This is not based on a lack of sun-tanning opportunities, nor missed chances regarding diving headlong into a pool of water, it’s all about the patch.

What a horrible, miserable soul-sucking summer we’ve had. 

Tomato growers across the region are complaining about fruit that’s stoically refusing to ripen, despite the fact that usually at this time of the year we’re all trying to palm those delicious orbs off to our friends, or doing what we do, turning it into sauce of relish.

Although I ranted about this last month, I was hoping to move onto something more informative, maybe something about how to prune a nectarine tree after harvest, but I’m too angry and need to vent my spleen.

My tomato vines are looking splendid and healthy. No disease at all, yet. Unlike a lot of the garden, where fungal spores are doing their best to take over, I’m incredibly happy with how they look.

 And it’s fungus, in nearly all its varieties, that has besieged my garden. 

My nectarines, they have brown rot, a fungal disease that mummifies the fruit. It looks like I will need to douse them, once picked, in watered down bleach to stop them from rotting. 

Also my grapevine, which, when the bunches were plump and full of promise was straining the inferior engineering of my chookhouse, has succumbed to black rot, a fungus that turns most of your small fruit, you guessed it, black.

So now I’m going to prune that vine right back, before I give it, and the nectarine tree, a going over with a fungicide. 

Then I’ll glance once more at the tomatoes, hoping that through the lush green foliage I’ll see a blush of red.