The two baby orchid keikis have made definite progress during the week. Both are putting out new roots, and one, the larger by a smidgen, has a new leaflet.

The parent plant I’m not so sure about. Although the newest leaf is glossy and turgid, the others are a bit limp and patchy. The two...

It is extremely galling that as soon as one has committed to learning something new, one is immediately flooded with unavoidable paid work that prevents one from putting the new stuff into practice. As a result, one may as well not have bothered.

The wait is over. After soaking in weak tea for seven days, my one remaining Phalaenopsis orchid is looking a little less ropy. In fact I was exceedingly pleased this morning that the one particularly daggy leaf came away in my hands. I had feared that I might have to cut if off, risking disease and death. Now I’m thinking that maybe the tea treatment gave the plant the strength to withdraw what it could from the leaf and seal it off with a nice corky abscission scar.

Like the bourgeois gentleman I aspire to be, today I learned that asparagus topped with a fried egg, which I eat at every opportunity during the season, has an actual name. It is, apparently, Asparagus Bismarck.

I learned this from Elizabeth Minchilli, doyenne of people who write about La Dolce...

A friend recently asked me what to call the ancient wheat known as farro. The word derives from the Latin far and she knew, as she explained, that “it is not spelt — as all of the classicists want to translate it.” And indeed it isn’t. Alas, the only correct answer to this fascinating question can only be, “It depends”.