In my element
Monday 6th June. A birthday. Not mine (yet). A trip to Lyme*. Mr A swims, and me and the dogs climb the hill from Charmouth and look down at the sea. The girls crash through the undergrowth recklessly and I worry that they will topple over the cliff edge. They don’t. The evening is hot and the dogs throw themselves into the water when we get back down to sea level. I try and take photos without dropping my phone in the water or letting Maud chase swans. It is harder than it might first appear.
*Only tourists call it Lyme Regis apparently.
Tuesday 7th June. I grew some marigolds for dyeing this year, disco mixed. I don’t often engage in such garish shades but they were a means to an end. However, it turns out one of them was the most beautiful shade of where orange meets red. I do not know how promiscuous marigolds are but I saved the seed from this one and sow it immediately.
There is more that can be sown now than you would imagine. If your season runs quite late (as mine does in Somerset), sowing quick flowering annuals now will give you much joy and happiness in mid-September.
If you are vegetable oriented, Charles Dowding says now is the time to sow kohlrabi, lettuce, leaf beet, chard, endive, chicory, Florence fennel, chervil, coriander, plus beetroot and savoy cabbage in first week. The Florence fennel one is particularly key. I have it all over the kitchen garden but every seed sown before mid-July just runs to seed. I let it because we use a lot of fennel seed in cooking, but some day, I would like just one or two bulbs.
Wednesday 8th June. I packed orders today. A lot of orders. It turns out a lot of people are quite keen on the sweet peas for September idea.
No one seems to notice, but the parcels are quite often posted from odd places. I head off to observe a contact, assess a child, appear in Court, and there are often a few parcels to post stashed in my handbag. As I pass random post offices, I swerve in. Today, I hunt for stamps. Many of the post offices are still on reduced hours but I find a counter in the corner of a petrol station on St Thomas Road. Unsurprisingly, they do not have 150 first class, large letter stamps but I take what they have. This search took me to a part of Wells that I have never (and probably would never) been to before. It was breathtakingly beautiful and yet so clearly lived in, I felt like I had stumbled across a secret. I did not pause to take a photograph for you, but here are some sweet peas instead.
Thursday 9th June. Last Thursday’s entry was about Miss Pickering’s herb fritters and many people write and asked for the recipe. I have eaten these almost every day this week, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable. The link to the original is here. She takes much better food photos than I do.
Crumbled feta
2 grated courgettes
handful of herbs
salt pepper
4 eggs
tablespoon of spelt flour
Mix
Make pancakes
Serve with sliced tomato and a crushing of pomegranate
I have found that this is a magic recipe, and you can use whatever combination of vegetables and cheese you fancy. Black kale and goats cheese works perfectly, as does chard and ricotta with plenty of basil.
Friday 10th June. Chicory grows very very tall and then falls over. You can’t even cut it out because it’s so tangled and wiry that it’s got mixed up with everything else. But here are three reasons why I adore it and I will never ever not grow it again.
The flowers close at night and open in the day which means that if you have it in your bedroom, it is like it is sleeping.
The petals don’t shed, or fall off, or drop, they just sort of dry and disappear. So neat, so tidy. I am pretty much allergic to housework, so this is an excellent quality.
In the beautiful blues, you occasionally get a white. It is all the more special for its rarity.
Saturday 11th June. A hot day. A balmy evening. A barbecue in the orchard. The field is to the east of the cottage and so evening sun is tricky. Tonight, the light is perfect. The teasels and the daucus carota seedheads, silhouetted against the fading sky.
