Memorandum Monday

The first Monday in June and all I can come up with that is new for Sian's Memorandum Monday is a gooseberry bush.

But you have to remember that it's my first day back at work after a week away in Portugal and it's hard to get back in the old routines.  There's not been a lot of 'new' to do.

Back to the gooseberry.  This is the first year we've had our holiday so early in the year, but there's grandparenty things happening in the 'proper' summer and we daren't be out the country when that happens!  Normally we look after our garden all year only to find that the week we go away in August is the hottest of the year, daughters and sons 'forget' to go round and water the plants we've lovingly nurtured and we come home to dried up, neglected fruit and veg.  This year, my husband decided that as we would be around in summer to look after things ourselves he would build a raised vegetable patch (raised in an effort to stop a certain furry family member from 'helping' with the digging.  Spoiler alert - it doesn't make a blind bit of difference!)and grow more fruit and veg because we all know, nothing tastes quite so good as a freshly picked home grown vegetable.  One thing that he loves and I don't is gooseberry.  He loves them in crumbles or gooseberry fool, I spend a lot of time scrunching up my face and saying 'but they're so sour'.  He was adamant though that this year, he would be growing his own (partly because whenever I go to the supermarket I forget {ahem} to buy them).  Imagine his surprise to arrive home this weekend and find that while we've been away a large bunch of little green berries have appeared.  I think that the rather large downpours of rain we've had here while we were in Portugal may have helped.  
So that's my new thing for the week.  A new fruit in the garden.  A new success.  As for me, I'm just relieved that while he's feasting on gooseberry crumble, there'll be all the more home grown raspberries for me!