Blue Cabbage with Courgette Leaf

It's a cabbage ,in Catala a col, its a thing of beauty, a blowsy veg, spreading itself across the patch, a sensual wanton bit of greens, it's easy and free, it has varicose veins amid its vertical ribs , it has a frilly edge to its labial petticoats, and as yet an unformed heart.

Its roots are in deep, its stems are close fibrous attached deep down to the neck, it's in there to stay, safe from disturbance until autumn perhaps, it shrugs off the odd penetration by caterpillar or butterfly, sloughs off the slug, tolerates the odd snail and welcomes the earwig as a tickling nuisance to be brushed off when the breeze blows.

Its a rotter at times, uneasy in deep wet, but sparkles with dew, rewards the sunbeam with an uncurled leaf, drops a floret or two when the frost sets in but feeds a soup pot or combines in col and patates to make a local, friendly dish.

Beloved of boarding schools, hospitals, and used in old peoples homes to perfume the air and conceal those other less brassical odours, wrapped by Greeks ,stuffed by Armenians, mashed by the million and strained to perfidy, mixed with butter, sautéed with mustard, bubble and squeak, colcannon, soup, beloved by vegetarians, nourisher of gulags, indeed the king and crown of the brassica patch.

All of this and more, but to me a saviour and my blip for today.