Tulips and wild garlic

May 7, 2009

Horrors. Some beastly person took a chance in our side passage and nicked my bike. Simple. I had neglected to lock it. I take a walk outside and let the beauty of the curled and furled parrot tulips take the edge off my frustration. The feathered buds seem to have been dipped in blueberry juice, clasped together like the furled wings of some exotic bird. In fact, more birdlike, than the the parrots’ beaks they’re named after. Soon they will unfold in a riot of undulating and frilly petals. Some will be white, others blue (actually a fuschia pink) and black ( not black, black, but more a deep burgundy black).

I’ve got to get replacement wheels, immediately. Not a pretty sentiment for someone who’s always banging on about the evils of self gratification, but the cycle bug has bitten and I’m fretting that I can’t hook the dog’s lead over the handlebars and let her take me at a cracking pace to the park, or nip to the Turkish shop for a bundle of early mint.

Justification swims around in my head for quietly siphoning off the family’s holiday money to fund the purchase, from petrol saving, to the health benefits that will stave off some horrendously expensive operation in my old age. I will make it up to them, I think , feeling like a wife who plays bingo with the housekeeping, on my way to Recycling at Elephant and Castle . And thank goodness, that in the third bike crammed aisle is a reconditioned classic sit up and beg, Raleigh, with my name on it. After a short test cycle under the grimy railway arches of one of London’s most gruesome interchanges (although developers have grand plans for it) the deal is done. Not the bargain rate I got in the wilds of Norfolk, but not a bad one either.

I”m back in business,and doing more making up to the family, by tearing up leaves of Jonny’s father’s wild garlic to strew in a gorgeous soup made with leek and potato. This is the season for wild garlic, ‘Allium ursinum’ or ransoms, and you can find it in any damp, shady woodland, or even a suburban garden, which is where mine came from. The flowers taste delicious, like garlic, too, and you can toss them in salads along with the leaves.

Living with all this white, is great because the location shoots that come to the house want a space that is light and airy, which is just the kind of feeling exuded by a white painted room. It doesn’t have to be a very specially mixed kind of white either, just a qood quality paint, in white. Dulux brilliant white matt emulsion is always reliable.

I can’t resist new colour though, and have taken the opportunity to spruce up the wood panelled attic, now my son is at university, with Paw Print’ a lovely muted stone shade from the environmentally friendly paint range by Earthborn.