Words from my shed

July 9, 2010

So sorry for the lengthy gap in posts this summer but as you know I’ve been bashing out text for the new book (a delicious one it will be too, with hundreds of simple recipes and ideas for eating and living ). I’ve just about got to the end. Hooray! It’s a marathon having to write down all the exciting things I want to say, plus getting all the facts and figures correct. Food recipes are particularly onerous, because they have to be supplied in metric, imperial and US measures. It’s also a test to imagine frosts and hot pies when I can hear the hose pipe hissing and my bare legs are stuck with heat to the slatted chair seat. You will all, please, have to buy thousands and thousands of copies so that the sweat and toil will have been worth it. Actually, I would buy it for Oscar’s fish soup recipe alone.

We finished the luscious photography a month or so ago. For the writing part I now retreat to the shed with ear phones and the dog under my feet for company. Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and the Hallelujah Chorus are good surges of energy for teasing out first sentences. The comforting hot shed wood smell and a breeze wafting through the open doorway, also help with getting into the writing zone, and when the flow of words sets like super glue there’re always the tomato seedlings to plant out. Very late, I know, but grown from a pack of discount seeds that my husband picked up on offer at the marvellous Lidl.

Every couple of thousand words or so, or less if the going is tough, I pedal with relief down to the Lido and join the fantastically variegated swathe of south London: all races and ages, a jumble of buggies, beach towels, tattoos, Boden bikinis, sun cream, and sparkling water. And no hint of trouble. You just don’t get that sort of casual yet joyous public celebration of the space we live in, in the countryside. After a few bracing lengths and some sunning under my favourite Olhao straw hat, it’s back to the piles of paper , a piece of cake or two, and hopefully more inspiration.

The show of pink, blowsy scented roses has been sublime. The severe winter seems to have spurred garden life into over production, but luckily also killed off pests like greenfly. The Constance Sprys, seen here, are as heavenly as ever, as too are the shocking pink Gertrude Jekyll blooms, and the white Icebergs are as frothy as a bridal bouquet from one of our location fashion shoots.

I love the roses in all their stages of growth, even when they’re in retreat and the petals are twisting and shrivelling. I am an eagle eyed dead header though, because I want to encourage the bushes to produce more flowers later on in the season. And just as I am beginning to feel rather sad that the garden has lost its vibrancy, the lavenders flower in a blast of purples and mauves – a magnet for the bees whose buzzing soundtrack fills the late afternoon. I haven’t yet found my hive for hosting, but I am even more determined to install one after reading that according to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, three of the 25 british species of bumblebees are extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines often up to 70 percent since the 1970s .

I am irritated by the foxes who come and toss my gardening gloves about the place, and then pee all over them, but the feeling is cancelled out by the appearance of more colourful invaders such as this gorgeous poppy, that seeded itself bang in front of my kitchen window. And then there is the heady fragrance of my neighbour’s jasmine which has slunk over the fence, all trailing green tendrils and white star like flowers. I cut a handful for a glass by my bed and the room fills with their scent at night.

The scents of the summer garden are also exquisitely intensified in the heat. The border on the left crowded with wild strawberries is sweet like strawberry jam. They have been self seeding since we arrived in the house seven years ago. Perfect for a doll’s tea party, or just picking on my rounds between the flower beds.

I think that rainbow chard is extraordinary in its colourfulness, particularly when it looks from a distance, like any other kind of cabbagey spinachy plant. I have been growing chard for the last year or so, and it really doesn’t need very much attention, apart from picking regularly to stop the heads from bolting and going to seed. I like to steam it very very lightly and eat with oil and lemon.

If I was to only grow one thing in my little vegetable patch, it would be rocket. I just keep on sowing it through the summer, and it just keeps producing more and more delicious peppery leaves for salads. NB there’s a new site called urban gardeners where you can exchange veg garden chat with other city dwellers.

The unusual summer heat this year, calls for daily salads and I toss rocket leaves with tomatoes, goats cheese, chopped peppers , cucumbers and anything else that’s in the fridge. Basil leaves from the flower pots by the shed, also join one of these summery amalgamations and maybe a handful of oniony chives snipped finely with scissors.