September | 2016 | Green Writing Room

… of mice, men and women are bound to run agley.

Just as I was getting back into a blogging routine, life has bowled me a googly and I shall have to prioritise ruthlessly for the next month or more. So once more, although I will be around, dropping in, and occasionally waving from the sidelines, I will not be visiting regularly and not posting much at all. When I don’t see or comment on your posts it is me, not you. I will be back.

Here is the book I am reading and which is engaging me completely. If you want to keep a perspective on our life on earth, this is the prescribed medicine. It starts with the simple premise that explorers have reached earth 100,000,000 years hence and then looks at what they might find. Actually it’s an accessible lesson in paleontology and stratigraphy (! my vocabulary is expanding).

And here are my delicious peppers (at least I hope they are, I haven’t eaten one yet), grown from seed.

And finally the hips are colouring in the garden as autumn creeps up on us.

À bientôt!

In true British fashion I am sometimes uncomfortable about undeserved praise. I love my garden and I agree that parts of it are beautiful, but… like any other garden it has a whole lot of corners the camera never sees. So here is the reality check. This bamboo outside the back door (note the weedy path) is my weather vane – I never water it. Below is what happens when it rains – though this is more rain than I have seen in all the 38 years we have lived here.And here are the sweet peas I so proudly grew from seed, chewed to pieces and covered in mildew.

And some ‘interesting’ though not very beautiful fungus on a hazel stump. This part of the veg plot has remained empty all summer. I missed sowing, or buying, any purple sprouting broccoli and failed to sow anything else. And here are a few dead plants. And scorched patches. And here is the promised hedgehog, M-R – well at least you can sort of see his paw. We’ll finish with a roller that hasn’t budged for… twenty years?There, I am shriven of false pride. Pretty pictures next time, I promise!