Week 24

Cheddar strawberries; green feet; tiny green brambles

Hello! What a strange old week. Here in the UK the country seems to have been divided between those who had endless rumbles of thunder in suffocating heat broken by a huge and dramatic storm, and those who had endless rumbles of thunder in suffocating heat only for the storm to just…never materialise. We were the second lot! It was so close! We were SO so ready. It did seem like the storm was beginning, but then it rained just enough to lightly moisten the earth and evaporate again, while we all lounged around like we were in a Tennessee Williams play.

Before we begin - midsummer is around the corner and there are still a few tickets left for our Midsummer Night’s Supperclub at Campwell Farm near Bath, with accommodation if you need it. Here’s the menu, to tempt you:

Elderflower, lemon and bay gin fizz

Farinata con zucchini trifolati

Middle Eastern feast: cauliflower steaks with ras el hanout, whipped feta, grilled seasonal veg, smoky hummus, pickles and more

Grilled peach and pistachio pavlova; raspberry and rose geranium syllabub

Yum! Come and join us under the sparkly trees.

To business: this is a weekly post in which we keep track of the year. I tell you three things that I have noticed/eaten/smelt/done that have felt particularly ‘this week’, and then you tell me yours. We start off with a roundup of your previous week’s comments, woven into a tapestry that we shall call…your Week 23:

First radishes picked from the garden; love-in-the-mist blooming against allotment bramble blossoms; the travelling funfair setting up in the playing fields; picking gooseberry and elderflowers for jam; making elderflower gin in a reused jam jar; elderflowers alongside Queen Anne’s lace, so the roadsides are mostly umbellifers; making elderflower cordial [yes, elderflower week! - Ed.]; the strawberry moon in all its glory; coffee in the churchyard every morning listening to the birds and feeling the sun grow warmer; strawberries, raspberries and cherries at the market; praying for rain; the wildflowers in the garden full of bees and insects; a sea swim every day; planting herbs at dusk; watching the honeybees on the alliums; thick fog in the Santa Cruz mountains; eating breakfast outside among the birds; taking a big bunch of garden flowers to a friend; first strawberries and cucumbers from the allotment; bindweed trumpets.

Thank you as ever for your wonderful observations. When we look back at this in six months’ time it will all feel like a glorious dream.

Here’s my Week 24:

Cheddar strawberries

We got some gorgeous Cheddar strawberries from the greengrocer this week. If you don’t know about Cheddar strawberries well…you’re not alone. I think very few of the original farms still exist but Cheddar in Somerset was once a major strawberry-producing area because of its south-facing slopes nestled into the edge of the Mendip Hills, so much so that a railway branch was built to bring them to Bristol and to London, known as the Strawberry Line (now being turned into a cycle path). And living in Bristol, they turn up every now and then. They were very sweet and very good.

Green feet

We are now into the times when the grass on the Common is mowed every week which means that relatively often the dogs come home a bit chlorophylled up and green-toed. Here are Saffy’s.

Tiny green brambles

I was poking around in the brambles, trying to find a nice flower to snap for you and look! The very beginning of the first berries are starting to form. Eek. Impossible.

That’s it from me. Tell me what has been particularly ‘this week’ about your week.