Autumn approaches

Although it's October, it is still unseasonably warm, day and night. So I'm still cropping courgettes (although they are beginning to rot occasionally), and the greenhouse tomatoes are still going strong, with a handful of 'Gardener's Delight' every other day or so. I have lettuce (Little Gem) still growing, although rather more slowly now, and have started pulling carrots and parsnips (grown this year in a bottomless dustbin - they are amazingly straight and long!).

There are so many figs still on the tree - but they are not ripening. However, we are still picking strawberries! Enough every two or three days for each of us to have three or four with our pudding, although many more are rotting due to the rain.

We are picking apples, too. I've no idea of the variety - they are versatile cookers/eaters ... cooking to a mush very quickly, but sweet enough to eat from the tree. They are only just ripe these past couple of weeks, and if the gales don't bring them down earlier, we shall be picking for the best part of October.

We had so many runner beans, that in the end I left them unpicked and DH removed them this last week. That's when it begins to feel like autumn in the garden - once the runner beans are taken down and the garden is once more a large and empty space.

Brown Betty - tried and tested

I somewhat simplified things and layered bread crumbs with slices of apple, ground cloves and brown sugar, starting and finishing with a crumb layer, topped with knobs of butter and then poured over a cup of water ... and it was delicious (with oodles of double cream)! I was suprised just how successful it was ... I thought it might be rather stodgy but it was like a light apple crumble.