Berry disappointing

Okay, I know there hasn’t been much news from the constantly frustrated gardener this summer. Put it down to the constant frustrations. Over the next couple of days I will try to make amends.

Let us begin with berries.

I had a reasonable crop of strawberries this summer, but by no means outstanding.

There were raspberries, yes, but not all that many.

There wasn’t a single blueberry from any of the six blueberry plants nor did a single gooseberry appear.

I got a fair, but far from bountiful crop of black currants (okay, I know these aren’t technically berries, but they grow inside the berry frames) from one plant and none whatsoever from the other. So no pork fillet with black currant sauce for me this summer. Given that my love of this particular recipe is the main reason I planted black currants in the first place, this is more than a little annoying. (Not that I can currently afford to buy pork fillet, but that’s another story.) Certainly the 20 or so blackcurrants I got would not have been sufficient.

• 400g blackcurrants (frozen if out of season)*
• 2tbsp unrefined sugar
• 50ml water

* Oh, ha, ha, as if such a thing as frozen black currants was available in the island supermarket.

And then there were the blackberries.

There has been a wild blackberry bush in the corner of the garden since long before that corner of the property became the garden. Although it has never been watered, it is the gift that has always kept on giving – so many blackberries that the frozen ones last until February.

Well, not this year. There were far fewer blackberries to pick, never mind freeze for the winter. I know I pruned it back quite a bit last year, but then I always do and I’ve never before been disappointed. Of course it didn’t help, as I discovered one morning last week, that some fuckwit had stolen all the ripe berries on the side of the bush facing the road.

There are a lot of wild blackberry bushes on the island and it is a common practice for people to go out with baskets or buckets and pick all the blackberries they can reach. And this is fine, because the bushes aren’t on anyone’s property. They’re just there. Growing wild. But creeping about at dusk and stealing blackberries from a fenced-in bush in what is clearly someone’s garden really is not on. I hope whoever it was gets genital warts. Instant karma’s going to get you, buster.

This may be what I’d hoped to see this summer. (I’ve certainly seen it in summers past.) Instead I was berry disappointed indeed.