There is precious little left to do in the garden. Which doesn’t matter much, as these days I wake up in utter darkness and come home in it as well, the days being their shortest right now.

But yesterday I had a day off AND the sun was out. So I went outside into my garden. More out of habit than with any intent. I noticed, I hadn’t banked up my climbing roses against frost yet. Although I start to wonder if there will be any, this winter, what with the temperatures being so mild, that my tulips start to peek out of the earth already. But one does, what one is used to do, so I heaped some earth around the roses’ roots. One never knows – real winter might still come. This took maybe twenty minutes. Then I was done.

So I just sat down to enjoy the sun. Within an instant, my little cat Lilly joined me and we spent half an hour lazing about.  After which I resorted to pruning my already well pruned shrubs. If there is another sunny day, there won’t be much left of the shrubbery at all.

Oh, and I harvested some of my cabbage, which brought me to recall a dish from my childhood: Krautfleckerl. Pasta with simmered cabbage. Lovely. I decided to do the cooking, for once. My sweetheart wasn’t too keen on this, but let me have my way. I had some trouble, remembering how to cook this, but managed well in the end. You fry some chopped onion and bacon to a gold colour in some lard, caramelize it with a spoonful of sugar, add the cabbage cut in stripes, fry this a little, then just add some stock, season with caraway, salt and pepper and leave the pot to simmer for half an hour. During which you cook the pasta. Put a little bit of butter in a pan, add pasta and cabbage stew and mix. Done. I loved it. Even my sweetheart, who needs meat to call a meal a meal, liked it, too. I first thought, he was just being polite. But he wanted a second helping, so there you have it.