Month: October 2023

Waste

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Given the choice, I would rather spend my days out of doors than cooped up inside, even though at this time of year the elements start to conspire against me. Still, I feel an overwhelming need to get outside into the fresh air and stretch my legs whatever the weather and if there is no serious gardening to be done, then walking is my favourite option. In the light of some very autumnal weather ~ goodness me, it is so wet here at the moment! ~ this week has seen me digging out my waterproof over-trousers, coat and walking boots for the first time in many months. I am lucky to have a choice of ways to wander from home but it doesn’t bother me if I end up walking the same stretch several times a week; there is something wonderful in simply being outside and moving, breathing in the fresh, autumnal air and noting the subtle changes in field, tree and hedgerow that mark our passage through this beautiful season. Not so delightful is the litter I’ve been picking up along the way this week. To be fair, it’s an unusual thing in these parts but too many days have seen me returning home with someone else’s beer can, cigarette packet, energy drink sachet and sweet wrappers to dispose of responsibly; it’s a grotty job but I have far too much respect for nature to leave it there. The word litter originally referred to animal bedding such as straw which has me thinking that if only what I’ve been picking up were biodegradable in the same way, there would be no issue . . . and that has led me circling back, at long last, to a post I’ve had sitting patiently in draft form for ages. Let’s talk about waste.

Tackling the gargantuan issue of waste is a complicated and often thorny issue but one that is both essential and pressing. At an individual level, it can seem like an overwhelming task so I think it’s important to listen to voices like Anne-Marie Bonneau (‘The Zero Waste Chef’) and Patrick Whitefield who advise against trying to do everything perfectly but doing what we can and concentrating on those things that are most relevant. I’ve been thinking about waste again this week in light of ~ amongst other things ~ another reading of the French 2020 Anti-waste Law (English version here). France doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to the matter of waste but this charter sets out ambitious plans and targets, not just for reducing waste but also for a system-wide transition from a linear economy to a circular one and I think it’s refreshing and encouraging to see a Western government setting out its stall in this way. There are a couple of world firsts in there, too, namely the ban on the destruction of unsold food products and a mandatory repairability index for electrical and electronic products in a start to banish planned obsolescence; the emphasis is also on using the changes to bring about ‘societal transformation’ and supporting the more vulnerable members of society through the adoption of a circular economy. It’s enterprising and, to a degree, pioneering stuff and given that many of the measures have been in place for some time now, makes an interesting template for my personal reflections.

Comparing the details in the Anti-waste Law document with what I can see going on (or not) has led to some interesting observations:

Some measures have obviously been put in place so for instance, plastic shopping bags are very much a thing of the past. People seem to have adapted to taking their own reusable bags to shops and on the rare occasion a shop attendant has put our purchases in a bag (for instance, at the local country store), the bag has been a sturdy paper one for which I can find many uses. In order to save paper and ink waste, customers now have the choice as to whether to have a till receipt or not and we are always asked. I’m very happy not to have one although it can cause issues if items need to be returned. A few months ago, I bought some loose prawns from the fishmonger’s counter in a local supermarket only to find once I’d left the premises, that they had been priced as scallops (over five times the price!); when I returned to the customer service desk for a refund, the first thing I was asked for was my till receipt. Mmm.

Other measures exist but don’t appear to be much used: as mentioned in a previous post, since 2021, French customers have been able to take their own containers to buy loose goods as long as they are clean and fit for purpose but the only person I’ve ever seen do that is me. I’m not sure whether it’s down to a lack of awareness of the possibility being there or a disinclination to do it but it would be encouraging to see it become a regular and more widespread habit. Certainly, not a single shop assistant has batted an eyebrow at my taking my own containers so as a customer, there is no awkwardness or problem at all. On my last visit to the local organic dairy where milk, yogurt and cheese are all bought in our own bottles, bags and pots, I noticed a large sticker on the counter with the title (weirdly, in English) of ‘Bring your own containers!’ It would be good to see such encouragement everywhere.

Some measures appear to be non-existent: there are supposed to be receptacles at checkouts so that customers can deposit unnecessary packaging as a message for producers but I’ve yet to see evidence of such bins in any supermarket, big or small.

