Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater - Страница 15

I try to prune the raspberry patch whilst being buffeted by high winds; sacks, buckets and even the watering can being blown across the garden. It is this annual task, and that of pruning the fruit trees in the thicket at the end of the garden, that is the turning point in the year for me. Seeing the neatly trimmed canes and the newly shorn branches of the young quince, medlar and mulberry trees is what rings in the new year for me rather than the bells, whoops and popping corks of New Year’s Eve. Anyway, Auld Lang Syne always makes me want to burst into tears.

Pruning holds no fears for me. It is a job I look forward to almost more than any other. The crisp snap of secateurs slicing through young rose-pink and walnut-coloured wood brings the possibility that this year I might actually manage to control this downright wayward kitchen garden. A garden where dahlias poke through blackcurrant bushes and dark purple clematis rambles through damson trees. Pruning makes me think, however briefly, that I am in charge.

But I give up after an hour or two, the wind thrashing the swaying and heavily thorned raspberry canes across my face just once too often. I go in and toast crumpets, then make a stew and an orange-scented cake.