More Than One Way To Grow A Tomato

Saturday lunch  -with our family's African childhood friends - grilled asparagus salad with the first new sugar snaps and feathery fennel from the farmers' market,

 and roasted vegetable and tomato tart( a bit over-cooked) and chunky avocado salsa with loads of basil tossed with the very last of the divine bottle of lemon olive oil I brought back from NZ - very sad to finish it.

The Lemon Almond and Polenta cake -( thank you, Nigel Slater - I used  a combination of two of your recipes for this one) and think it's better than the River Cafe recipe I've made for years....especially with the addition of the orange, lemon and honey syrup you drizzle over it when it's still warm out of the oven.

On Sunday we took the slab of left over cake to welcome home our friends who have recently returned from NZ and moved into a new house and still have no furniture ...or cups .... so we toasted them with pink elderflower fizz in plastic picnic glasses, sitting on the grass in their new garden.

Buckfast Abbey very close to our friends' new home. It has been recently renovated and cleaned and gleaming inside and out....

stained glass window inside....

and a stained glass panel - part of a collection of modern art set in the lovely peaceful gardens surrounding the Abbey.

I wanted to put my arms around this, and rest my head on its cool whiteness....

One of the gardens is laid out with a huge variety of different lavenders ...I picked a bunch of lavender just like this one at the allotment this evening.

 I envied their sweet peas already in flower....I planted 8 straggly pot-bound specimens at the allotment tonight - they have been sitting on the shelf by the back door for days ...just couldn't get myself together to go down and get them in the ground...I wanted to watch the tennis at Wimbledon this afternoon....and anyway it was far too hot....

I fell in love with the ballerina skirt petals of this open rose holding a bowl of light.

My book of Flower Spirits by Melanie Eclare says that Sea Holly carries a message of self-acceptance.....that it's acceptable to reveal our prickly edges.....not to hide them....

The more vulnerable and open we can be about who we are, the more we reflect the perfection of the Sea Holly and the softer we will become on ourselves.

I'm reading a long and very comprehensive report about dementia which was recommend to me by our neurologist. It's written by an Australian, John R Hodges, called Younger Onset Dementia - A Practical Guide. I'm picking out the bits that apply to Semantic Dementia. I read some of it at the beginning when my husband was first diagnosed but I was so heart thumpingly terrified then that I couldn't take it in ....and couldn't believe any of of it was true .....he wasn't that bad ....these things wouldn't happen to him -  apart from losing his vocabulary, things like disinhibition, rigid thinking, reduced drive/motivation, giving up hobbies, emotional roller coaster of moods.....

But they are.

In the section on Practical Tips for Improving Everyday Life one of the points is 

Avoid conflict between you and the person with dementia.

At the allotment tonight my husband says he's finished watering. I say the tomatoes are still dry. He says they shouldn't have too much water ( or soil by the looks of the shallow pots they are in). I say they are drooping and should have more water. He says please don't ....but I do - water them.

Later on I think I bullied him, bringing out all my prickly edges...although it goes against all my limited gardening instincts, maybe he's right ......maybe he knows more about tomatoes than I do....although he doesn't grow them in the way my father used to....maybe there's more than one way to grow a tomato....

But only one route to peace - beginning with accepting myself, loving myself - especially the very prickly bits........