Lemon, ginger and hayfever

I rocked out into my magical new garden this morning all ready for phase two of my attempt at reliving The Good Life. Carrots, spring onions, peas (only about a million of them - that new frost resistant seed variety from Suttons is a lot more resilient than I had been planning for...), lettuce,  mixed leaves and loads and loads of tomato seedlings all advancing into fragile, tiny baby plants; courgettes,  chard - yes, I have been pretty enthusiastically buying and propagating vegetable seeds.A new garden will do this to you (as will middle age).  Actually grief will do it to you too. Something about planting and seeing things grow, just like going for long walks breathing in the air consciously and listening to birdsong, helps to rebalance my aching head and heart. This is a bit of a sidetrack from the theme of today's blog, but whatever, here goes - grief throws out my centre of gravity. A trigger that reminds me of my loss can literally take my breath away, make me reel, confuse my thoughts, rob me of my appetite, my sleep, my composure, even my will to live. So it would stand to reason I guess that creating things, which is what is going on when you grow vegetables successfully, and I do have a bit of a hit and miss track record but this season looks like being more hit than miss - restores my gravity, reminds me that things go on living and growing alongside loss. Right, that is it for the sidetrack. Now for the real story of today. I rock out ready to transplant my tiny plantlets into individual mini posts from my propagator (loving how professional I'm sounding - truth is I really don't have a clue beyond what it says on the packet). Half an hour into my transplanting I begin sneezing. Six or so hours later I have dispatched two full boxes of tissues and my nostrils are inflamed. A discomfort turns into an Addams Family style nightmare when I take time out from blowing my nose and wiping my streaming eyes, to rub lemon into two sides of cod ready for baking. Then I rub Vaseline on to my bright red nostrils, and only a second too late do I remember that I have not washed my hands first. Lemon on raw nostrils! Aaaaaaargh! My nostrils are on fire. In fact that incident was three hours ago and they are still traumatised. I have never before suffered from hayfever and I bitterly resent getting it now, minutes into spending unspeakable amounts of hard earned money creating a garden I can grow industrial quantities of vegetables in. I fill the sink with cold water and dunk my nose in it for as long as I can without losing consciousness. Finally I figure I am going to have to find an activity that is both pollen free and sufficiently challenging to take my mind of the fact that my nose is twice its usual size. I pick up the lemon again and look at it. Lemon. And ginger. A time honoured combination. I make a curd. Grate fresh ginger. Flour, egg etc and we have a lemon and ginger cake, moist with lemon curd and lemon juice. I pull out a tub of cream cheese, combine vanilla and icing sugar, grate lemon zest, and smear it over my cake. In a last minute impulse I pull out some dark chocolate, and grate it over the top. This process has taken about 40 minutes from beginning to glistening, cake stand completion. And I have not sneezed once. There is a very obvious moral in there.