In search of veg

You know how it is when you’re a bit summer veg-ed out? I mean it’s been great to eat so many lush peppers, crisp courgettes, sweet sweetcorn and many and varied salads, which always taste better when the weather’s great, but I’m a bit summer veg-ed out. So feeling the need for something different, I decided to set out and try a new green grocers and to combine that with a walk to up my steps.

I even took the long way round and headed through Charlton Park. My plan was to stop off and explore Charlton House on the way back, but after being drawn towards the cafe and its elusive clientele I changed my plans.

The cafe wasn’t open sadly, but that’s a good reason to walk this way again surely? The path led me on towards Charlton House, a Jacobean building originally a residence for a nobleman associated with the Stuart royal family, then later a wartime hospital, then a museum and library and now a community centre. It’s also where we got our first and second Covid jabs during lockdown.

When we were there then we popped our heads around the garden gate, noting that there was a garden and most likely more there than we could see at a quick glance. It’s taken a while to get back there, and we were right. There is a lot more there and the Amnesty International Peace Garden opens daily.

I was quite taken with the sculpture and the ‘froth’ of plants that greets you as you enter the garden which aims to be ‘a place for quiet reflection and contemplation’ and which opened in 2006.

The paths continued to lead me through the garden, wandering around the beds. There’s plenty of places to stop and pause, and to sit and enjoy the space. There’s also signs throughout the garden explaining the watering strategy during the current drought, and which reiterate the importance of putting the right plant in the right space.

Even though many of the plants are perhaps browner than they would usually be, there’s still colour and texture in the space along with some great trees.

And while this is a fabulous space, it wasn’t getting me the veg I came out for. So while I could have stayed and enjoyed the space for much longer, I was off in search of veg. Inside the local green grocers I found more summer veg, but also the start of autumnal squashes. I left with more courgettes, sweetcorn, a cauliflower and an onion squash - and a resolve to seek out some new recipes and ways of making the most of the summer veg while it’s still around.

And the bonus was, I’ve found a local garden and a cafe to come back and visit.

Heat, feet and my happy place

Don’t worry, there aren’t any pictures of feet - but mine, or rather one of my toes has been giving me some gyp this past week or so. Instead, you’ll be relieved to know I’m including photos from the flower garden in Greenwich Park, aka my happy place. My toe is improving with the antibiotics, but I suspect it has a little more in store before it’s totally fixed. That along with the high temperatures, and life generally have conspired to keep me away from my laptop for longer than I intended.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Since the middle of June - in fact the day we had all our tree work done - the temperatures here have been warm, and warming up with a red weather warning and temperatures of 40 C forecast a month after this. I’m not sure it made it to 40 C where we are in London, but it was pretty close - and extremely warm!

Our garden has suffered since the tree work was completed. The grass has turned straw like without the canopy the trees provided. We expected it to bounce back pretty quickly with some rain (and still do), but so far the rain hasn’t shown up. Instead it’s got warmer, much warmer. But as you know a garden waits for no one and so I’ve been pottering about in the garden aiming to keep it tidy. I’ve also been picking up many, many branches which appear where I’m sure I’ve already cleared, while timing this pottering outside of the hottest parts of the day.

TREES IN THE FLOWER GARDEN, GREENWICH PARK

On those two hottest days, it was like nothing I can remember experiencing in the UK. I know 1976 was warm, but at 9 years old my experiences and memories were understandably entirely different, and the temperatures were four degrees cooler. The first day I ventured out, briefly, fully sun-screened up and with a rather glamorous large brimmed straw sun hat. Both destinations - the local supermarket, and the dentist - were air conditioned and appointment booking me was very impressed with managing to coincide an air conditioned appointment with a very hot day. Glossing over the fact that it was still the dentist!

Our house got warm - the warmest we’d ever known it, and so a change of tack was required the following day. As well as keeping the curtains shut, being awake early meant we could open the bifold doors into our north facing garden, until it started to warm up around 7am. Then they were closed for the rest of the day. MOH ventured out onto our patio briefly at lunchtime quickly coming back in declaring that it was “like Barbados out there” - and he wasn’t wrong.

