Monday 7 July 2014

Tree Link up + Forgotten little red jewels.

It's the 7th of the month so time for linking up with Loose and Leafy for following a tree through the year.
My tree is our Horse Chestnut, not the one with white flowers but a

Ruby Horse Chestnut tree is a particularly choice clone of a hybrid horse chestnut, resulting from a cross between the European horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) with white flowers and an eastern North American native (the shrubby Aesculus pavia) with red ones. It is a better landscape plant than either of its parents and should be planted more widely. 'Briotii' originated in 1858 from seed grown at the Trianon in France

The flowers are long gone and  have started to grow into the cases that hold the conkers. There are never as many as there would be on the common Horse Chestnut.

 We are not really sure how old the tree is, maybe 50 years?, this give some idea of height compared to  a  6 foot fence.
With the branches coming right down to the ground, under the tree is shady, here's a closer look at the trunk texture.

And what are the forgotten little red jewels?
 Redcurrants!
I'm  sure I've not mentioned them before. Did I sell any last year? I can't remember. I know I put lots of bags in the freezer because several are still there. But this year our 6 bushes are loaded with  little bunches hanging down, and now most are ready to pick and sell. So I went on the supermarket comparison site to find a price and none of the supermarkets had any for sale. We could corner the market!
I  picked several and decided to sell them in the 250g punnets at £1 a punnet, which is probably cheap but they are not as useful as raspberries and I would rather sell them for £1 than NOT sell them for £2.


 I popped the blackboard out and before long the first four punnets had gone. So I picked some more and they soon sold too. Maybe £1 was cheap!
In between all this, 2 loaves and some bread rolls were made and C was laying the small paver stones outside the new shed door.
Before all the above we had picked and packed all the other things that were ready to sell today. Look what happens when you have two wet mornings and forget to harvest the courgettes!
Back tomorrow
Sue

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