Bless these high wide clouds. It is cool enough at last to tend le potager²--the garden square on this hot ’05 summer. From April until the Solstice I have planted, watered, weeded, mown (the grassy paths) and watched… Now it’s time to eat.

Yesterday’s meal was plucked, rinsed, thrown in a bowl and dressed with good Catalan olive oil and strong home-made vinegar: a handful of roquette, 6 sugar snap peas and few pea tendrils, three cherry tomatoes, and a fat red onion. I am still enjoying the Spanish souvenirs from my trip to Catalunya with Catherine Bell of New Zealand’s ‘Dish’ magazine; a leftover baguette floated a slab of manchego cheese and a glass of sparkling cold cava completed the table. I ate under crossed branches that shade the center gravel square in the center of the tic-tac-toe garden: an X of perpetual spinach, an O of a round table, an X of red onions. I win.