The garden is in full snacking mode at the moment.
Too bad potatoes aren’t all that appealing eaten raw because a gentle poke and prod in one of the hills of ‘taters’ uncovered a perfect red-skinned one; I covered it up again until I feel like cooking.
Two strawberries nearby to the potato plants were then eaten and a nasturtium flower and leaf added a spicy tang to the fruit. There’s a thought for the next fruit salad……
The two scarlet runner beans are most accommodating for such casual repasts: between them they produce two to three beans a day of the length ideal for eating. And I quite enjoy the camouflage aspects of these beans – a hanging bean can be directly in view but not seen unless you move the angle of vision slightly and then – voila! Could this be similar to protective colouring of insects.
I did not manage to acquire any red malabar climbing spinach plants this year -darn – or four or five of these succulent leaves would be a daily garden stroll snack item as well.
What else? Oh, yes – eyeing and touching but not picking the still-green hazel nuts (a neighbour warns me that the squirrels get ALL the nuts as they seem to eat them before they ripen), the rock hard plums, the stone hard pears and the rosy apples which will remain firm when they are ripe but will let go into my hand when I lift them to let me know they are ready to be eaten. One requests permission of fruit for the picking and then is rewarded with the peak of readiness.
All the embryo figs sacrificed themselves to new green growth when I put the tree in the ground in the spring: it was getting too heavy to move in its pot and had nicely survived that harsh winter outdoors on the ground so I decided it was hardy enough to be earthbound. It is growing wonderfully and has put out more than a dozen new fig babies. Next year! This is a shoot from the fig tree at a former house that once gave me 42 figs in one day. I have high hopes!