I set about picking the seeds for the garden this morning. Seeds and even fruiting bushes and trees are the perfect e-commerce product. Neat, compact and modest in price. One of the nice things about some sites is the ability to spend about 50% more - three bucks instead of two - and get the small commercial producer's size of any seeds you particularly covet. For me, that is Genovese basil to blend with olive oil for a winter's worth of green sludge but I am also getting super-sized on the sugar snap peas. I will squeeze the peas into every spare sunny wall and trellis. Between them will be pots of the basil and even a couple of figs amongst them, ordered on-line and shipped bare rooted by courier.

Why? I plan to gorge, of course. Gorging is an under appreciated activity and, frankly, is wasted for the most part on things we later regret - hot dogs, cheezies, booze. There is nothing, however, as puritanically lustful and the gorging on sugar snap peas when they are perfectly ready to be separated from vine and joined with your obsession. Except maybe the anticipation of that moment. There may even be a day or perhaps a week, global warming willing, when there will be figs - more figs than one ought to eat. Chomped right by the plant, sliced and layered with ham, stewed with port and poured hot on vanilla ice cream.