This morning while Robin is out, driving around in the rain with his lovely, temporary, Age UK enabler,
I lose myself in a big cook-up - making a fragrant fug in the kitchen. I'm running down the fridge in preparation for going to Portugal on Sunday. So I roast going-off red and yellow tomatoes with garlic and basil, grate old beetroot and carrots for Feta and Walnut burgers, chop yellowing leeks and the end of the celery for a curried hazelnut loaf, blend up a batch of deep grey green toasted pumpkin seed butter and peel the 4 brambly apples ( free for the taking from the owners of the incense and crystal shop where we were on Friday) for a sweet orange zested apple crumble for the freezer.
When I'm cooking my same old recipes I don't have to think or worry - my hands take the strain.
After a late lunch this afternoon we walk to the allotment under growling zinc black skies. I cut the slender feathery filigree stems from the asparagus plants and make a rather feeble attempt to fork under the dense mat of roots to dig one up. Decide to leave it till tomorrow when our gardener is coming to help.
I ask Robin to pull up the old canes staking the dry sticks of broad beans that never produced any beans this summer. It seems too much for him - says he can't get them out. He wanders through the long wet grass between the collapsing raised beds, scattered with the gold and red leaves of the rust tree. He points to the lavender bushes, the moth-eaten remains of the kale and the shrivelled red currants hanging like long earrings on bare sticks.
He says,
We can eat all those.
I say,
Yes, we'll get them next time.
But I'm not sure there will be a next time.
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