The makings of a dinner with Handsome Son, and a brave volunteer

The planets being in the right configuration, Handsome Son is free for dinner on a night when I have time and energy to do something about it. So here's the makings. 

Chicken breasts rolled with ham and cheese, eggwash and chickpea crumbs, then roasted red potatoes, parboiled, with carrots, garlic, grated Parmesan, red pepper flakes sort of strewn about. Whole garlic heads for making garlic butter for spreading. Everything can go in a 400f oven.  Nice prosecco cooling. Dates, almonds, bananas for dessert, no cooking just assembling.

And outside,  this little volunteer, probably dead nettle or a relative, standing up to a tough environment, and creating a natural artwork.

What I'll be doing, in a few, is continuing in this great book of musings about gardens, real and fictional, their places in art and writing and the lives of the gardeners. You need your tablet or  other reference aid ready to check on writers, painters, plants,as she mentions them and you need to know more, instantly.  Lively always lives up to her name, and at 85 she's as sharp as ever and as compelling.