July - A month so full of radiant roses, heady floral scents, plump and succulent soft fruits, industrious insects, and earthly creatures all buzzing, skittering, slithering, or hopping throughout this garden oasis which we lovingly share. Evenings are getting warmer, and summer has left behind all traces of the spring handover and has now become centre stage. The garden is rich with abundance, fat with growth and bursting at the bushes with bounty and …growing far too quickly for me to catch up.
July 1st marks the start of gardening with colleagues. Every Friday for an hour, all our lovely team come out of the restaurant to cast aside their aprons and slip on a pair of gardening gloves instead. I’m excited to see the unending list of little tasks ticked off one by one that normally take up so much of my time, but they must be done. Weeding, berry picking, tying up the rambling fruit canes, pricking out, sowing, dead heading etc. It’s all light sociable work, and a healthy and enjoyable way to start their work up top with a clear head - perhaps a few purple stained lips and fingers, and a glowing satisfaction that they too contribute to bringing the produce to your plate, whether it was picking peas, snapping off the courgettes, plucking off the broad beans, collecting herbs and edible flowers or pulling out spring onions, leeks, or beetroot.
Courgettes, peas, leeks, broad beans, spring onions, beetroot, and very soon the runner beans, are taken up to the kitchen in increasing flows. I love making these journeys, passing by and sharing smiles with the guests as I carry the produce up to the back kitchen door.
“There’s the gardener, bringing in our lunch ingredients,” they say. “There are our guests”, I say, “waiting in anticipation for Chef Darren Broom’s mouth-watering masterpieces, or Bartender Ollie Jones’ tongue-tingling concoctions, made using fresh ingredients that I have raised from seed and nurtured until it is time to hand over the harvested goodness.
“Don’t you have the best job!” they exclaim to me as we meet each other on their leisurely wanders through the Rosa Rugosa and pebbled paths.
“Yes, I really do,” I reply, as if I contain the biggest secret to happiness and wellbeing.
I wish you all a summer of shared feasting among glorious garden settings, warm laughter among friends and family, good vintages and open hearts and minds.
Annie