There are encouraging signs of gradual change, however, and I remain hopeful that the impetus will grow and it will start to filter into everyday life more quickly. Our local garage is displaying posters explaining how they can be part of a circular economy and all the possibilities open to them in terms of re-using, repairing and recycling vehicle parts rather than always opting for new. It is now prohibited to throw old toys and sports equipment away at our local déchetterie, they are instead sorted and collected with an eye on extending their lives. There are businesses and schemes across France focusing on activities such as collecting and re-using glass bottles, repairing old bikes and distributing them to those without and mending or upcycling old clothes. Next year, Paris hosts the Olympic Games and amongst many innovative ‘green schemes’ already being implemented in the city (such as rooftop farms and cleaning the River Seine for safe swimming), the organisers have set themselves an ambitious target of halving the carbon footprint of previous Games. I’m interested to see how that goes but it surely needs to be a priority in any ‘world’ event now.

Food waste is an area where we personally don’t do too badly because we never really have any. I think this comes down to several strategies: we only ever buy what we need, we plan all our meals around what we’ve got and prioritise the use of anything that is creeping past its best, where we buy in bulk we ensure foods are properly stored or preserved, any leftovers are revamped into another meal or frozen for another day, we only put on our plate what we can eat, we cook everything from scratch so we can tailor dishes and meals to our own tastes and any peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds and other biodegradable bits and pieces are composted (although in many cases we adopt a ‘skins-on’ approach and eat the peel anyway).

We add to the compost heap every day, a fact not lost on a little feral cat who has recently adopted us!

I agree with Anne-Marie Bonneau that composting food should be a last resort; I was very grieved over winter when some of our stored squash started to rot and despite saving what we could, the rest ended up on the compost heap. This year, I’ve raised fewer plants but also prioritised varieties which I know are good keepers to avoid that kind of scenario again; the fact that we’ve ended up with a huge harvest isn’t helpful but I will give as many squash away as I can. Growing the vast bulk of our fruit and vegetables means a healthy diet, a reduced carbon footprint and a huge sense of respect for food, knowing that any waste doesn’t just mean the foodstuff itself but the water, energy and other inputs that have contributed to its production. From 1st January 2024, all French homes must have by law the facility to recycle food waste so local councils are currently making domestic collection buckets and compost bins available to all households . . . not that we need either.

If we are going to really tackle the issue of waste, then I believe the approach needs to be holistic and all-encompassing. Take teabags as an example. Since 1st January 2022, the use of plastic in teabags has been prohibited in France and this is a good thing because the amount of microplastic particles released from teabags at brewing temperature is a huge environmental issue; plastic-free teabags can also be safely composted so become something useful rather than a part of the waste stream. However . . . teabags in France usually come with a string and cardboard tab, sometimes attached with a metal staple (not compostable) and are often individually wrapped in plastic inside a glossy cardboard box which itself has an outer plastic wrapper. That’s an awful lot of waste packaging for 20 cups of tea! Somehow I doubt that anyone would have the time or inclination to remove all those wrappers even if the collection bins were available at the checkout. Tea is one of the few things I bring back to France after a visit to the UK (and thankfully, it remains a legal import post-Brexit) but the only bag involved is a sturdy brown one which I re-use many times. I buy a good quality loose-leaf Assam tea which is weighed into the paper bag and which I then decant into my faithful old tea ‘caddy’, a heavy jar made from recycled glass with a cork top that I’ve had for nearly 30 years. It’s a luxury ~ a few hundred grams have to last me many months ~ so my other tea moments involve gathering herbs from the garden. I’m an unapologetic tea snob so always use a teapot which means I have no need (or desire) for teabags anyway; I think there’s a rather lovely meditative process to warming the pot, adding leaves, pouring over boiling water, leaving to brew and then sitting back and savouring. Plus as tea leaves and spent herbs are excellent compost ingredients, there’s no waste. Perhaps teapots should be issued alongside compost bins? 😉

Along similar lines, if I go to the local boulangerie to buy croissants or pain au chocolat for a breakfast treat, they will be wrapped in a brown paper bag whereas in supermarkets they are often sold in large rigid lidded plastic boxes which I think are a clear example of unnecessary plastics. They do make good mini-cloches for seedlings but my guess is the vast majority end up being thrown away. Many people will buy breakfast pastries from supermarkets as they are convenient, have good in-store bakeries and you generally get far more for your money but I’ve felt for a long time that the boxes surely need to go or else some sort of returnable scheme be put in place as is due to happen with plastic bottles in France at some point this year. The good news this week is that we saw croissants for sale in paper bags in a local supermarket for the first time, although the special offers were still in plastic boxes; it’s a welcome step in the right direction, at least. Cultural shifts take time and effort but I have a hunch that if customers had to serve themselves into paper bags (or even better, their own reusable bags) then the croissants would still fly off the shelves. Only time will tell.

