Twice a garden in London.

I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden thrives (I am told) tho’ I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in London.

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Vol 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Charles and Mary Lamb have moved out of their rented flat in Covent Garden to the outer suburb of Islington, where he has bought a house of his own. He is writing to Bernard Barton, the Quaker Poet on September 17, 1823. Lamb was then 48 years old, and took to gardening, as well as home-owning, with enthusiasm. This not-so-tiny salad was growing in a tiny patch of soil in Canterbury, and grew to edible size. Let’s look forward to growing and eating our own salads this coming summer!

Harvest to be anticipated.

smart

I expect some of the Fordwich allotment gardeners put their own produce on the table over Christmas and New Year, but there was no-one around when we peered through the hazel hedge on 8 January – except for the dancing scarecrow at the back. And there’s a good patch of brassicas to the left, I’m not sure whether it’s kale or cauliflower. Note the leaf broken over the head of the plant; gardeners do this to keep the florets white and deter pigeons.

I hope my chard recovers from the December frosts! Nothing to see there for the pigeons right now.

Harvest Home!

The Turnstone festive table has always included plenty of home cooking, but this year there were two special ingredients: freshly harvested kale and parsnips, thanks to NAIB and her raised beds.

The King could have eaten nothing fresher or tastier, but allotment holders across the land will have tucked into their homegrown veg from spuds to sprouts. Hello to cousin Jo in Bradford!

A happy new year to all from the Turnstones.

Not just the eating

Ready to sow carrot seeds

The journalist and chef had written about moving out of London and starting a vegetable garden. Well done to her! She clearly enjoyed getting her hands dirty and eating her first crops:

“The feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment was addictive. But it wasn’t just the eating: it was the fact that I had created my own food from a tiny seed.”

But no, no, no. You did not create your own food. Even if you are an atheist, you must recognise all the forces of nature that nourish the seed, once you’ve sown it and gone away, leaving it to grow, you hardly know how.

Have some humility; remember you are human, that is humus – earth – and to earth you will return. You can, perhaps, claim to create or design a garden. You can create a recipe for the produce of your garden but you cannot create a carrot. Rather you should watch over it, harvest it, admire it and enjoy eating it as fresh as possible, giving thanks to its creator.

Pleasure in the plot

A book I return to is Come into the Garden, Cook, by Constance Spry who had connections with the village of Barefrestone, where L’Arche Kent began. I missed New Year’s Day, when I’d meant to post this, so here it is now, rather than waiting 360 days. Spry was writing in wartime to encourage creativity in cooking. She was also an artist in floristry, which shows through in this post. Enjoy your garden, and happy new year!

On this first day of January (1942) I will tell you what, in even an indifferent vegetable plot, gives pleasure. There is a splash of bright green like a rug thrown onto the brown earth lying next to rows of grey flags, just common or garden parsley and leeks. There’s a breadth of what might be grey-green tropical fern, but is, in fact, chou de Russie. (Russian kale) There’s grandeur and colour in rows of red cabbage and the purple decorative kale.

From Constance Spry, Come into the Garden, Cook, London, Dent, 1942, p11.

Photograph by Marc Ryckaert

Green grows the lettuce, oh!

I walk this way a couple of times a week. Stour Street runs parallel to the river. Its old houses have post-war buildings in between them where bombs and at least one fire removed others. The street is narrow here; the 19th Century house has a strip of flagstones and a low wall but no front garden – except for this 25 cm square with its specimen of a lettuce. It brightened up a grey day!

Not from the supermarket

You can’t make cole slaw without cabbage, so to the local supermarket or the local farmers’ market at the Goods Shed? Almost equidistant, and on this occasion I had to pass the shed first, and before it got too busy with out-of-towners.

This cabbage’s stalk had not dried out, it was not wrapped to death in plastic, and had most of its rosette of outer leaves. Beautiful. Worth buying, worth a snap, and worth sharing.

Dessert apple and grated ginger lift the cole slaw, but the best start is a good cabbage!