It’s official – summer ends today. And once again I have failed to harvest nature’s bounty from the garden: the redcurrants and blackcurrants remain unpicked, the birds ate all the cherries weeks ago and if I don’t pull my finger out this week, the apples will go the same way.
I did manage to pick the plums, strawberries and blueberries, but only because last year I managed to repair the fruit cage. Even a very small smallholding requires more time, effort and ingenuity than I can spare to feel fully in control.
When I say that summer ends today, I am of course referring to the official meteorological definition, which started on June 1. This is based on the traditional four-seasons Gregorian calendar – and from tomorrow will have poets banging on about the “mists and mellow fruitfulness” of September.
The alternative definition of summer is based on astronomy, and starts and ends roughly 20 days later. It’s usually a better guide because it’s based on the 23.5-degree tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis as we orbit the sun – and gives us real equinoxes and solstices, rather than just dates in the diary.
I’m afraid that neither definition gives me much excuse for watching my amateur attempts at small-scale food production end in such dismal failure. It’s not as if I don’t know what to do. I remember my grandma telling me of how, when she was a girl before the First World War, harvest-time was probably the major event of the year. In those days, children from rural areas would almost certainly never go to school during harvesting – there was much more important work for them to do in the fields.


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