Eats shoots and leaves?

The sun continues to shine unabated and the salad in the greenhouse grows an inch a day.  So we are now into full-blown eat it or beat it mode.  The different leaves are lovely to look at, and make a brilliant plateful of fresh salad.  Combine that with one of Claire’s fine tartlets and you have a proper salad for a magnificent May Sunday.  OK, the tomatoes are not our own (yet – the first trusses have set and the plants are coming on strong) but what a joy to behold.

We set up lunch on the patio table which sits outside the kitchen window in the drive.  It is not the sort of table you move in a hurry as it was requisitioned from my brother’s bistro when they were changing their whole “theme”.  It think it was designed to be too heavy to throw in a drunken brawl – which it certainly is.  Anyway, the food looked and tasted good, with home-grown radishes (more planted already) and a decent bottle of co-op’s finest Fair Trade Carmeniere to wash it down.  It felt like we were on holiday, which is pretty much how I try to approach life these days.  Enjoy it like it is a holiday – even work!  And we could have been in any part of continental Europe with sun baking the stone wall behind us.

Red Bombs Away…

Radishes are an interesting veg: I used to find that peppery taste too hot when I was younger, but either my tastes have changed or perhaps we don’t grow such violent radishes these days.  But I love the look of them – the green leaves setting off the red and white body, which looks like a brightly coloured mini bomb.  I hope it is the harbinger of good times to come with long days in the garden dining off the fruits of our labours under the Somerset sun…..eating outside house and home as if without a care in the world.

Tomatoes a week ago – trusses set…