The way in which our household waste is managed is set to change very soon following pilot schemes in several local communes and having this week seen a general household waste bin stuffed to the gunwales with cardboard and electronic equipment, including a computer keyboard, I think this can only be a good thing. Under the present scheme, we pay an annual fee for the management of our waste, both rubbish and recycling. We have no kerbside collection so we have to take everything to one of the many communal collection points; the nearest is a couple of kilometres away and has a general rubbish bin and recycling bins for glass, paper, metal, some plastics and clothing. Under the new scheme, an annual charge will remain but the general household bins will be locked with access only by using a microchipped ‘badge’: this will record the number of times we open the bin to deposit a maximum of 60 litres of rubbish at a time and beyond a minimum allowance (yet to be announced), an additional charge will be added to our bill accordingly.

We’ve lived with this system before in another commune of Mayenne and in theory it should encourage people to think more about recycling what they can and reducing their waste in general; one of the biggest problems here is that many people don’t sort their rubbish and just throw everything away. However, it’s not without problems, fly tipping being a major one as people furtively dump rubbish bags in a pile next to the collection bins to avoid charges or else burn it if they have no close neighbours. Also, I think it would be a fairer system to base the charges on the weight of rubbish deposited rather than the number of deposits: our household rubbish amounts to so little that we collect it in old freezer bags which are beyond re-use and weigh in at 100 grams or below every few weeks. The point is, every time we open the bin we will be charged the same as someone who has deposited 60 litres of rubbish (we couldn’t produce that in a year!) so it will mean us having to store up our bits of rubbish for longer which is not the healthiest of situations and hardly encourages people to move towards a zero waste lifestyle. I know I’m not the only person who has raised this point but the local council argues that a weighing system would be hugely expensive to install and so bills would have to be much higher. Well, no system is perfect, I suppose. It remains to be seen what will happen when the new scheme starts in this commune (2024 is a trial year, we have collected our badge this week) but I’m hoping that within the ethos of the Anti-waste Law, there will be an acceptance that a low waste lifestyle ~ without fly tipping ~ is not only possible, but to be encouraged.

Ecological sobriety is something I’ve been reading about in several journalistic articles this week; for anglophones, the word ‘sobriety’ tends to allude to temperance but in this (French) use, it means ‘simplicity’ and refers to people choosing a simpler lifestyle in order to help the planet. It seems there is a groundswell of movement in France away from negatively equating such simplicity with austerity but instead seeing it as a beneficial and positive move. More and more people, especially among the younger generations, are finding that by swapping stressful jobs for something more pleasant, and reducing many things in their life including the size of property and amount of travel (especially flights), along with consumption of everything from food to social media, they are feeling much happier. For some, it’s a case of doing what they can, even if the gestures seem small, for others it’s a complete shift in lifestyle to off-grid, communal living. What I like most about what I’ve read is the emphasis on reducing because for me, this is a key word: if everyone reduced their consumption by just a small amount ~ whether energy, water, clothes, stuff, travel, food ~ and at the same time, focused on reducing the associated waste, the impact would be massive. No-one is talking about doing without but it seems many people would be much happier, too, so surely as a society this is what we ought to be aiming for, the well-being of people and the planet.

As a personal example, last year I bought a pack of yarn to crochet a blanket as a gift for Sam and Adrienne. I normally knit them woolly socks to take as host and hostess gifts when we stay but as I knew we were driving to Norway (or at least, that was the plan before things went pear-shaped in Germany!), I decided to make a blanket instead, something bright and colourful which I hoped would help to lift the gloom of winter days in Stavanger. I chose the ‘Aria’ design from Attic 24 and it proved to be an interesting project; there were very few squares where I would have chosen the same colour combinations but when it was put together, it was incredibly effective . . . which is why Lucy designs blankets and I grow squash. 😂

The blanket packs are all pretty generous so I was left with quite a pile of spare yarn and decided to use some of the greens, blues and purples to knit a quirky little jacket for our youngest grandchild, just pulling random balls out of my basket to make uneven stripes. I love this kind of relaxed project, simply making it up as I go along and, once finished, somehow the idea of mismatched buttons seemed to suit the mood.

