Aloe Vera
A couple of weeks ago I was admiring Mike Murphy’s giant Aloe Vera plant that he had just brought into the house for the winter. This plant is big enough to justify some Christmas lights, when the time comes. I knew that Aloe Vera is reputed to have great healing properties but was uncertain how to use it straight from the plant. “Just cut off a leaf and rub,” another friend had explained a few months ago. I didn’t fancy rubbing the spiny leaves on a sore place. ‘It’s the sap,’ she explained. But how...
read moreFigs
I love figs.When I bite into the first ripe fig of the season, the pleasure is overwhelming. There is something very sensual about this fruit. I bet Anthony and Cleopatra had a bowl of figs on their bedside table. Of course it’s the leaf, not the fruit, which has been endlessly immortalised in stone. I’ve never quite worked that out. Vine leaves are prettier and much more delicate. Perhaps the waxiness of the fig leaf was easier to carve. Biting into that first ripe September fig is an experience that is both familiar yet curiously...
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