A monthly diary of activities in Susan’s Garden.
Photo heavy, text light, following a natural timeline.
As summer progresses, we find Susan in the kitchen, pen in hand, pensively tapping her lip as she contemplates the bounty of the potager and orchard. With family and other visitors gone, her thoughts turn to local friends, to long, lazy lunches at her beautiful table while the heat outside continues to beat down.
Did I say lazy? Susan? never!
Her idea of a casual lunch begins a few days earlier, thoughts turning to a menu assembled from what is ready in the garden. The cookbooks come out, pencil meets paper. And while you’re at it, use that pumpkin, harvested in July and sitting in the mazet like a golden coin burning a hole in a teenager’s pocket. A batch of pumpkin and chestnut soup in the freezer sits well with her, waiting in anticipation of those cooler autumn evenings. Oh go on then: give your guests a taste too.
And so secateurs in hand, Susan joins battle.
Back in the kitchen, it’s time to turn up the heat. Cutting, chopping, grinding, seasoning, tasting, frowning, adjusting: always three things at once. Use the mazet, use the studio, cover every surface. Make coffee. Heat it, cool it, freeze it, cover it: over two days the tomatoes are transformed, the contents of the potager turned into a potage and so much more.
Suddenly it’s midday on Saturday: time for Susan to set the scene and add the finishing touches, before her guests arrive at one.
We assemble, aperos in hand, introductions made. The conversation begins, offering the promise of an interesting and leisurely afternoon.
Susan passes from table to kitchen, assembling her plates with as much care as she does her stained glass - the dishes communicate visually the same sense of colour, suspended in the lightest of frames. And then “lunch is ready!”.
As light on the tongue as it is easy on the eye, it’s all delicious.
August delivers.
And as August passes, the first hints of the end of summer make themselves known: a parched plant here, exhausted by the heat and the energy spent producing its marvels, a leaf falling there; a cooling evening breeze as dusk turns to night, earlier each day.
So it’s job done - or is it? Susan and I are only six months along the road to a year in her garden. What’s next? To find that out, dear reader, you will have to join us next month.
