The (somewhat thankfully) late in the year but perfectly delicious discovery of the Breakfast Martini has heralded in even more pleasure for 2026.
My mother has the greenest fingers I know. Everything flourishes under her care, and their new house has brought even more opportunities for greening. Light-filled and extraordinarily generous bay windows house cuttings which double in size weekly, and the glass-roofed orangery is a lush, tropical landscape peppered with sofas.
The jewel in their new ecosystem, a Christmas present from my father the year before last, is a Calamondin Orange. It is cherished; glossy and branching. And this year, fruiting prolifically. Like orange golf balls, the fruits were admired from afar until early December, when the biggest and most perfectly squeezable were plucked in celebration, and I went home in proud receipt of this bitesize treasure.
Unsure how to best honour this little gem, it sat on my kitchen side until the perfect moment came along. Its moment to shine, garnishing one of our last drinks of the year – breakfast martinis on New Year’s Eve. Most exquisite in halves with that unique appeal of everything miniature, in sharpness it met the lemon and marmalade of the drink somewhere in between.
It was the discovery among the flesh that gave me most pleasure, however. A single seed, unnaturally large in the tiny segments, and to be honest somewhat unnatural altogether. A finger-like root extended, crooked and blanched, giving the seed an all-too-human demeaner.
But in the confidence and forward momentum of New Year’s Eve, I planted the strange little seed in a takeaway sauce container, popped the lid down and went back to my drink. Nearly 3 weeks on, it’s been moistly getting by on the windowsill, with a quick inspection every now and then but little else, a turn on the propagator if it’s particularly cold.
Until I saw it, the first glimmer of green. It took days for the leaves to unfurl fully, so fresh and alive you think you can almost see them moving. Everyday now they’re a little bit bigger, gloss green and shining, the promise of garnish for another breakfast martini on another New Year’s Eve.
a year in the garden 