It took me many years to realise that the bits of garden that actually poke out of the soil are the fripperies really and that the soil itself is the bit that requires the most work. Green manures are often recommended to stem tide of weeds in the spring until you’re ready to plant, as […]
Read More
Winter in the poly tunnel should be a time of leaves and carefully staggered late crops of things but mine looks a bit like the half price sale at a garden centre that’s going out of business. We’ve been so very busy lately that we haven’t been able to find the time to get some […]
Read More
All I want for Christmas this year is more time in the garden. Oh the pleasure that can be found in the idle pottering about of a summer evening, or the power harvesting of an autumn morning after the school run. I revert to childlike status, begging my family for “Just five more minutes” as […]
Read More
Life in the UK has recently been brought to a standstill by the revelation that we on this Northern European island have had some snow fall on us. It was admittedly something of a shock for us ex-Londoners to see just how deep snow falls out in the rural countryside and we woke yesterday to […]
Read More
The weather is dank and dark, the heating still isn’t working and the dog refuses to recall but I find I drift easily away from all of these petty everyday issues when I think of summer and the bumper soft fruit crops I hope we’re going to get. I’ve become increasingly irritated by supermarket soft […]
Read More
So it turns out that having chickens about the place may well be addictive. I find that I’m really enjoying having them around. They burble imperiously at me when I bring them corn, and I like the pompous way in which they strut. Yet I have to say, I don’t feel actual affection for them, […]
Read More
It’s cold here at the moment. I mean seriously, nose-achingly cold. We can’t have had ice covering the car more than twice in the last three years that we lived in London but here it’s been almost every day for at least a month and as I type this the thermometer already reads less than […]
Read More
London to Land Girl 