In the garden

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) writes in his 1681 poem “The Garden”:

What wond’rous life in this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons as I pass,

Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

It’s not quite like that in my garden. The Black Homburg vine produced few luscious clusters, for one thing.  Otherwise it’s all good.  Apart from ever-reliable staples such as lettuce, beetroot, rhubarb etc, currently most productive are chillies(a dead heat – geddit? – between the serrano, jalapeno and cayenne), raspberries and passionfruit. Try as I might I can’t think of a way of combining the three in one dish.   

So here is Prince with “Raspberry Beret” from his 1985 album Around the World in a Day. Prince won’t let his real videos appear on YouTube so this is the Pop Up one with annoying visual pop-ups, but even so it is always a pleasure to see him, and also Lisa Coleman on keyboards and especially Wendy Melvoin on guitar: