Arundel Art Trail and a Hedgerow Harvest

It has been a busy week.

Monday was very special because I went with Jenny Stacy http://jenny-handmadehappiness.blogspot.com/ to view the art and high quality crafts along the Arundel Art Trail. There were so many venues to visit but Andy Waite's new work, mostly interpretations of the South Downs around here, obviously caught my eye. See more here http://andywaite.sussexart.com/ and we were both taken by Gilly McFadden's superb colour palate in her watercolour 'stripes' and beautifully executed screen pints. We both voted for her work to win the Derek Davis Prize. After 3 hours of visiting the 47 houses that had hosted artists work, we were both pretty tired!

The rest of the week has been spent gathering as much as I can from the hedgerows for wine and jam making. The blackberries along the Wiggonholt walk have been fantastic this year. I picked enough for a gallon of blackberry wine and my Stopham walk yielded enough for 2 1/2 gallons of elderberries wine. I must have picked 16 lbs of blackberries - some for wine and the rest for Blackberry and Apple jam with a few pounds in the freezer for fruit crumbles during the winter. I only saw the Wiggonholt Church Vicar & his wife picking blackberries, it seems crazy that people are buying punnets of blackberries in Tescos when the lanes are overloaded with fruit for free.

My favorite bramble bush. I think the huge berries are a cultivated variety that has escaped over the walled garden at Wiggonholt

Charlie the hound patiently waits while I pick, sometimes helping himself to the fruit on lower brambles or occasionally seeking out nice rabbit smells in the undergrowth.

Many thanks to Jenny for her lovely Bonne Maman jam jars to refill and to the Master Craftsman for his assiduous cleaning and sterilising of the wine making equipment.