FROM PATCH TO PLATE Matthew Fort

Ah, that first, full balmy note of spring. A light breath of warm wind. Violets in the hedgerows. Blossom on the pear tree. Green shoots shooting up. A quickening of the pulse. A sudden surge of cheery optimism. ‘Whan that Aprill with his showers soote the droghte of March hath perced to the roote’ as the genial Geoffrey Chaucer put it back in fourteenth century, and I’m not sure much has changed since.

Of course, this is a busy time in the vegetable patch. I begin to patrol it with increasing energy and anxiety. The