Believe it or not, I still have yarn left over so my plan is to gift it, along with other bits and pieces, to those who knit toys and the like for charity and as I used the packaging for other things, I’m hoping this means there will be minimal waste from my original purchase. Yes, of course, I acted as a consumer in buying the yarn which came with its own carbon footprint but it gave me the materials I needed to create personal and meaningful gifts made with time, effort, much pleasure and a lot of love. It’s so easy to beat ourselves up about these things but I firmly believe that if we can just stand back and reflect quietly and holistically on the entire life span of everything we buy, use or consume, and make a conscious effort to keep as much as possible out of the waste stream for as long as possible, then the difference would be enormous. Walking lightly on the Earth doesn’t need to be painful, sacrificial or even difficult, it just needs a small shift in perspective . . . and perhaps a bit of voluntary litter picking on the side. 😊

Ecological gardening

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A few weeks ago, we were approached by a younger French couple who asked if we would be happy to show them round our garden; they were very clued up on all things ‘eco’ and were interested to see how we were putting things into practice. Naturally, it was a pleasure and I was very taken that their first act was to throw their shoes off and wander barefoot around the patch ~ although I did spend the time hoping they were keeping an eye on the hoards of honeybees feeding in the clover runways! Apart from being a pleasant and sociable way of passing an hour or two, I realised afterwards that it had given me an unplanned but very valuable opportunity to gather my thoughts (in two languages) and clarify exactly what it is we are doing here and why, and how we are changing and evolving along with this piece of land. These days I tend to describe what we do as ‘ecological’ rather than ‘organic’ gardening and although there are many authors who use the terms interchangeably, I believe there is a clear distinction between the two. Organic gardening is great but is still open to practices I would no longer use and it doesn’t take too many internet searches to turn up plenty of articles devoted to such things as pest and weed control. If I had to sum up my own take on the difference in a nutshell, I no longer think in terms of what we can do with a patch of land but rather, what we can do for it.

Let me set out my stall on this one straight away: no matter how much I might use the word in my writing, there is no such thing as a natural garden. It might be an abundant polyculture, rich in food and flowers and teeming with life but it is still very much a human construct, controlled and manipulated by ourselves. Left to its own devices, nature would plant a deciduous woodland to fill this space and very quickly, too, if the number of tree seedlings that have appeared in the lasagne beds is anything to go by. The trick is to try and integrate our growing spaces into the local landscape as much as possible, ensuring that we can enjoy a sufficient harvest while supporting as much biodiversity as possible.

One of the cornerstones of our approach is nurturing the soil: get that right and the plants pretty much look after themselves. I spend a large proportion of my gardening time on soil creation and improvement and I am in no doubt that it has contributed greatly to the ever-increasing abundance of food and wildlife on the patch. The polytunnel is the most artificial part of the garden and it is there I have been focusing my efforts on a bit of soil love this week, having first harvested the butternuts from inside (on which subject, more later). We have the best patch of winter salad leaves ever which I’m thrilled about and which I’m sure comes down to the improved state and health of the soil in which they are growing: mizuna, mesclun, rocket, lamb’s lettuce, landcress, mustard, komatsuna, pak choi, beetroot, parsley and chervil along with a legion of lettuce, coriander and dill volunteers, are already providing us with copious pickings of salad goodies.

Self-set lettuce, coriander and chickweed make welcome additions to our salad bowls alongside the official plants.

Next to them I have planted two rows of winter peas, the Swiss heirloom ‘Freda Welten’ and the ever-reliable French ‘Douce Provence’ which should germinate and put on minimal growth before sitting tight over winter and giving us a very early yield in spring ~ that is, of course, if the voles leave them alone. For the rest of the bed, a good dollop of donkey dung and compost followed by a ‘light touch’ mulch of grass clippings and chopped dead leaves plus a sprinkling of sawdust have left it looking more like a woodland floor than anything else . . . but then, that’s exactly what I’m aiming for. The mulch isn’t so thick that it will prevent the soil from warming up rapidly in spring but the worms will be very happy with the covering and as long as I remember to water regularly, they should work their magic in there over winter.

I love the way that the changing seasons bring new foods into fashion. It is most definitely the week of the chestnut here, our single tree dropping large prickly shells full of fat, shiny nuts. Unfortunately, the red squirrels have had a head start on this year’s bounty (one of the disadvantages of going away) and we came home to a garden littered with empty shells and not a nut in sight. Now it’s a case of playing the earlybird game and trying to beat the furry ones to the forage; we don’t mind sharing but it would be kind of them to leave us a few. They’ve certainly taken all the hazelnuts and if the number of times I’ve watched them burying their treasure is anything to go by, I think we will be finding young tree seedlings everywhere come spring. I watched a beautiful squirrel one morning this week ~ fiery red with a chocolate brown plume of a tail ~ scuttling merrily back and forth along the bottom of a hedgerow, shadowed by an enormous jay; the bird was half hopping, half dive-bombing the squirrel who seemed totally unperturbed by the avian attention and carried on burying nuts as if nothing was happening. Fascinating.

Red squirrels are an abundant species here and, unlike their British cousins, they do not have to compete with grey squirrels for food and habitat or run the risk of catching the fatal squirrelpox virus (absent in continental Europe) which is transmitted by greys. The latter are a native of North America, first introduced to the UK in 1876 as an ‘ornamental’ species: the rest, as they say, is history. Love them or loathe them ~ and there are plenty of people in both camps ~ they are a good example of how an introduced species can effect native ones. The wider native vs. exotic/invasive species debate is one that rages through ecological discussion and literature and one that appears in Dave Goulson’s excellent ‘The Garden Jungle‘ which I have just finished reading. It seems to me that there are no clear-cut answers to the issues but I find myself in many cases feeling more of a pragmatist than purist. Take, for instance, ladybirds. I wrote earlier this year about how the ladybird population in our garden had dealt with a massive aphid infestation so efficiently and effectively that not a single plant failed; ladybirds play a key role in our integrated pest management strategies and we encourage them by providing habitat and food sources. However, look back at any of the ladybird photos I have posted and the eagle-eyed will notice that they are mostly (if not all) harlequin ladybirds. These non-natives were introduced to several European countries as biological control agents to help deal with aphid plagues, but like the grey squirrels in the UK, have brought a host of problems with them, not least the fact that they predate native ladybird species.

What, then, is an ecological gardener supposed to do? Should I be trying to eliminate the harlequin ladybirds from our patch to help the native species fight their corner? Or do I simply have to accept that they are now an established part of the ecosystem and leave well alone? I’ve been reading the expert opinions of French scientists and there seems to be a general consensus that eradicating the harlequin ladybirds would be a futile and indeed, almost impossible, task; there is every chance that given time, things will settle down and the native species will adapt and recover and a sense of equilibrium will be reached. As if to prove a point, the very day that I had drafted these paragraphs, I spotted a single ladybird whilst chopping and dropping a patch of foliage ready to plant with garlic; it came beetling up a dead stem and I’m as sure as I can be that it was a native seven-spot ladybird. Still here then. That’s wonderful news.

I could pen a long list of activities and strategies that I think underpin ecological gardening, many of which I’ve written about in previous posts, but time spent outside this week has highlighted the importance of cultivating an attitude of acceptance; if I am going to talk about ‘working with nature’ then in practice I need to trust the process and go with the flow. I apologise if that sounds like wishy-washy woo-woo, but please believe me, it isn’t. What I’ve come to understand, often the hard way, is that the best possible gardening mantra I can adopt is que sera, sera, a term which ~ despite its appearance ~ isn’t Spanish but an English language phrase dating back to the sixteenth century, encapsulating a certain kind of cheerful fatalism. For instance, I can’t do anything about the weather. I can rant and rail at heatwaves, droughts, torrential rain, high winds, heavy frosts, violent hailstorms and anything else that can wreak havoc on the garden but the point is, most things will survive the onslaught, especially if I’m careful and observant in my choice and location of planting. In every season, there will always be something that fails or is eaten by other hungry beings in the garden but even so, we never seem to be short of an abundant harvest.

Celeriac, carrots, leeks, aubergines, peppers, black radish and the last few Majorcan pea beans gave us a delicious tray of roast veggies this week.

Plant plenty of everything and as Roger likes to say, something will happen. Where individual crops are concerned, there will be years of feast and years of famine but over time, nature has a habit of balancing things out. If we have a poor crop of potatoes this year but a glut of squash, then I simply have to accept that. It’s certainly less stressful than feeling disappointed and, let’s face it, if I wanted certainty and predictability, I could jack it all in and go to the supermarket . . . but where’s the fun in that?

Late October strawberries. Now there’s a bonus!

