I only arrived 5 minutes ago and already I’m elbow deep in Fiona’s veggie patch pulling up bright green fat bok choy and some enormous weighty cucumbers.
I’ve sent mum off to find me scissors and a bag for my swag – preferably a nice woven basket designed for harvesting vegetables, but there isn’t one – a cardboard box will have to do. I’d also like an old wide brimmed straw hat that ties under my chin and some gardening gloves – isn’t that what you wear gardening? I wish I knew.
It’s like a vegetable treasure hunt pulling up the netting at each garden bed to see what’s growing inside. Cherry tomatoes, spinach, radish. shallots, chillies and a few indecipherables… pumpkin maybe?
Bright yellow ladybugs scatter across the leaves and something’s bitten me on my wrist.
The bok choy, shallots and chilli I’ll stir fry to have with grilled salmon for dinner tonight. The cucumbers and mint for a smoked salmon and cucumber salad entrée tomorrow – and of course the Pimms.
Mum finds some rhubarb in the last bed – our favourite and soon to be stewing with some apple and ginger to make compote.
I harvest half an enormous bush of rosemary. No idea what I’m going to use it for yet, but for now it can sit in a vase on the table. Beautiful.
Some basil, mint and we’re done.
We spy a passionfruit vine creeping along the fence but the fruit isn’t ripe enough yet.
I long for my own veggie patch out the back.
Lucy in the Larder 