Monday, August 08, 2005

Granny story, cherry tomatoes, chard

A friend and neighbour stops to talk and, inspired by the summer day, tells a story about her and her grandmother. The old lady used to have a snooze in a deckchair in the garden. The little girl, as our friend then was, used to sneak up behind her with a blade of grass and tickle her grandmother's nose, making the grandmother brush away an imaginary fly while her eyes remained closed. Our friend always expected to be discovered but, she says, her grandmother never woke up suficiently to catch her at her tricks.


Cutting chard - it is the variety with stems ranging in colour from ruby, through orange to bright yellow, which are beautifully set off by the big, dark green leaves - and presenting a bunch to Giuseppi in the Pantiles. He puts it in a jug on the counter, and promises to cook it with polenta.

Picking cherry tomatoes, which hang in delicate sprays in the greenhouse, and cutting back the leaves to let more ripen.

1 comment:

Lucas said...

I like the story about the grandmother.
Could the wily gandma have been playing a game of her own, pretending to think it was a fly when really she knew all along who was tickling her nose?