Tomato

Its tomato time. We’ve been at work in the garden. In this plot we have the tomatoes, encased in the empty tonic bottles. Also in this plot are potential string beans, radishes, chives, spring onions and mixed lettuces.

I love gardening. Or is it the idea of gardening? Whatever it is, the whole venture is rewarding. This is my second real vegetable patch. I have learned from the lessons of last year – there is no real need to plant 24 tomato seedlings. Certainly, there is a compulsion, but no real need. Loads of basil is in this year. And mesculin lettuce mix is a new one. Radishes and beans are what books recommend kids try and grow because it is easy and successful. You don’t have to tell me twice.

There is something special about eating food that you grow, whether its just the sticks of rosemary you add to your lamb roast, or a full home grown salad with herbs. Before I grew some veges I did sense that it would be a rewarding thing to do, and the suspicion is wholly confirmed. I think a smidge of our decision to buy the house we live in now came from their being a magnificent lemon tree in the yard. Never again for us, the torment of G&T, soul-less and woeful, without its slice of lemon. ...

If only the lime tree would come good…

We have abandoned strawberries, but that is just as well as look what they did to our friends in Glasgow. Fiendish things, with all their sticky little seeds on the outside, upsetting the norm in the fruit world.