Allotment

It has been a struggle for me this year to go to my allotment as my heart has been elsewhere. The garden has been left to survive and grow wild, largely on it's own, contending with lack of rain and a molestation of dandelions. I try to love their bright faces and pretty clocks. Despite my neglect, the effort I made in the Autumn to plant onion sets, has paid off  and I was happy today carrying back a heavy weight of handsomely huge onions with thoughts of platting them and hanging them in my kitchen. Perhaps they will see me through the Winter.

The artichokes I picked, I had for supper with a dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, honey and mustard. They were delightfully 'meaty', more successful than last year despite the lack of rain but it is perhaps the extra spring sunshine we had, that did it. I need to  'catch' them when they are just before tennis ball size and not let them get bigger or flower. I like the greeny/grey/blue arrangement on my green striped plate, picked up from the dump and I would like to paint it.

Tennis balls are apt as it is Wimbledon, not that I am watching TV, but I have a continuous suppy of delicious strawberries which I pick freely and randomly and it gives me great pleasure as I pop one into my mouth and I am reminded of lying lazily between rows of strawberry plants when I was 16, on a farm in Longborough, not that far from here, knowing that the punnets we were picking were going to M&S but the biggest, choicest and most juicy were going into my mouth..... and that the money I was earning was taking me and my boyfriend to Greece. The simple pleasure and ambition of youth.