Filling The Hungry Gap

3rd June 2012 Sunday

This morning we follow a marked trail through a pine forest, rain drops dripping through scented branches. No plastic flags - red white and blue -  in sight. I’m distracted  - my mind keeps veering off to the ant’s nest I discovered yesterday in a big container on the patio. The pot is disintegrating and we need to move the ants. I don’t want to kill them. Their intricate pattern of tunnels, some lined with strings of white eggs - a thousand seed pearls in the black soil -  is a work of art.

In the end we do destroy their home, scoop them out with a spade and fill three bags of anty compost which my husband wheels down to the allotment. I plant up some big pots with pink daisies, trailing begonias, lobelia and pansies but the cold wind brings in the rain so I abandon the task which I find unreasonably stressful. I wish my mother was with me to help me decide what combinations to plant. I always seem to buy too many of some things and not enough of others. Meanwhile the slugs are having a field day on the zinnias and the pussy cat is peeing on the little geraniums.

I only have half an hour to make supper before a dear friend arrives. Luckily I know the flavour of the veggies will speak for themselves and will only need a scrunch of salt and a glug of olive oil just before serving.  A supper to celebrate the end of the ‘Hungry Gap’ - Cornish new potatoes  - earthy white pebbles. A bunch of carrots - slim as ladies’ fingers. A fistful of broad beans - tender emeralds. Young spinach - flat, wilted spear heads. And a whole bulb of sliced green garlic spicing up a fresh tomato sauce I found in the freezer. All perfect companions for chunky cod fillets, baked in paper with lemon and marjoram.

Followed by a square plate of ice cold cherries - my first this year.

Later we wave our friend goodbye and when I say to my husband that I need chocolate he offers to go and buy me some. To try and fill my own hungry gap - which feels more like an endless ants tunnel. But sometimes you need chocolate to temper the salt of sorrow.