In light of the above discussion, let’s talk about squash. This year, I set out to reduce the number of squash in our harvest; they are one of our favourite reliable and versatile staples but there are only so many two people can eat, even spread out over several months. Last year, we had problems with poor keepers which rotted and ended up on the compost heap. They were at least recycled into something positive but for me, it was still a waste of good food; call me a killjoy, but please don’t get me started on all the pumpkins currently in the shops, many bought to bring a few moments of pleasure before being thrown away. This year, then, I restricted myself to three varieties ~ a butternut, ‘Crown Prince’ and our own Asturian mongrel ~ and I only planted a dozen plants in all, five each on the two Hügel beds and two in the tunnel. When a couple of the outdoor blues were munched to lace by slugs, I accepted we’d probably lost them, hard though that was. For weeks, there seemed to be a lot of flower and very little fruit and I began thinking maybe I should do a bit of emergency panic planting but instead, as with the aphid infestation, I sat on my hands, held my nerve and let nature take its course . . .

The two munched plants fought back, recovered and were soon sprawling down the sides of their hill as if nothing had happened. Flowers withered and died to reveal rapidly-swelling fruits lurking beneath luxuriant foliage. In the tunnel, the two butternut plants sent out long snaking vines in every direction, shimmying up the walls and pushing out through the doorways as they went. This week, we have harvested no fewer than 83 squash from those dozen plants, 24 of them from the two plants in the tunnel alone. How could I have predicted that? We’ve had years when more plants have produced far fewer fruits. I genuinely tried, I really did, to limit the crop this year and look where it has got me! In the end, nature will do its own thing whatever I might hope for so I may as well give up any pretence of control and just let it roll over me. I’m giving squash away to anyone who lingers in sight for more than a few seconds and we are already enjoying the comfort that warming squash-based dishes bring in the current autumnal weather. I have to be honest and say I have no idea where we are going to store the haul once they have seasoned but we’ll find a way, I’m sure. Que sera, sera and all that.

We have just been to the UK for a week and it’s incredible how quickly everything changed in our absence: we left on the back of unusually warm summer weather and returned to something far more akin to autumn. It’s been a bit blustery on occasions (although no storm Babet here, thankfully) and the prevailing theme is a damp one, but there has also been a soft stillness to the air, with misty mornings smelling of mushrooms, golden apple-scented afternoons and dusky evenings cool enough to light the woodstove. Walking down to the potager one morning, I startled a flock of at least fifty fieldfares that had been sitting in our apple trees, taking off with the loud clattering calls that are a familiar backdrop to winter here. Along with the bramblings, also newly-arrived, they are winter migrants who seamlessly take the place of the departed sun-seeking swallows. It’s good to see them but, a bit like the squirrels and chestnuts, I wonder why they have to take the decent apples from the top of the trees instead of feasting on the plentiful windfalls. The great tits are back from the woods and hanging about the (empty) feeding station in greedy anticipation, but they can wait a while for their free lunches. There is certainly no shortage of forage for the wild birds, the mild air is still full of insects and it has been an exceptional year for haws and rosehips. Our holly trees are flaunting branches of stunning scarlet but I’m wondering for how much longer.

I squeezed in what will probably be my last butterfly walk of the season before the truly wet weather arrived. The numbers have certainly dwindled ~ just nine individuals of four species this time ~ but I was pleased that the bulk of them were in the garden section of my transect. The Wall butterflies which didn’t appear until late summer have been very active this week, frustratingly difficult to photograph as they have a fidgety flight but I did manage to capture one sunning itself on a garden seat.

The Red Admirals are still here too, but nothing like in the quantity we saw on a visit to the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park visitors’ centre with Sarah and her family where literally clouds of them were feasting on fallen apples. I realised why friends and family in the UK have been talking about these colourful beauties so much this year, the numbers were extraordinary. Our butterflies might be on the wane now but mooching round the garden with my camera this week, there has been no shortage of insect life in general to observe and it has brought home yet again how important our garden patches are, especially as wild food sources start to die back.

On the back of all this musing, my plan for the garden next year is simply to have no plan. It seems to me that the less I do, the more I achieve and nature and I are rubbing along just fine in this way. There’s no point in trying to guess what the weather will bring, especially in the light of so much unpredictability and change, and who can say what will thrive and flourish in the garden, what will wither and fail? All I know based on experience is that we will have enough fresh produce to meet our requirements even if we lose some crops and if the current pattern continues, the biodiversity on our patch will continue to expand. What more could I ask for? Less time fretting or trying to control outcomes means more moments to engage with and truly enjoy all this precious patch of land has to offer and I’m very happy with that. It also gives me more time to work out what to do with 83 squash and let’s be honest, I’m very much in need of that at the moment. 😉