King Harvest has surely come

This is but a sample of the recent output from my capsicum plants. Despite (because of?) the drought, it’s my best-ever harvest ever: loadsa capsica and they are massive. The longest is 17 centimetres (see the ruler), several are 15 centimetres (see the Iris DeMent CD included for size comparison) and that’s not because they are pumped full of water and stuff like the ginormous vegetables you see in a US supermarket. The only performance-enhancing drug they have taken is fund-raising worm wee from the children’s school. Tomorrow afternoon I shall make red-pepper jelly.

Elsewhere in the garden there are passionfruit (wonderful), blueberries (pretty good), grapes (totally unsatisfactory), raspberries (awesome), chillies (can’t go wrong with Serrano and bird’s-eye) plus the usual staples. My wife was for once impressed when I made her lunch yesterday, spring rolls with Vietnamese mint and Thai basil from the garden. Home-made nuoc cham, obviously.

So here is the Band in Tokyo in 1983 with “King Harvest (has surely come)” from their second album, austerely titled The Band. No Robbie Robertson – this is the later version of the band with the Cate Brothers (that’s Earl Cate on guitar).  There is a great DVD of this incarnation, The Band is Back, recorded in Vancouver that year. Richard Manuel, lead vocals on this song, hanged himself three years later. He was only 42.