And so it begins.
You know how in all those gardening guru books - or indeed gourmet guru books - they tell you that home-grown fruit and vegetables taste better than anything you can buy?
Doesn't matter how many times you hear that or read it, nothing prepares you for the flavour of your very first home-grown tomato.
Or the next four hundred, for that matter.
And I can't even begin to describe the taste of my first season's raspberries.
Last year - the first summer here - I did very well with Sweet Bite cherry tomatoes, lettuce, basil, and those lovely small Lebanese eggplants. Silver beet and rocket came out of nowhere (I didn't sow it) and lasted through the hottest summer for decades.
Not so good with beans and the peas were hopeless.
Over the cooler months, I had a lovely long run with broccolette, and I accidentally grew a terribly impressive cauliflower. I bought a mixed punnet of brassicas (won't fall for that again) and for several months I peered closely at the stem of the largest plant waiting for Brussels sprouts to appear. They never did, but I know brassicas can take a while so I was patient. Then one day I was chasing a white cabbage moth and separated the leaves on top and nestled in there, to my enormous surprise, was a perfect white cauliflower.
Harvest is terribly exciting. Will the novelty ever wear off? O, the pride - verging on conceit - the wonder of it. O, the heartbreak when it fails miserably.
Digging up onions and garlic, or breaking off rhubarb stalks, I stare at them, utterly amazed that they look just like the real thing. In fact I can stand for immeasurable hours gazing at the vegetable patch, or even someone else's, like the marvellous potager at Heronswood.
Last night I ate the last of my broad beans and a few raspberries and was ridiculously happy about the whole thing.
PS The big news, though, is that the olive tree looks like it will recover. I admit to checking it every hour last weekend, and I swear it has a new leaf this morning.
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