We were looking for milk thistles today ( there’ll be more about that in a couple of weeks… ) and found ourselves down a tiny Sussex lane; so tiny that when the windows were down we were able to lean out of the car and snip the thistles. Getting them in was trickier as they are extremely difficult to handle…

However my son proudly snipped a bramble…which wasn’t quite ripe

but which then reminded me that some of the blackberries in the garden needed picking…

…these are also ridiculously spiky and  tricky to pick, so I suggested we sacrificed some of the unripened ones for the sake of preserving our hands

…so although we’re deep into August and Summer, there will be the first blackberry and apple crumble tonight of hopefully many more over the September and dare I say Autumnal months!