Hello wonderful people! All this rain is making all my plants grow rather rapidly and as I sit on my terrace, I can’t help but say to myself, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, what does your garden grow?” Not half the things I’d like it to grow, but then again, little terraces in Mumbai are hardly the places for flourishing herb gardens or verdant vegetable patches.
It’s been my dream to live off my land. Eat what I grow. In a Henry Thoreau manner, exist on my own ‘Walden Pond’. (Not build my own house, which would be disastrous, but just be self-sufficient). This would also force me to learn to cook since I’d like to have the ability to prepare my own produce!
I don’t think I’d be a new age, tech savvy farmer, I’d farm on a smaller scale. I’d like to dig up the beds of my brinjals, and tend to the weeds in the cabbage patch and prune the drumstick trees myself.
There’d be broccoli, plump red tomatoes, muddy brown potatoes, crunchy green chilies, and cute as a button mushrooms! With all the digging I plan on doing, I must also be prepared to encounter some dastardly worms! EEEks! Hazards of the job, I think!
I’d go out every morning, pick the prize specimens and then slice and dice and season and spice till in a puff of imaginary smoke, Voila! There would be a culinary masterpiece of such fragrant aroma and mouth watering taste, that one would be left with no option but to go out and begin all over once again! I’d be my own Nigella Lawson! ‘Saucy’ seductress of bakes and broths!
{{/usCountry}}I’d go out every morning, pick the prize specimens and then slice and dice and season and spice till in a puff of imaginary smoke, Voila! There would be a culinary masterpiece of such fragrant aroma and mouth watering taste, that one would be left with no option but to go out and begin all over once again! I’d be my own Nigella Lawson! ‘Saucy’ seductress of bakes and broths!
{{/usCountry}}I’d throw Italian style dinners, set along a long wooden table in my backyard. Seven course meals that went on for a few hours. I’d decorate the table with fruit and vines from my own trees. And by the glow of fairy lights and fireflies, people would tell stories and sing and break bread (stuffed with olives that ALSO grew in my garden!) and be thankful for all that the Earth gives them.
If you’re reading this and wondering “so what is the point?” I can assure you that your pondering is in vain, because there is none! ? Just musings of a mind trapped on a little terrace in Mumbai, dreaming of cherry trees and honeybees! Have a great week folks!
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