Of berries and blossoms.....

We were up bright and early this past Saturday morning. We always first go do our weekly grocery shopping. We wanted to be sure to drive over to the berry farm early enough as last week we missed out on picking raspberries. They were all picked over by the time we got there in the early afternoon. There are always blackberries as they are obviously less popular. We picked a small container of the blackberries and a larger one of the raspberries.

After we had finished picking berries, we decided to drive past a farm that came up for sale which we wanted to check out. We thought we should drop by the garden center to see if they got in the supply of clematis that they had told us would arrive in August. I still needed to plant up the other side of our new rose arbour. I had to decide which clematis to get as they did have a nice selection. I decided on this one which is Clematis 'Piilu'. I really like the centers of this one which you can see well if you enlarge the photo.

We spent the afternoon pruning more of our holly which seems to be taking over parts of the garden. These large bushes were not cut back much before we bought the cottage and as a result there is a lot of dead wood on the inside. We regularly prune to encourage new and bushy growth and it is going very well. After an afternoon of working in the garden, a meal of tuna steaks with fresh green beans, carrots and onion was welcome refreshment.

And then, of course, how do you finish that meal off after having picked those berries? Our favorite chocolate mousse with raspberries!