A week of celebrating talent, and late nights
Monday 27 June
-
I had such great plans for today, I really did. And it did nothing but rain. I thought it was going to be a day of turning the compost heaps, thinning the fruit on the espaliered apple trees, and addressing the ever increasing bronze fennel but every time I set foot outside the back door, it rained.
So what I did instead was sow hundreds of perennials in the greenhouse, and then came inside to make tea and sourdough crumpets. I have yet to find a crumpet recipe that truly works (I have tried many, including Flora Shedden and River Cottage) but have not quite cracked it. Let me know if you have a fool proof one.
But even a bad crumpet is a good crumpet, especially with lashings of butter and a touch of marmite.
Tuesday 28 June
-
The map under the cup of tea in the picture above is the planting plan of the Piet Oudolf Hauser and Wirth garden. I have been staring at it a lot recently. My flower field, Malus Farm, is being guided more and more by regenerative principles and that means the surface of the soil should be covered, and the underneath of the soil should be as undisturbed as possible, and that means as much permanent planting - as many perennials - as possible. And no one does perennial planting quite like Piet Oudolf.
Wednesday 29 June
-
I have accidentally compressed six months of social events into ten days. Another one tonight, dinner at The Bull in Totnes for my brother’s birthday. The Bull Inn is Geetie Singh-Watson’s passion project and it shows. Everything organic, everything wonderful. Even more lovely was seeing the different coloured houses of Totnes, glowing in the evening sun. The second late night of the week, and I am already feeling like I am too old for this.
Friday 1 July
-
Finally July. A day of two halves. I collect a guest off the early train from London for a day at the Somerset cricket ground and offer to treat her to breakfast and coffee to disguise my tiredness.
Then an evening in the field. I had so hoped to start collecting some of the seed that is ready (I can’t walk past the phacelia or the Daucus carota’s without their seeds attaching themselves to my jumper) but the day has been intermittently wet with torrential showers and that does not bode well. Wait for a dry day. Dryness is key to successful seed saving.
By nightfall, another guest has arrived. Jenny from The Laundry Garden has made the journey from north-east Wales and arrives in time for gin and supper.
Saturday 2 July
-
I was so looking forward to showing Jenny the best that Somerset gardens have to offer. The village of Mells. Hauser and Wirth. Maybe as far as the Pythouse. There was an itinerary, but it did not go to plan. On complete impulse, we started our day with Black Shed Flowers near Sherborne. As we pulled in, we saw someone balancing a laptop on a planter in the middle of the car park. It turned out to be the owner, Paul. For the rest of the morning, Jenny and I were in heaven; a private tour of the most wonderful, exciting, glorious, two acres of every single sort of cut flower you could dream of. We wandered up and down every path we could find, admiring every bed we could reach. It was such an incredible privilege to share Paul’s enthusiasm and extensive and wide-ranging knowledge. We only left, two hours later, because the storm clouds rolled in and it started to rain.
By the time we reached Bruton for lunch, we were both regretting not having brought boots and coats. People who live in every other bit of Somerset complain that Bruton is London-in-the-country. Like London, you cannot get a table for lunch anywhere on a Saturday if you have not booked. We ate an impromptu picnic in the Land Rover, watching the rain in the Hauser and Wirth car park.
The reason for all this adventuring? Bex Partridge’s book launch. The sky cleared as we crossed to border into Devon, and the patches of blue spread across the horizon. So many of my favourite people, all in one place. (Plus Gill Meller, but I was too shy to go up to him and tell him that his sauerkraut recipe was excellent.) Instagram is full of pictures by better photographers than me, Éva Németh for one, so I won’t share many more here, but it was beautiful.
Sunday 3 July
-
Suddenly… sunshine. A biodynamic fruit day and so I tend my many many squash. (I had ear marked today to make raspberry vinegar from our rather meagre crop from the canes in the hedge, but we ate them last night for pudding, scattered over biscotti millionaire’s shortbread from Durslade Farm Shop.) The courgettes have already given much pleasure this season. They seem slow to rush to marrows, although maybe I just don’t give them a chance; I check them twice daily so I can have courgette fritters for breakfast (Anna Jones’s recipe is the crispiest and lightest, and don't miss out the chilli jam) and zucchini agrodolce for supper.
Patience may be a virtue but when it comes to any form of squash, it is not one I possess.