18.3.25

in the soil

Awake an hour before by alarm and none too pleased with it – my brain lagging behind the rising dawns – I have things to do in town and still do not make it here before noon where despite the weather, warm and calm after a cold week, the allotment is almost empty, two old men sitting separately on their plots at opposite ends of the site. This is probably because there is still not much to do here, if you have got your onions in, if your broad beans are doing well; I re-sow mine as well as some seeds of monk's beard and of dill a friend gave me. It is too early still and certainly it has not been warm enough for the weeds to go wild, removing one default task from those to be done here, and instead I potter up and down, watering in my seeds, checking on the rhubarb under its bucket, trying to see if the cauliflower has begun to form itself into a cauliflower without damaging its densely interlocking leaves, and in the end just sit on a chair between the skeletons of last year's fennel and the just-budding fruit bushes and listen to two bluetits singing as they chase each other through the hazel tree.

in the kitchen

The wild garlic is in its first green abundance, foragers are falling over themselves to bring it to us and everyone is still very excited about it, it will be a while before it reaches the point where every fridge smells of wild garlic and it seems like it has appeared in every dish on the menu. When we have this much wild garlic we tend to make pesto with it, which given that we tend to tame the allium pungency of the garlic with rocket or basil or parsley or chard means that we have lots and lots of bright green pesto to stir through hot pasta or serve with mozzarella or enliven a bowl of white beans (staff lunch) or a pasta salad (staff lunch). As with courgettes at the height of their season it is good to find recipes that greatly reduce the bulk of wild garlic, which is why blitzing great handfuls into pesto is so satisfying; other good options are wilting it into a creamy or buttery sauce, or rubbing salt into it with your hands to collapse down into kimchi.

on the page

I had been waiting keenly for the Netflix adaptation of Il Gattopardo which I read shortly after visiting Sicily for the first time and re-read while I was living there, and it was only on watching the first couple of episodes that I realised I could barely remember what happened in the book. Partly (a quick scan of Wikipedia assured me) this is because very little actually does happen in the book, as the dramatic events of the risorgimento – Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily, the unification of Italy / annexation of the country by the house of Savoy (depending on who you ask), the aborted march on Rome – are filtered through the immense weary cynicism of the eponymous Prince, for whom the comings and goings and governments are something of a sideshow to the concerns of his dynasty. In the book in my memory he is almost a Lord Groan, so weighed down by the carapace of history he can barely lift his head to the present, but perhaps I just need to reread it.