29.10.24
in the soil
I have been keeping this journal for over a year now and I find I begin to repeat myself, the same thoughts in the same soil; but growing is all about repeating yourself, like cooking but on a slower scale – that worked, try to remember it and do it again; that failed, try to remember and do it different – repeating yourself so slowly that you don’t realise you are changing. October is October and time to sow the broad beans as it was last October, to get enough growth in them to survive whatever we have that passes for winter and get a head start on the spring, not as last October so overgrown in the warm autumn that the first frost knocked them down; it is time to clear the dead remains of the artichoke and reveal its fresh growth, what I thought was one large plant coming up as 6 – no, 7 – little growths, that frosty shadow green one of the plot’s few contrasts to the muddy soil, the drifts of dead leaves.
in the kitchen
I have been thinking for ages of making as my next ROVO LIQUEUR a proper herbal Italian-style amaro - that genre of bitter digestifs which in Britain and America (led by Fernet Branca) have become a kind of hospitality industry shibboleth, a declaration that you are a serious person with serious tastes (I love them all, I should admit) but which in Italy are just drinks that you drink, deliberately medicinal - but made entirely with herbs from the allotment. Cardoon or artichoke leaves along with dandelion root for the bitterness, I think, fennel and maybe lovage seed, thyme and lemon balm and I don’t know what else, a fun experiment at least.
on the page
John Berger’s A Fortunate Man, a kind of extended essay in collaboration with the photographer Jean Mohr, is typical of what little I have read of his work in choosing a subject you didn’t know you particularly cared about and rendering it both intellectually fascinating and extremely moving; in this case, the story of a country doctor somewhere in the Forest of Dean becomes a meditation on class and education, on service, on community, on what it means to live a good or a great life , a deeply affecting book.