I’m working towards my ambition to be an earth mother. We’re making progress, as long as you don’t count the bit where I fed the baby half a packet of cheese flavoured crisps yesterday to keep him quiet while I chopped the salad up. I’m enjoying having my own cooker again, tried out a new recipe for hummous this week, tasted great, we introduced it to some Argentinean friends last night, very successful. We also squeeze our own orange juice most mornings. Making yoghurt is too ridiculously easy in the Argentinean summer; warm up some milk in a pan, dump in some old yoghurt, plonk the whole thing in a sunny spot on the patio, out of the reach of baby and dog (that’s the hard bit), ignore for eight hours. Fridge. The end. Speaking of the patio, our orange tree is just coming into flower, and in the beds we’re growing mint, parsley, chicory, tomatoes, zapallitos (little round marrow-like things), runner beans, and we will have oregano when I just figure out where I put that packet of seeds down yesterday. At the moment the crop making the most progress is the runner beans. Those seeds were imported possibly not entirely legally, so if you see any news stories about giant runner beans taking over the southern hemisphere, remember you heard it here first; but don’t tell anyone it was me.