the beam running the length, and with the remaining (many) grape clusters is a lovely late-autumn garland.

Anyway, my buckets were full.

A zinc and a plastic bucket, both heaped with grapes.

Then it was just a matter of pruning the excesses (the vine had decided to climb onto the roof and was starting to probe under the tiles of the main roof; some of the dangly bits were altogether too much in the way, and so on), and assist the rest to focus on the beams and joists, not let gravity define its direction. Much better.

View of the whole patio. A bright and airy, inviting space. The vine spreading across the roof well above head height, and an autumn-themed tablecloth finishing the ambience.

The insect approves.

Red admiral butterfly resting on one of the beams, waiting for a wasp to break the grapes’ skin so it can drink the juice.

So now what to do with the grapes? The seed-to-grape ratio makes them not particularly nice to eat, and besides, that’s too many grapes for just me. Not enough time to make wine (and absolutely no idea how), but juice is good!

First, I learned something interesting about the water repellent properties of grape skin. Or maybe they’d cast a breathing spell. Don’t @ me, I’m a city kid.

A few grape clusters in a basin of water. The outer surface of the clusters appears to be holding a thin layer of air, as if the grapes had cast some kind of magic breathing spell.

Anyway, making juice is a simple four-step process, once the water has made the spiders and ladybugs leave.

First, roughly strip the grapes from the stems. Any ripping or squishing at this point is fine, just try to leave any unripe ones behind. The grapes from the basin filled a small pot quite well.

A pot filled to just under the brim with loose grapes. Beside it, a potato masher - always show them the implements, maybe they’ll confess.