Mirabelle

I walked up to the garden this evening with a bunch of salads to plant out. I was given them yesterday by my neighbour, just as two friends arrived: 'This is my brother', explained my neighbour, pointing to me.

At the garden this evening I was delighted to see my garden neighbours A and A, because I had some good news to tell them. A was up a ladder picking their crop of mirabelle plums - small yellow-green plums which make delicious jam and tarts. The other A gave me the recipe for the tart while she encouraged me to pick what turned out to be five or six kilos of fruit. Then I planted out the salads next to the hundred or so leeks which A had given me some weeks earlier. I wondered how much I had actually bought for this garden, since I also save seeds from one year to the next, many coming from plants given to us. Not much.

Gardening here is a joy and a marvel of relationships often deeper than friendship: mirabelle means marvellous or wonderful. These people are the ones who tell me regularly that they are my family, and it's true, I've got my kith and kin and I've got this village tribe. A time was fixed for an aperitif with A and A to give them the photo of Teleri's that they bought at the opening of her exhibition.

By the way, a quick mention for the writer Mirabel Osler, the gardening and food writer. We have copies of her The Elusive Truffle, and A Breath from Elsewhere, and I recommend both.