I have a bit more time now, so I’ve started making things. I made cheese from milk: Camembert, cheddar and goat’s cheese. I turned cattle bones into broth, soaking them in water and apple cider vinegar, then baking them and soaking them again, with a carrot, an onion, some celery and peppercorns, for 36 hours over a low heat. So, I thought I’d try making vegetables.

Maybe I should talk first about my relationship with gardening. I usually feel sorry for plants that wind up in my care. I’ve boasted that I have brown fingers. I get distracted with other things and forget to water them. I put them on a shelf with the other ornaments and forget they need feeding. Or water. So, I usually feel a certain amount of trepidation and empathy for the plants under my care. Very few friends ask me to look after their plants and those that do regret it.

When I moved into a house with a garden, I decided to water it every night and I did for a while. For a year, I think. I watched one plant produce yellow blossoms which a month later turned into long green pods. Then the azaleas bloomed and the bottlebrush. In October, the bottlebrush tree turned into a rosella tree until there were only little red tufts left. The man I hired to help look after my garden cut down the azalea bushes. I’m not sure why; they weren’t flowering at the time so he might have thought they didn’t have a purpose.

Still, I thought my relationship with nature had changed. I used to sit down next to my trees and meditate. There was a rounded portion of the trunk which fit my backside.

The local food network sourced organic baby plants, so I bought carrots and broccoli, spinach, lots of different types of lettuce, blackberries, strawberries, zucchini and some herbs: tarragon, thyme, mint, oregano and sage. I put a note in my diary to water them every day.

I put the blackberry and strawberry out front where the soil is sandy, and the sun shines hot. Don’t berries grow anywhere? The strawberry died, very quickly. The blackberry produced a few berries before it reduced itself to a single green stalk. I water it faithfully and I’m seeing a few leaves now. I’m fairly sure they are blackberry leaves and not a nearby weed. I replaced the strawberry with a zucchini plant which produced little yellow bell flowers. I was so excited; I love zucchini and zucchini flowers even more. I told a friend who shook her head. They go soggy if they produce at this time of year, she said. The one zucchini it produced before it died was pretzel-shaped but delicious.

I bought a garden bed from Aldi and planted the broccoli, the carrots, some spinach and some more lettuce. All but the broccoli failed to flourish. Broccoli are the ugliest plants I have ever seen and the eventual flowers, which are the part that’s edible, looked more like broccolini. Eventually there were two plants left and they looked more like weeds so on the spur of the moment, I pulled them out and planted the top of a sweet potato. It’s now a flourishing vine but it’s yet to produce a potato. I did manage to grow carrots eventually, in another bed I set up in front of the house. They must like sunshine because there’s plenty of it there and as long as the bed is deep, and they can grow down, they are happy.

I put the herbs and some lettuces on my deck. Handy to go out when I’m cooking and pick a few leaves. The ones that are still alive. I tried some of the tarragon before it died. The thyme is mostly thin woody stalks, the last of the leaves died on the weekend. I water it anyway, in hope. The sage died and came back, maybe the thyme will too. The first lot of lettuce lived long enough to feature in rice paper rolls, but nothing has lived since. I found out the deck is a very moist area and since then I have adapted my watering policies. I now have oregano and chiles. I had sage but we had a lot of storms and it died. The lettuce lives outside the back door and occasionally features in salad. I buy lots of it, in case.

The mint died, so I bought some more, which also appeared to be dying then flourished in the three weeks I was in Vietnam. I should do that more often. By the time I’d been home a few weeks it had died again. “How did you manage that?” said a friend. “Mint grows anywhere.” I found out later she was wrong, but I felt really incompetent for a few weeks.

I understand that plants require a place they like, the right nutrients in the soil, light and heat that feels comfortable, water and a bit of air movement. I’m told to talk to my plants but all I really have to say is “hurry up and grow so I can eat you”. If I give them names and speak to them gently, I’ll feel guilty eating them. How can you eat something that has a name?

This is much harder than making cheese.