I love this time of year. Not because the
weather is glorious and the garden looks better every week (although it is and
it does). No, I love this time of year because every day we’re eating food from
our garden. Even if it’s just a simple salad, the ability to nip out into the
garden and rustle up a meal from the muddy colander I return with is pretty
special.
Mainly, I love summer because we hardly ever need
to go food shopping. I really hate shopping. (The exception being car boot
sales and charity shops, which present the kind of challenge a competitive gal
like me enjoys.) Shoe shopping is a grind. Clothes shopping is a bore, unless I’m
flush and can afford to grace the likes of Jigsaw, which never happens. And
shopping for jeans is a special kind of torture invented only for women.
But food shopping is the absolute pits. I hate
the supermarket above all else. (Is it me or is supermarket shopping only fun
when you have literally nothing to
get and you’re just wandering around to keep a friend or your mum company? It’s
great, fingering items I have no intention of buying and popping biscuits in
the trolley when no one is looking.)
Because we only go to the supermarket,
Kaufland, every six weeks or so (it’s a 50-mile round trip), we always end up with
a pretty full trolley. Bulgarians never
fill up their trolley, partly because they’re thriftier than us, but also
because they probably go shopping far more regularly. So, while I’m steering a
trolley that looks like a mad woman’s entry on Supermarket Sweep (minus the inflatable guitars), everyone else’s trolleys
are empty, apart from four cabbages. Then they all stare at us like we’re a)
greedy and b) ridiculously rich. I want to say to everyone I encounter, ‘Look, I
know it’s a lot, but I haven’t been here for six weeks. Stop looking at me like
that. Seriously, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.’ And it’s like that every time we go shopping. And, AND! (I’m getting more furious as I
write), we have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Honestly, the prices
in Kaufland make Waitrose look like Kwik Save.
Well, that turned into a bit of an
anti-supermarket diatribe. Sorry about that. But you get the idea: cutting down
on the food shopping is always welcome.
Right now, we’re harvesting plenty of kale,
spinach, radishes, beetroot, courgettes and loads of herbs. Enough to make a
light meal every day. And today we pulled up our garlic crop – 30 triumphant heads
of garlic, some of them almost as big as my fist. We eat garlic like it’s going
out of fashion, so this bounty won’t last us all year, but it should see us
into winter. First it needs to dry in the sun for a few weeks before we can
bring it in and store it. Then it’s Garlic City, baby (first stop: Aioli
Avenue), and woe betide anyone who should look at me funny in the supermarket.
I’ll simply blow them down with the impressive power of my garlic breath.
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| The honeysuckle on this arch has just finished flowering but it was heavenly to walk through every day. |
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| This is the round bed we added last year. It's filling up nicely but looks a bit like a mad old lady's garden (which I secretly love). |
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| Big ole floppy cupid's dart. |
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| Berkheya purpurea, apparently. |
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| I have a bit of a thing for ugly flowers. Ugly flowers and ugly shoes. These spiky sea hollies are just starting to turn blue. |
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| Hollyhocks starting to flower, and a GIANT white gladioli in the background. It's taller than me. |
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| Lovely smelling sweet peas. |
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| This is not a flower. This is a tomato plant. Progress in the wonky polytunnel continues apace. |
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| Garlic triumph! |
