in the soil

First a pace around the plot to ascertain that the garlic is doing fine (the Isle of Wight better than my own saved cloves), that the kale has indeed all died, mainly that the broad beans have not been killed off as yet by mice or by slugs or by frost, and then it is time to address the bramble. This last year it put far more energy into its spreading flesh than it did into fruiting and so I am anticipating something of a battle, with not just the old dead wood to remove but also the newer creeping suckers which have wormed their way through the grass and into the currants, the garlic, under the greenhouse on the lot next door; suckers which are not only remarkably tenacious in their grip on the soil and covered in sharp spines but also, it seems at times, malevolently animated, capable of whipping themselves around in the hand to snag on twine, netting, other plants, sleeves and trousers and coats. Today though on the only sunny day of the week the work goes by smoothly, cut lengths of dead and green bramble alike joining a steadily growing pile to be burnt once everything has dried out a little, my only concern really is that everything is too green. Ideally this pruning is doen in the coldest part of the year when everything is more or less dormant to avoid wasting the plant’s growth and energy with what you cut away but everything still seems very much awake, alive - for the last few weeks I have been reading that spring plants are up everywhere, a definite sign our winters are not what they were. The bramble at least seems indestructible, and the worst I could do through unwise pruning is to deny myself and the birds a good season of fruit.

in the kitchen

In the last week the weather has been mostly grey and my wife has been mostly ill and so I have been devoting the unfamiliar amount of free time I have to make broths of various kinds, a slow and lengthy process which makes for quick and easy meals. The bones and scraps from a rotisserie chicken joined spring onion, ginger, a piece of seaweed and a couple of mushrooms to make a light soup we had with rice and bits and pieces; beef bones from the supermarket (actually short ribs with quite a lot of meat still on them boiled for hours with onion, celery, carrot will become a French onion soup, the beat perhaps polpette or pasta filling; on the stove this afternoon is a ham hock from the butcher round the corner from the railway station in Canterbury, with parsley stalks and leek greens along with the usual veg, the last of a bottle of cider in with the water, and a packet of split peas waiting in the cupboard to make a meal of it.

on the page

I can’t quite decide mentally speaking if I am still in holiday mode or if I am back at work and should be reading accordingly and so I keep starting different books, one on dowsing and divining for something I am researching, a reread of The Name of the Rose for “fun”, a book about soup I keep dipping into while making so many, unable to quite settle on any of them, but in between I pick up a copy of Jesper Sjödahl’s Nothing New: Considered Cooking that a friend has sent us, a lovely little book from the same one-man press as my own Psychogastronomy, and find myself reading the whole thing in an afternoon, nodding along to advice on the proper size of a salad bowl, on roasting a chicken, on the importance of a good pot of beans - a book of soothing pleasures that is perfect, this time of the year.