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Life from Stone: The Imp of Spring and the passing of thyme

Life from Stone: The Imp of Spring and the passing of thyme
(Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.)

Was winter ever really there? Strange how the warm sun on your skin makes a winter that ended yesterday seem to have disappeared weeks ago.

Spring, stolen by time, the subtle thief of youth; Spring the temptress, the enticer, the imp in the shadows, dancing between the tall trees, playing now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t, tripping and prancing off bark and trunk. Spring the Puck of the four seasons, delighting in pranks, lightening spirits dulled by months of chill; Puck the loosener of winter’s grip on our souls. Spring the elusive, the seemingly-never-coming who suddenly is there; look at me, see? I sing and I soothe. I told you I’d return. And you breathe again, as the shrubs seem to yawn and stretch as the sap emerges tentatively from slumber to peek over Spring’s parapet. And relief falls off tree and branch as tiny shoots of green appear wherever the imp has danced, the harbinger of warm and hot, the consigner of the cold and the frigid to the wastes to where the winter limps away, defeated by the sun. And life springs from earth like moss on dead wood.

The last of winter’s oranges are wrinkling in the basket on the kitchen table. Strange how well, and how long, an orange keeps its sweet juiciness even as its skin withers. Nature is kind to the fruit, and the fading ones do not deserve to be ignored or discarded. Like people who grow old, as the colour fades from their hair and the skin creases and folds, the richness within is greater than it was in the younger years when hair was auburn and cheeks flush with exuberant youth. Don’t discard that withering orange that you’ve used for its zest; the grating away of its outer protection works a bit of magic within it; the flavour intensifies and sweetens even more. That’s the juice you want in the middle of the hot Spring day.

Is it really six months since you wore a T-shirt, put your sandals on? Since you lit the braai fire at six and sat out back till eleven, with not a thought for need of jacket or scarf; since the bees buzzed around lavender and Thai basil, and you plucked those preening, fat tomatoes for the pasta sauce while the cat rolled in the sand at your feet, embracing the sunshine. The cat who has gone blind in one eye this winter, and whose good eye now is in jeopardy too, wrenching your heart when you see him bump into the wall, a door, a plant pot, a tree, as he pads around the yard, the turf he knows so well yet now seems to have lost his way in. Just a year after his big brother Sean left us, my lovely boy’s in trouble. But I bless the warm that Spring has brought to his turf; you don’t need to see too well to roll in the sand and feel the sun on your neck.

This winter has been harsh in my neck of the Eastern Cape woods. We seemed to be past the worst of it when, several weeks ago, pry-of-night lows of -6℃ took their toll on plants we’d thought hardy. The duranta tree with its pretty bursts of mauve suddenly shed. I’d planted it seven years ago and never has it been marred by frost until now. Then came a second deep frost, the lows again down at -6℃ around 3am. A ficus that has seen six seasons of Karoo winters shed every one of its lustrous green leaves as they curled up into grey before falling; we’ve waited for weeks with breath bated to see if it will spring forth new growth, after I trimmed away the slender twigs to give it a better chance. I examine it closely every day. Even parts of the orange trees have seen some frost damage, though not mortally. But just ten minutes ago I went out and had another look and found the tiniest leaf you ever saw, almost imperceptibly small, but a tinge of green nevertheless. And that one solitary leaf, in its smallness, holds a great promise: it means the ficus is alive, Jack Frost did not kill her, she will be covered in leaves again not long from now.

At the foot of the ficus are the parsley plants that began from seed in the potting shed in April 2020. I’d thought they would die off when they went to seed a few months ago. But I let them seed and let those seeds turn dry and brown, then I cut the overgrowth right down and scattered the seeds in a patch alongside them. They have sprung forth and this summer there will be masses of parsley for flavour and garnish.

The grapevine rooted alongside the ficus also had me worried for a while. For three years it’s been the first in the garden to shows its new shoots. This year the roses, every one of them, have beaten them to it. The Foodie’s Wife was convinced I’d killed most of them through excessive pruning back in July. Turns out, the more severely I pruned them, the more abundant the new growth. But two days ago the vine showed its first four little buds, and this year I have plans for you, Vine of the Backyards. Your young leaves are going to dolmades, inspired by Marita van der Vyver’s column about cooking with them at her former home in the south of France. Read her poignant and beautiful column about leaving the fig tree behind and moving on. In this last column she also writes of friends who cooked lamb shoulder in vine leaves, so that is now on my list too. We can’t travel, or might not yet feel safe to, so “travelling” by cooking dishes from the countries we’d love to visit is a fair substitute. The aromas and flavours can take us there.

The Mission olive tree in my side garden is covered in hundreds of tiny shoots and buds. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

If you read my olives tale in June you might like to know that the Mission tree in the side yard has hundreds of tiny buds, so the portents are good that the crop of 50 I picked earlier this year, and which made my solitary first ever and only jar of brined olives, will be followed by what looks like being at least a few jars more. Better still, the other Mission olive at the other side of the house is shooting out buds as well. Oh, and those brined olives turned out great; we ate the last of them a few days ago. If the crop turns out as well as hoped for, I’d like to dry some and brine others, then use the dried ones for tapenade and the like.

There’s yet more life from apparent stone in my garden. Late in 2020, I planted tarragon in a pot near the back door. It seemed fine for a while but faded and died. For months there was no sign of it. Suddenly, a week ago, there it was; its roots had survived and waited for the sun to return, and soon there will be fish and chicken dishes flavoured with tarragon, and with luck I can finally make a Béarnaise sauce to go with a future steak.

Thyme; what to make of the passing of thyme? My thyme almost invariably passes, to use the currently preferred term for “die”, as we used to say. Mind you, thyme is not, for me, as dire as sage. Almost every sage plant I’ve ever put into the soil has glared at me and swiftly passed into whatever netherworld the ghosts of dead sage lurk. No sage grows out back, though I’ll always try again, as now and then I get lucky with it. But both of the little thyme plants that thrived last summer have somehow made it through the winter’s intense frosts; they’re less of themselves than they were, but they’re still there. I suspect it’s because this thyme (sorry) I planted them near the sides of big pots with some protection from larger plants growing above them. I’m a trial-and-error gardener, not one for consulting the experts; but maybe there’s something in that. Perhaps you’ll tell me.

Today is the first day since March that has seen me in shorts and T-shirt again. The car was hot as hell when I climbed into it this afternoon; the car I had climbed into only 10 days ago after scraping ice from the windscreen. There’s nothing like the Karoo for sharp temperature contrasts barely days apart.

Puck must be hopping around in the back yard somewhere, new shoots sprouting where his feet have touched bark. In my little potting shed there are seedlings of tomatoes, lettuce and capsicum, soon to be ready for planting out. And the photo that Facebook reminded me about only days ago, taken one year ago to the day, showed the same back garden covered in blossoms and shoots, clear proof that this Spring has been slow in coming.

But the joy longer waited for is the greater joy, and I’ll be out in the garden as soon as I sign this column off, to delight in the budding bounty that promises so much. To Spring, to Life. L’chaim. DM/TGIFood

To enquire about Tony Jackman’s book, foodSTUFF (Human & Rousseau) please email him at [email protected]

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