Herbs made it in spite of my chronic neglect of the garden this year. The sage surpassed itself with the lack of competition.
I left in June last year, abandoning my garden to its own devices. Getting ready for work on the house, knowing I wouldn't be around to nurture a summer crop, I missed out on the lazy winter browsing of seed catalogues. There was no spring cosseting of young tomato plants, lifting them out into the sunshine in the morning and carrying them back inside before the temperature dropped in the evening.
A full year turned, the house still wasn't ready though at least I could camp in it (before they discovered a leak in the water main - 80 litres an hour). The strawberry plants were taking over the vegetable patch, my beautiful glossy-leaved passionflower twined its way up and over the scaffolding from next door. I came back to a buddleia throwing panicle-tipped branches across the drive.
The woody herbs, rosemary, sage, bay, have thrived in the bone dry environment, purple flowers attracting bees and other pollinators. I'm most pleased with small features of the renovations - a sensor light so I can pop out with my scissors and cut fresh herbs after dark, an outside tap and power point.
I begin to think I've got this living in two places 200 miles apart down pat. I'll be in one place for certain times of the year when it's a pleasure to be there, and back in the other for crucial stages in the growing season - sowing, watering, harvesting. I wonder whether young tomato plants will make the journey, will they like the sea air?
If I think about regrets, it's for the flowers I haven't grown. I think about moving the passionflower, an inexpensive climber from an Asda pallet, dark glossy leaves and green and white and purple flowers, hacked and trampled when the scaffolding was removed, to the back fence where I can enjoy it from the porch.
Beside my chair, I'll grow a pot of jasmine filled with flowers in the spring giving off a heady scent as you brush by to get in the house. I found the root of the old jasmine, bought in Chelsea and loved for years on my windowsill, it made the journey north and survived the frosty winters. I stuck it in a pot of water and now it is sending up fresh green tendrils oblivious of the weather.
And in the summer, it'll be bold lilies, saturated colours and glorious perfume. I remember the first time I smelled them, in a conservatory in a hotel in Wales where we'd gone for afternoon tea, nectar dripping from swollen stamens. Could anything be so perfectly beautiful in the moment?
White longiflora lilies became my favourite cut flowers. Then I visited the Chelsea Flower Show with its multitude of specialist growers ... orchids ... peonies ... lilies ... and started to grow my own. They thrived in the micro-climate of London but rotted in the damp chilly winters here on the edge of town in the middle lands of England.
This summer, looking for a quick hit of statuesque beauty to counter my ravaged garden, I bought pot after pot of lilies coming into flower. I learned to time it, the very day the prices were marked down just before the buds burst open. They're hibernating now, inside the porch, away from the cold and damp, waiting for the spring.
The seed catalogues have arrived. Time to browse and dream and plan.
Leek and bean stew, a variation on this recipe by Derek Sarno. Toppings: yoghurt, a slick of olive oil and mixed seeds.
