Do you like pesto, ever thought of having a go at making your own, well, it’s easy-peasy. If you get your skates on, there’s still a week or two before all that free wild garlic and tricorn leek (a milder garlic taste) goes over.
You can use both the flower and stems of these plants instead of basil leaves or, simply do half and half. You’ll also need, olive oil, pine nuts (cheat by mixing in cheaper unsalted cashew nuts), grated parmesan, the juice of a whole lemon, and a generous pinch of salt; it doesn’t come any fresher.
Note to self: Stop buying more plants!
Whenever I visit the nursery to purchase plants for clients (often), something will always seduce my roving eye… and my debit card. But really, I need more plants for my own garden like another hole in my head, I need neither. Inevitability, they’re left sitting in their pots for two weeks, before I can find the time to plant them out.
So, to get on top of things, last weekend I asked, well, ok I bribed, two good friends to come over and help me out in the garden. The enticing offer was door-stopper bacon and egg sandwiches, chocolate hobnobs, all the tea they could drink, and when the job was finished, beer and homemade carbonara; did it work, have you tasted my carbonara, of course it did!
I’ve recently put in a small pond, tucked away behind the fragrant Mexican orange blossom to the side of the summer-house, it’s simply a very wide, shallow plastic trug sunk into the ground. A neighbour kindly gave me a jam-jar full of tadpoles, which I’m pleased to see grow bigger by the day, they’ve got little back legs now and will soon turn into froglets.
It’s all part of a move towards a more organic way of gardening, and I’m hoping these soon-to-be frogs, will clean up all those pesky slugs and snails that manage to evade the nightly ritual of ‘Slug-patrol:’ we live in hope.
