This time next week we will have been living in this house for 15 years. The longest I have lived in any house.

Ever since we moved in come spring a great glow of yellow flowers has burst out of tree that stands in the back of the garden. There used to be a mistletoe hedge in front of it and for years all I noticed was the bright yellow against the deep green of the tree it grew out of and I thought they were all one and the same.

Then the fence over which the mistletoe grew collapsed and so we pulled it all down to make the garden bigger and I came to realise that the yellow flowers came from a laburnum tree that was somehow managing to grow through a yew tree.

The coming of the laburnum has been a great signifier of spring but that is then coloured with summer being around the corner when the yellow will fade in a few weeks time and we will be in June and coming to the longest day after which it all slowly starts to wind back again.

But before that happens we had the first burst of yellow in the garden today.

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Some of us spent the weekend across a combination of Sussex, outside of Guildford, and then Brentwod in Essex.

That far south the seasons were two or three weeks more further advanced and as we sat in a garden on Saturday evening the high scent of some of the flowers were heady with intensity although one or two of us confused that smell with the smell of fields after feeding.

Sunday in Essex was spent in an old school hall watching children going through a further round of public speaking. The seven teams taking part were a culmination of some four hundred or schools from across the country that had started out on the competition.

Cora’s team came second which was a fantastic outcome from having watched the first round of the competition in a somewhat less grand class-room in Prenton.

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Competition done it was a slow journey back to Birkenhead and the first burst of yellow in the garden.

There is always food and good music.

I cooked for myself this evening.

By way of preparation I took three frozen chicken thighs out of the freezer last night. I had picked them up last month at The Farmer’s Market and then found I had no immediate use for them so into the freezer they went.

Lunchtime today, in an Irish rain that swept across Liverpool and came down in great gobs of wet, I walked up to Bold Street to buy onions and harissa from Matta’s.

It made me wish that I could find the opportunity to make the trip up there every week. Walking through Matta’s it is impossible to think of anything else but of all the good food that has been cooked from there in the past and will be cooked in time to come.

Home and I gave the chicken thighs 30 minutes to marinade in smoked paprika, ground cinnamon, crushed garlic, salt, lemon juice, grated onion and olive oil.

I then put a pan on a low heat and cooked up the thighs gently.

In the meantime I chopped up a preserved lemon, two thin green peppers, a good squirt of the harissa and a very good handful of coriander.

Once the thighs were cooked I stirred them into the rest of the ingredients and then tipped them on a plate with some giant couscous.

I ate it listening to the start of a party next door and the warm inner glow of the new Giant Sand album.

I can’t help feeling that the world could move on a better plain if more people were to take time out of their day to listen to a bit of Giant Sand.

I should also mention that the idea for the cooking came from the Morito Cookbook and that there is always a need for good beer – especially those made with sea-water.

Having spent some time yesterday communing with a frog I set out this morning to do the same with a newt.

Newts are a great deal more shy than a frog. A frog is happy to put its head up out of the water and sit there quietly taking in the sun and, so long as you don’t make a loud noise, allowing itself to be photographed.

Newts lurk under the water skirting beneath leaves and the green tangle of weeds on the surface and by the time you see one it has gone with a flash of its tail.

So some time had to be spent doing nothing but crouching by the side of the pond waiting for one of them do something. It is surprising how much movement there can be in the slow still water of a pond. The slowest movement is the crawl of a water snail over and under the weeds on the surface and then there is a bend in the water as a fish moves underneath and the plop of a newt or frog as they elude the watcher again.

Eventually a newt held still near the surface and I got it.

Then we went out for some late lunch in Liverpool  walking past the old Cains building and bemoaning the closure of a brewery.

We have just had the first proper barbeque of the year. I had bought the food for it yesterday but getting up this morning and listening to the rain hammering down I thought I was going to have to think again.

But mid-morning the rain stopped and there some flashes of blue sky and then after midday the sun started to come out and when it did there was proper heat in it.

So most of the afternoon was spent picking out weeds and trying to hold back the spread of ground elder. There was time to plant out some potatoes and to take ten minutes to fall asleep in the some of the heat.

Then it was time to light the barbeque. It all felt a bit creaky having been in the cellar for six months but having got the coals alight it was good to feel the heat of it curling up the hairs on the back of my hand.

We had:-

lamb chops marinaded in garlic, cumin and olive oil

chicken wings with harissa

veggie burgers

large field mushrooms steeped in oil, garlic and cherry tomatoes.

The sun shone bright as we ate listening to Tom Waits & Crystal Gail.

I should also mention the newt that flipped its tail and went back into the water back behind the frog’s head.