24.6.25

in the soil

Fittingly – the solstice just gone – the first real day of harvesting not just a bit of this and a bit of that, some herbs or weeds to make the day feel worthwhile but good bunches and bagfuls of everything, a good fist of agretti, seven artichokes and plenty more on the way, redcurrants and blackcurrants to cook with a fig leaf now the little tree has (finally) fully established itself, green growth at the top and the bottom, I pick the broad beans clean, leave just a few to dry out on the plants. The couple left of the autumn-sown beans are still green and going but the spring-sown dwarf plants have collapsed and yellowed in the heat and the lack of rain, not long for them. The garlic is browning and collapsing too which is what you want so I dig it up and put it to dry on a sheet of corrugated plastic and next week I will sow seeds of turnip and kohlrabi and there will be the first courgettes and more artichokes and the cucumbers, the climbing beans and the cucuzze will the earth willing keep growing up and up before the days begin to get too short, the nights to draw in.

in the kitchen

Today is Midsummer, Johnmas, the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, a day important in Christian and pre-Christian religious calendars – day of fires, witches, traffic between worlds – important to herbalists who might pick St John's Wort to make St John's Water, herbs left infusing in spring- or rainwater the night before to gather the sacred dew and also traditionally the day to pick the walnuts for nocino, the Italian green walnut liqueur which (some rather dubious sources have it) has its roots in fact in pagan British brews for the midsummer festival. In fact in this country now the walnuts are normally not quite ripe by June 24^th, by the end of the month my supplier said, a little earlier than last year. I was thinking to go and gather some anyway for the ritual of the thing, make some pickled walnuts perhaps (the other thing the British do with green walnuts) or try and candy them as they do in the Caucasus but as I got up and started writing this the rain started falling and with it my desire to traipse across town to the park with walnut trees in it, another day or another year perhaps.

on the page

Normally on a holiday I would read three or four books and so I always buy a couple at the airport but then last week's trip to Rome wasn't a holiday, not really, and certainly didn't involve much in the way of sitting around reading and so I found myself flying back still reading the book I came with and with two books I probably wouldn't have bought if I hadn't been in an airport, strange zone where money seems meaningless and its spending essential to survival, although it's true I had been waiting for the latest Sally Rooney to come out in paperback and only hadn't got it yet because of an idiotic snobbery at what, it being too popular? Stupid really, and you don't need me to tell you it is as good as or better than all her other books, a real thing of real voices.