Chilean guava, Iggy Pop, survivalists and a rainy day summer soup
Monday 15 July 2024
There is day in summer where the sea holly turns electric blue, the yellow daylilies catch up with the red, the first broad beans forget to hold themselves away from the horizontal, and the scent of the Chilean guava flowers writes its name across the nostrils of anyone lucky enough to be in their vicinity. It turns out that day was yesterday.
God that scent. I love it even more than the delicious berries, and that is very big talk. It is utterly transporting, giving me nostalgia for places, people and times I’ve never known1. Lighter than elderflower yet of equal depth, it is the imaginary perfume of the imaginary love of your life. It is - like a car park in central Bath - impossible to navigate to by other landmarks. To sit in its company is to be properly alive. Just like a summer cloud, it passes then returns.
As with broad beans and elder, I would grow them for the flowers’ perfume alone. I’ve no idea how a few dozen of the tiny bell flowers on each of four plants can fill the entire garden like the most joyous of passenger airbags, but they do.
I spent much of the day on the garden. I moved rocks heavier than I could budge2 with my bare hands. I dug out high growing ornamentals of I know not what kind and planted low growing herbs, skirret, allium Ping Pong, Serpent garlic, some perennial kales, a couple of 9 star broccolis and an early variety of rhubarb.
The sun tightened my skin and filled me up. It was a very good day.
This morning, as the rain falls hard, my face feels pleasingly slapped and shiny as greaseproof, and the rainy window makes a kaleidoscope of the garden. I could be in another country.
It is a soup kind of a day.