"... of delicate heart"

This afternoon walked round the open garden at Druimneil House. It's an attractive Victorian house with 10 acres of garden on rising ground, and a wonderful productive walled garden which supplies vegetables to the nearby well-known Pierhouse Restaurant in Port Appin. The present owners have lived here for over 25 years, they have been working on the neglected gardens ever since. They now have lovely autumn colour, ponds and beautiful viewpoints, a very nice owner and a couple of rescue dogs. I could have shown you amazing views but they would only have had boats in them. So it was this artichoke in the walled garden which really stopped me in my tracks and shouted 'Blip Me!'.

Ode To an Artichoke
first and last verses

The artichoke
of delicate heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.

So you have it:
a vegetable, armed,
a profession
(call it an artichoke)
whose end
is millennial.
We taste of that
sweetness,
dismembering scale after scale.
We eat of a halcyon paste:
it is green at the artichoke heart.

Pablo Neruda