An all you can eat buffet.

Remember the photos of the baby grapes I took on May 8th?   Here they are just 1 month later and starting  to  take shape now.

We can't remember when we last had so many bunches  but we think it was way back in the summer of 2005 -  we had to cut off a complete branch as it was so heavy and the grapes weighed in at 23 pounds.  Lots of grape jelly made and lots eaten too as that was in the days before we started wine making.

So looking good for this years harvest,  assuming all the other vines are as laden.


The mulberry tree is laden too,  and it is an "all you can eat buffet"  for the birds.  Sparrows,  chaffinches,  golden orioles,  blackbirds,  coal tits and starlings all visiting all day.  The starlings come in a great flock every morning and every evening and as they land on the branches,  so  big fat ripe mulberries drop onto the ground.  Not somewhere you want to walk at the moment,  certainly not if you are thinking of going indoors as the fruit is all sticky and gets stuck to your shoes.

Just over a year now since the mulberry tree was pruned and it is now wider than it is high but only just....  I paced out it's width and I reckon it spreads over 8 metres so must be about 6 high.  And the more it's pruned the denser it gets but without pruning we lose so much morning sun in the garden.  Yes I know we have lots of land and other places to sit if we want sun,  but the plants need sunshine too as lots of the front garden flowers are of the 'full sun' type and don't bloom properly without it.