Monday 31st May - Bank Holiday

Day 42

This evening the allotment gave us the last of the asparagus and the first rose. A single dark red one on a flimsy stem, perfectly whorled petals, scented deep and rich like long memory.

I remembered a loaf of bread baked with wild garlic in the freezer when we were on our walk this afternoon along wide avenues fringed with huge beech trees and the strong flavour of wild garlic below them. And the idea for supper came to me.

We sat down late with the light fading - our plates laden with fat and thin, short and long asparagus spears, curled up pink prawns, squeezed with lemon, flecked with parsley, a pool of mustard seed speckled mayonnaise, wilted neroli cabbage leaves and at the last minute, a bright yolked poached egg. On our side plates lay the fat slices of double garlic bread, crusty outside, damp and buttery inside.

A bunch of purple sage flowers, three lupins and an armful of mauve flax flowers, furled like prawns - more allotment gifts - added their perfume to our night kitchen. We lingered at the table not wanting it to end - this Monday which all along has felt like Sunday.

Sunday 30th May

Day 41

This afternoon while my husband was building a cling film house for his tomatoes I was a garden artist - both of us digging in the sun a little distance apart. I took my palette of rainbow plants - scarlet and burnt orange, rape yellow and magenta, velvet violet and moon silver - and splashed them onto the green canvas of our city garden. Sometimes I felt my mother beside me, our hands in the earth. She taught me how to make flower pictures in pots.

Ever since the apple blossom fell and turned brown I’ve been impatient for colour in the garden. But yesterday when my second sister came with a bouquet of parsley and young kale, she stood at the window and said,

“ But look at all the wonderful different greens.”

Which I hadn’t noticed in my longing for red.

Before lunch when we sat in our magic circle of women, my first sister said,

“ You can always choose to see the glass half full or half empty.”

The same glass - my choice. Today my glass overflowed and watered my heart.

And now my lovely man is on his way back with pizza.

Saturday 27th May

Day 40

Today we bought a red car with low mileage and a big boot. Good for taking stuff to the dump and the allotment. But not good for people with long legs in the back. When we took it for a test drive the salesman sat in the back - with his short legs - and told us about the ‘toys’ - the extras we don’t need. Like a sunglasses case fixed above the driver’s door. He said it has a ‘low talk’ for a diesel car.

Cars with toys that talk. I love the colour though - flame red. Like my shoes.

We celebrated with an spontaneous lunch at our favourite cafe where I never tire of the marriage of rolled thin short crust pastry and cheddar cheese. Cut with salad leaves and a sharp dressing.

On and off splattery rain put paid to my planting plans and I put a pan of floury potatoes into the oven to roast and made a mustardy lemon and parsley mayonnaise. And a vase of honey suckle flowers - rose pink claw trumpets tinged with gold, blessed with rain drops - to welcome my beloved family to the supper table.

Friday 28th May

Day 39

When I come to fill the patio pots with the bedding plants I bought on Wednesday, at the time I’d set aside for it, the sky is nearly black and the wind makes me hug my arms. So I hesitate, check the red geraniums and yellow daises and pink verbena all jostled together in a cardboard box are still damp, and decide another day would be better.

Now I wish I’d seized the moment, defied the rain on the wind and my tiredness. I notice how prickly everything is - like an inside out hedgehog - when I’m putting something off. Planting or writing.

Tonight though I did discover what’s the softest thing in the whole world. It was when I cupped the top of a baby’s head in my palm and couldn’t find words for it.

Thursday May 27th

Day 38

The grassy green brilliance of gremolata - a big bunch of parsley, the zest of a lemon, fat cloves of garlic all whizzed up into a slippery sauce with glugs of olive oil - rescued our chick pea, carrot and quinoa lunch. Which was tasty enough but as dull looking as the sky today.

Fresh vegetables in the market this morning were sparse. You can tell we are in ‘the hungry gap’ - that space in spring when stored carrots are woody, leeks have bolted, potatoes are sprouting and cabbages run to flower. Everyone is waiting for the first broad beans which herald the true beginning of summer with all its bright coloured sweetness in the fields. Which end up as joy on our plates.

Tonight we were a bunch of lovely women swapping clothes laid out on a big sun streamed bed. Filling the gaps in our wardrobes. Someone’s rejects - our new broad beans.

Wednesday 26th May

Day 37

I’ve just returned from a long walk in heaven with my friend and her little dog. We were enfolded in a pulsing green world, a magical forest of giant trees, ramrod into the sky, sheltering acres of pale bluebells beneath them. We followed a wide red earth path lined with a bridal froth of wild garlic stars. We passed an ancient mossy wall and opened a gate onto a meadow sprayed with buttercups, closing their heads like sea anemones in the fading light. And then stopped to breathe in the view - squares of brown and green fields, cows like a string of chestnuts, heads down, gliding across them. And us talking, talking all the way.

Now the smell of mushrooms frying in garlic is enticing me downstairs. Another kind of heaven.

Tuesday May 25th

Day 36

I’ve been cooking vegetarian food for my father today. To supplement his diet at the residential home where vegetarianism is a bit of a mystery. Luckily it’s the water I swim in - what to do with meat is my dry land.

I didn’t know till I emptied the fridge of all veggies and started chopping, what dishes I would make him. They just had to be sloppy (easy to freeze) and full of flavour. And have coconut and cheese somewhere - as these are two of his favourite ingredients.

By noon I had two pans bubbling on the stove. One yellow - mild curried lentils, chunky with carrots and potatoes, swirled with pureed spinach, glossy with creamed coconut. The other red - a herby tomato sauce packed with long white canellini beans, butternut squash, leeks and swiss chard. This one became a crumble with a topping of rye breadcrumbs and grated cheddar.

Later I decanted them into little plastic tubs and glass ramekins - one size portions to be popped into the freezer at the home. For a day when vegetarian inspiration runs dry.

As a surprise I also baked him a batch of coconut macaroons. Squidgey sweet in the middle, toasted prickly on the outside. I call them coconut kisses. When I opened the tin and showed him his face lit up.

“ Just like my mother used to make,” he said.

I hope they were. She was a very good cook.