Fruit and flowers

No more about mulberries for now, let's just say that even more dropped after the last post,  we almost ran out of space and on Sunday we pressed most of the brews.  So far, we have  90 litres clearing with another 30 or so to do soon.

The pear tree in the front garden has started to drop its fruit, much to the delight of Monty and Pip,  as they both like to eat the pears.   I'm not so impressed as we have flowers growing underneath.  More importantly we also have some large sage plants and  chives there which don't really need dogs trampling on them on their way to retrieve the fruit.  So this evening I picked all the fruit from the tree,  18lbs of small pears, some ready to eat, some for keeping and the bruised/over ripe ones I'm going to try making cider with.

Another plant that grows here is the cardoon, it's most spectacular when in flower although it's supposed to be for eating - the leaves that is, not the flower - although I don't know anyone who does eat it.  It looks tough, but maybe we should try it, possibly it'd be ok in soups or stews?