Every year for the last few year's we go to this appartment on the Med in Spain. It's in Malaga. It's lovely, there's no doubt about that and I've had great holiday's there. But something different happened last time I was there. It's a frustrating place for a gardener like me sometimes because the garden is kept within an inch of it's life, everything is so ordered and clipped. Well that's what I thought. On the last day I started to look a little closer and noticed the tops of broadbeans, about 3 to 4 foot high about 12 foot straight ahead of the porch. I went over to look and saw for the first time that week, a long row of them growing right down the garden sandwiched between the clipped hedge and the prickly cactus growing out of the sand. I started to look around and I started to see shallots growing, the sweet peas, the mint, the rosemary, more broadbeans, enough to feed a small army, and then I noticed the banana tree, the fig trees, the orange tree, the olive trees 3of them, the lemon tree - it just went on and on. How on earth had I missed all this right under my nose? This is a different place for me now - it has much more meaning now that there are plants and veg growing that you can eat. Here's to Juan the Spanish gardener and secret allotment holder and yes I put a good handful of his broadbeans into the Andalucian soup. I hope he didn't mind. Many thanks.




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