What with it being Autumn now, fruit is the word, and the word is fruit.  So I have been collecting elderberries, mulberries and blackberries for what seems like forever.  I’ve made a rather excellent elder & blackberry jam, and many assorted puddings with apples, pears, plums, blackberries and mulberries.  Although one of the dandelion wines (the rhubarb-bolstered one) became a casualty of over-enthusiastic hoovering on Maggie’s part, the more promising one is still aging nicely, and looking ludicrously alcoholic; it only really stopped fermenting about a month ago, which means it spent the best part of three months burbling away to itself.  I reckon it will be fantastic, and probably about 16% after I’ve topped it up to a full gallon.  It will be ready to try at christmas, although I shall endeavour to resist drinking much during the festive season, so that it can age a full year.

The next wine project is elderberry, and I expect this will come to fruition over the next two weeks – freeing up space for the next few, which need to be done in quick succession, as most fruit is on the way out:

• Rowanberry wine
• “Whitty Pear” (true service tree) wine/mead – this one will be special, if it works.  The tree is very rare.
• Mulberry mead
• Mint wine/mead

I’ll also be making some things (not wine or mead) with rosehips, and maybe haws, if I get a chance.

Anyway, here’s a poem by D.H. Lawrence that captures a lot of things rather splendidly…and makes me want to find some Medlars.

Medlars and Sorb-Apples

I love you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.

I love to suck you out from your skins
So brown and soft and coming suave,
So morbid, as the Italians say.

What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour
Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay:
Stream within stream.

Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine
Or vulgar Marsala.

Though even the word Marsala will smack of preciosity
Soon in the pussyfoot West.

What is it?
What is it, in the grape turning raisin,
In the medlar, in the sorb-apple,
Wineskins of brown morbidity,
Autumnal excrementa;
What is it that reminds us of white gods?

Gods nude as blanched nut-kernels,
Strangely, half-sinisterly flesh-fragrant
As if with sweat,
And drenched with mystery.

Sorb-apples, medlars with dead crowns.
I say, wonderful are the hellish experiences,
Orphic, delicate
Dionysos of the Underworld.

A kiss, and a spasm of farewell, a moment’s orgasm of rupture,
Then along the damp road alone, till the next turning.
And there, a new partner, a new parting, a new unfusing into twain,
A new gasp of further isolation,
A new intoxication of loneliness, among decaying, frost-cold leaves.

Going down the strange lanes of hell, more and more intensely alone,
The fibres of the heart parting one after the other
And yet the soul continuing, naked-footed, even more vividly embodied
Like a flame blown whiter and whiter
In a deeper and deeper darkness
Ever more exquisite, distilled in separation.

So, in the strange retorts of medlars and sorb-apples
The distilled essence of hell.
The exquisite odour of leave-taking.
Jamque vale!
Orpheus, and the winding, leaf-clogged, silent lanes of hell.

Each soul departing with its own isolation,
Strangest of all strange companions,
And best.

Medlars, sorb-apples,
More than sweet
Flux of autumn
Sucked out of your empty bladders.

And sipped down, perhaps, with a sip of Marsala
So that the rambling, sky-dropped grape can add its savour to yours,
Orphic farewell, and farewell, and farewell
And the ego sum of Dionysos
The somo io of perfect drunkenness
Intoxication of final loneliness.

• walked over 20 miles around the peak district with a heavy rucksack
• drunk water out of a peat bog (it was orange and had interesting aquatic life)
• got drunk on a mixture of raspberry vodka, kirsch, grenadine and lemonade
• got sunburnt despite it being mostly overcast (idiot)
• drunk water from an awesomely clear (and very tasty) stream
• saw a UFO
• laughed at Richey for ending up with a reggae reggae face, reggae reggae trousers and reggae reggae sleeping bag.
• ate a lot of hobo’d food (mostly barbecued)
• got munched a lot by midges
• got woken up by the random clucking noises of grouse
• barbecued a chocolate brownie
• ran through acres of heather (more difficult than it sounds, especially when it’s uphill and you’re carrying a massive rucksack)
• listened to lots of Maudlin of the well, Kayo Dot, Ufomammut and the Beatles
• followed sheep around
• ate wild raspberries and cherries

Awesome