27.2.24
in the soil
The wind blows high and the wind blows low and the wind blows the lids off the water butts and the compost bins and deposits them in the respective hedges behind, tangles netting around the brambles (again) sends the plastic bottles used as eye-guards on bamboo poles flying in every direction (again) flips chairs over (again) and somehow leaves undisturbed the dry grass and teazels and twigs piled around the fennel plants in an attempt to kill off the living grass invading their bed; you can talk all you like of nettle and bindweed but it is grass that is hardest to get rid of, once it wants to be somewhere you do not want it to be. It has even decided it wants to be in the pond and creeps its way in, borrowing pondweed as root structure, retracing the path of its ancestors back into the water.
in the kitchen
After plenty of time to get the most out of cabbages and kale and chard and indeed to get tired of every one of them it is the season for wild garlic, bear’s garlic, I am surprised every year by its colour yes but by the flavour too, so sharp and heavy for its floppy innocent leaves. Some cooks seem to like to throw it around raw as if it were spinach or lettuce but it is neither; a pesto is good, the residual heat of the pasta draws out and mellows the garlic-ness of it, but it will take more cooking than that – I had a soup / stew in Istanbul once of lamb cooked in tempered yoghurt with the addition of some wild green I never identified which bear’s garlic will happily take the place of, the larger leaves especially – or a pot of pork or lamb in milk, curds dyed pastel sage by the wilting allium – or a chicken pie if the wind keeps up –
on the page
Again I have been mainly writing rather than reading, writing and (to be entirely honest) playing backgammon on my phone. I had forgotten – I forget every time – the pleasure of adding to a long word count, watching the number go up towards the goal, slowly but surely, of research, finding the fact or remark that when stuck will launch you forward; beating the computer at backgammon is certainly more of an immediate pleasure, though.