The Menu: May is when I begin growing food produce at home in earnest

Re-engaging with nature is incredibly grounding, healing, and therapeutic — never more so than when the fruit of your labour yields food for the table.

Delicious oregano also served as a decorative plant in Joe McNamee’s old garden where many ornamental plants were edible.

May is upon us once more, and as a proud May baby, I have no hesitation in saying it is the finest month of the year; is there another with the same invigorating sense of vibrant new energy and possibility, including the fingers-crossed possibility of an actual summer ahead.

May is when those early pathfinders of April, asparagus and rhubarb, are superseded by the first real flush of the new growing season. May means succulent strawberries, perky salad greens at their peak, and my favourite dish of all: New potatoes, served up with fresh chopped parsley (another May ‘baby’), and too much butter (mind you, in recent years, new spuds have been laggardly, delaying until June, so fingers crossed for climactic clemency!).