A STUNNING BLUE MOPHEAD, GREENWICH PARK

Even late into the evening it had that warm air feel you get when you’re on holiday, and so we spent the evening in the garden under the umbrella. Some very welcome but only a few drops of rain appeared, but they had almost dried before they reached the ground, and no way enough to make any difference to our grass!

ECHINACEAS, GREENWICH PARK

It’s clear that our houses and infrastructure in the UK just aren’t designed for these temperatures, and will need a rethink if the temperatures continue as is predicted, as will government policy. I expect we’ll see more houses adopt shutters like those in the Mediterranean do, whether they’re internal or external. I think it’s something we’ll seriously think about when we move (no news yet!), as while retro-fitting isn’t easy, retro-fitting in a decorated and ‘finished’ space is even harder.

I did feel a bit cooped up those two days though, and that’s where my happy place comes in. With the temperatures a whole ten degrees cooler I was keen to get out, and so I did. I realised that it had been far too long since I’d been to Greenwich Park, and so headed out to the flower garden, a place that from these photos is easy to see why it makes me smile.

COSMOS, GREENWICH PARK

So much colour too, and while the grass there is a similar shade of parched as ours, the flowerbeds were being kept watered. The grass around those noticeably greener. And it was good to get out, strangely these two days felt much worse than lockdown when we were each allowed out for an hour a day. I’m not sure why, perhaps because then, while it was warm, the garden was still a relatively cool spot - that tree canopy worked obviously playing its part.

With a walk to Greenwich Park and then various errands and a trip into town for dinner and the excessive temperatures behind us (for now) all was good, mostly. That’s when my toe started to swell. It had swollen slightly the week before, and was brought down by ibuprofen - that wasn’t working quite so well this time round, even after a weekend of doing very little and sitting with my foot up and iced it was still twice as toe-sized as it should be.

CROCOSMIAS, GREENWICH PARK

Cue an emergency doctor’s appointment, some bright red antibiotics - thankfully not the same ones I had recently for my tooth infection which I had a reaction to (yes, I’ve been in the wars a bit lately - I’m putting that down to stopping work, seriously). The swelling is reduced, but not gone and similarly for the pain. It’s remains red and has been likened to a cocktail sausage rather than a toe, and there is definitely some likeness.

I’ve still some of the course of antibiotics left to take, but I think there’ll be another doctor’s appointment before it’s well and truly fixed. But I know this for sure, enforced rest isn’t all it’s made out to be, but hopefully there’ll be good toe news soon!

Cheese, wine and hummingbirds

Isn’t it always the way, that something almost on your doorstep is often not somewhere you go as much as you should. You mean to, but never quite get there. And that’s true for us and the wine bar in our London village. It’s been there a while now, and may even have changed hands, but we finally went along and had a relaxing evening.

It was a busy night there though, with live music which added to that. Thankfully we’d booked which was just as well as the people arriving in front of us were turned away, or at least had a bit of a wait for a table to become available. Our table was towards the back of the wine bar, which was great as it meant we had a good spot to watch the to-ing and fro-ings from the kitchen and were able to soak up the atmosphere of the live music but still manage a conversation.

Rather than opt for a ‘proper’ meal - and by that I mean a main course we decided on a more informal approach choosing cold cuts, a bistro salad, bread and a cheese platter - and a bottle of wine or two. It made a pleasant change to sit and chat, and reminded me of nights gone past spent in a wine bar in Covent Garden, which is probably no longer there - and probably hasn’t been there for a while.

But of course, I couldn’t leave without checking out the loos - which weren’t quite what I expected. In my mind’s eye, they would be typically French matching the atmosphere and decor from the wine bar downstairs. But they weren’t, they were full of hummingbirds with a modern touch - and I loved them.

The cheese alone is worth going back for, and I’m pretty sure this won’t be our only visit. Somehow drinking wine and eating cheese feels so much more relaxing when you’re out, maybe it’s as simple as knowing you don’t have to do the washing up!