Tag Archives: Radish

Eating Out of House and Home

Sunday Lunch Al Fresco
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.

Fresh Radishes
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.

Tomato plants
Tomatoes a week ago – trusses set…

Digging In

It rained today.  It was cold.  And I dug.

Apart from planting radishes, broccoli, parsley, peas and rhubarb chard, I could not help myself digging one of the large herbaceous borders which is getting strangled with ground-ivy and elder.

I never would have thought that I would find this therapeutic, but I am genuinely gaining immense satisfaction from the back straining labour.  When I was younger this would have been anathema to me, but not now, and the reasons are complex.  Before Easter I set out to clear the “Silver Wedding” bed (so-called as it was created from herbaceous gifts given to my parents when they celebrated 25 years together).  Now while I agree with Pippa that digging is very therapeutic, it also struck me that, while I found the clearing of ground and revelation of spring plants satisfying, I think that it goes deeper than that, to a sense of territoriality.  What I am really doing is laying claim to that piece of turf – taking away my father’s influence, if not ownership.

Before, I would only have been able to venture into doing work in the garden under his supervision and advice.  But now I am increasingly emboldened to take control and do it my way.  And interestingly, he seems to like it.  He does not – as a I thought might be the case – seem to feel threatened.  But, perhaps not surprisingly when I come to think of it, he seems to welcome my input and likes to seek my opinion on horticultural matters, which makes me feel good, but also reminds me how little I know.

It has been a year or two since these beds were really worked over, and images of ground elder and ivy have now supplanted cows in my nightmares.  I know I haven’t got it all out, but for the moment it looks pretty and tidy.  As to how you get ground elder out of the numerous clumps of hostas that are sprouting I haven’t a clue, but if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing quickly so I just nip the tops off the weeds so only the flowers show.

It looks good enough for now God only knows how many weeds will sprout back after this rain.