Those currants look lovely.

darkpaisley still covets your cat.

That's a lot of red currants!

I like hot days too.

*hungry* I love picking currants! (used to do it a lot as a child and it brings back tons of memories)

I've put two red currant bushes in our garden and love the idea that they might one day look so lovely and offer such beautiful fruit. :)

Wow! Your currants are so far along! Ours are still green and small. And we're just a little north of you. I guess it's the lack of rain on our part.

Lovely pix!

Those red currants look lovely! I doubt there will be many strawberries or raspberries here this year. But I need to cut some rhubarb and make something with it.

Ooh, this post made me realize how much I miss picking currants, although, mind you, I think they are almost a month later in the ripening up in Scandinavia...

We don't have any currants. Blueberries yes. Mouth watering for blueberry PIE !

I don't think I've ever had red currant anything before. I'll have to try it sometime. Beautiful photos. It's hot here, too, but SOOO much cooler today than it has been for almost two weeks. I'm not that big on hot weather, to be honest. Give me cool weather for the rest of my life, and I'll be happy. XDD

Magnificent dawn video. Jiji is protecting your home from Zebras.

Bah! Do both. Make a fruit tart with frangipani base and redcurrant glaze! Julia has a great recipe for that in the old cookbook.

Help me, disambiguation man, help me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangipane

These things about Frangipani (the flower), I did not know. At all. Which is strange, considering.

But my folks had a record I used to get in trouble for listening to, called Irma la Douce. Which was, I suppose, risqué for the 50s. Some sort of sentimental and heavily stereotyped comedy about the Parisian underworld, and a poor student who falls in love with a prostitute, becomes her pimp, but refuses to share her, so he masquerades as a rich client to keep her to himself, so he has to wax floors during the day to pay her to pay him (give logic a miss on that one, I think). I remember how it began. A sleepy little tune on an accordion started up and the narrator began... "This is a story about passion, bloodshed, desire and death. Everything, in fact, that makes life worth living..."

Getting to the point, one of the hardened criminals is introduced at the end of a series of brutal nicknames, representing the "crème de la crème of crime". Polyte, the Bull, Roberto the Rock, Jojo of the dirty eyes, and... Frangipane (the flower). Hilarity.

Well, we're still talking about tarts, as that was the beginning of this thread. ;)

Another thing we do with redcurrant to keep it is run the fruit through a foodmill with some mashed ginger or rhubarb, filter it, add a wallop of honey and can the syrupy mix like any other fruit canning concoction (hot bath, 30 mins).

We use that a squash (disambiguation man sez: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_(drink) ) for soft drinks with a little seltzer.

Yum!! I ate lots of red things today too--cherries and strawberries!! :) Wonderful "dawn chorus" there. :)

Ohhh currents. The French take them off the stems, put sugar on them and eat them. Just. Like. That. :)

What were you doing up at 4:30! :P

But it is nice for us that you were, so we, too, could enjoy that beautiful birdsong.

Those red currants amidst the foliage make me think of the edible jewels in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. Lovely

What a joyful sound to wake to--and leave it to you to capture it.

Nice bird noises-great that you've recorded them. I met an awesome man who could tell the name of birds just by the sounds they make or the songs they sing. Just awesome. I was glad I decided to join the nature hike/bird walk that he led.

Lovely, indeed, F. Wish I could learn that skill. Did it take you long to do that?

Sounds like there many birds around where you live. That's wonderful! I grew up with many birds around me, and although I loved seeing them, I tended to take them for granted and as part of everyday life. I could match some common ones with their names, such as the crows and hawks, but not the rest...Of course, I was very familiar with the Mynahs, as we had a series of them as pets. :( There are also quite a number of birds around here in this part of the US but I can only identify the crows, hummingbirds, barn swallows ,and the like:) I think reading your and Deepa's posts about birds and meeting that guy at that weekend Nature Knowledge Workshop, has piqued my interest enough to start beefing up my limited knowledge... I admire that guy all the more because he has become legally blind due to glaucoma. He was an ardent and expert birder before that, so he's trying to find a way to continue with his passion and share or transfer those birding skills, including identifying birds by sound, to as many as he can. Admirable! In fact he's organizing a group of people or two in the next months for this. He's charging a minimum amount. I am tempted to go, but I need to conserve my energies and pennies for my upcoming trip.

Gorgeous picture of the redcurrants - I always think they look like little red jewels!