Peas, I wrote blearily, carrots, beetroots, mangetout, radishes, Brussels sprouts (surely they come later?) different sorts of lettuce, endive, gooseberries, red currants...
The phone had rung as I drank my tea and stared at the plain, and the city on its hill.
"Signora, buon giorno!" Sunday morning, quarter to eight! Right, this was not my call, and its real recipient could get out of bed and discuss tomatoes forthwith. But it turned out it was my call after all; if I wanted more variety in the vegetable garden up the hill a list was needed.
The mind goes completely blank when threatened with nothing but a tide of tomatoes unless a list is produced now. Trying to imagine a summer table all that came up was lettuce - absolutely pathetic. So this year it will be my fault - celery, peppers.... but they're off, gone in that uncomfily early morning way people do things here. By a more Godly hour I'll have thought of all sorts of things - spring onions, basil..
4 comments:
watermelons!
cucumbers!
potatoes?
The outcome was really bad, tom. Peas should have been started in march, radishes and carrots are too demanding, endive?? Brussels sprouts are for later if successfully identified, potatoes won't do, not in that earth, artichokes are a perennial and would prevent the working of the ground with the tractor and require digging by hand. Celery got a grudging ok. Beans must be the cut, green kind, not broad that go with bacon and buttery dressings etc.
Onions yes. Peppers perhaps. And as for gooseberries and redcurrants the plants weren't even for sale.
It's tomatoes, green beans, beet leaves, spinach, lettuce, onions and earwigs AGAIN. Perhaps if I plant up the other things secretly, late in the evenings, their sheer presence will attract a bit of watering and hoeing.
Forgot, there will be cucumbers. I'l try watermelons when THE CALL comes on Friday evening (the call when I'm warned fresh bagsful of unidentifiable greenery have been left inside the big green doors, Signora.) So I wash it and boil it and put in containers and shove it into the freezers alongside the dead pigs and dead deer.
One day I'll empty all the freezers and have a giant funeral for meat and veg. in the dead of night.
"And as for gooseberries and redcurrants the plants weren't even for sale."
It follows: No russet apples, no gooseberries; no gooseberries, only grapes
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