Hot cars, pruning, herb flowers and The Rah Band
Abundance: Monday 15 April 2024
Can there be a better smell than a car interior on the first hot day of the year. It is - like afternoon sex in June, a long early evening bath in late October, and the freezing back/roasting face of a bonfire in January - a pleasure multiplied by the time of the year.
Saturday - in perception and very possibly reality - was the first seriously sunny day since mid September. It wasn’t just bright; it had heat. A third of me that I hadn’t known was missing came out of hibernation.
I tore into pruning, strimming, weeding and digging as if it all had to be done today. It reminded me of 20 years ago in the farm’s early days when I’d plant 50 trees between breakfast and sleep, metre cubes of tough pasture excavated to accommodate the existing roots and allow for a season or two of easy growth. On Saturday, I realised how much I missed the feeling of working in a physical zone of doing where I don’t notice scratches and cuts.
The trips to the tip, backseats down and covered in prunings from neighbours’ overhanging trees and shrubs, and trugs heaving with perennial garden weeds, needed windows down. My thoughts turned to a perspiring glass of cider. I think a little of me had begun to wonder if it was ever going to feel like this again.
After, a late afternoon stroll around my wife’s allotment - the warmth dipping off quicker than it came - gave me the chance to pluck a few flowers from the clumps of wild garlic and three cornered leek that are safe from dogs’ attentions. Pinched at the top of their stem, their clusters whole, with the sun having woken their oils, these were easy, flavourful rewards I knew would transform the evening meal.
The day was from late June and the evening from October, and this gratin - with one foot in the new season and the other in the old - suited it perfectly.