My south-facing kitchen window is packed with seedlings, and I’m bracing for the cold snap that’s arriving tonight. It should last the week, which means there will be very little garden progress for the next few days. I’ve saved up a couple of episodes of Gardner’s World to tide me over. I’ve been growing vegetables…
Read MoreDear Steve,Can I call you Steve? I mean, I do feel like I know you, having heard from a friend-of-a-friend all about your aptitude for laziness, ineffectuality and taking credit for the work of others. Maybe I don’t know you personally, but I definitely know your type: quick to play the hero while you’re riding…
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It’s bizarre living in a country that’s unravelling. Not only do we pay the highest energy prices in the world, we now have produce rationing. Brexiters are keen to blame bad weather in warm countries, but the rest of Europe doesn’t seem to have this problem. Could it be that the country who left the…
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This is a scary post to write. I’m about to admit to the sorts of things people don’t discuss in polite company, and I’m nothing if not polite. It’s how I mask, but that’s not what I want to write about today. Today I want to tell you about my experience with menopause. Don’t worry,…
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I’ve often wondered what the dying days of the Soviet Union must have been like for the people who lived there. As institutions crumbled, buildings decayed, and the very fabric of life lay in tatters, the state broadcaster was telling a bewildered public that all was well. Soviet citizens didn’t have access to the internet,…
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I’ve taken the decision to grow all of my berries in pots. Originally, I was going to use a bed, but the soil requirements are so varied that I think each bush will be happier in its own home. So I’ll be moving two honey berry plants and potting up a couple of blueberries. I…
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A couple of days after Christmas, I came down with flu. I wasn’t sure it actually was flu at first, but several negative covid tests and an illness that just wouldn’t shift convinced me this was the case. I thought I was on the mend until last Tuesday evening when I began to cough up…
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Only a few weeks to go until my gardening dreams collide with reality. At the moment, every vegetable I want to grow will go exactly to plan and look as good as (if not better than) the photo on the seed packet. There will be no weeds, no aphids, no blight, no leggy seedlings –…
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Glennis Toole was the coolest person I’d ever met. As I was seven years old at the time, I hadn’t really considered other people ‘cool’ or ‘uncool’, but I was instantly smitten with her. She and her family had moved into a house on our street and as there weren’t many kids in our neighbourhood…
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I vividly remember ringing in 2016 with my first view of the Northern Lights. I’d been chasing them for years and was beyond excited to finally see them. I just knew it was a good omen and that there were great things in store for us all. Then beloved celebrities started dying, the UK voted…
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While goofing about on TikTok last night, I was shown a clip about perennial kale. I’ve grown kale as an annual, but had no idea there was a perennial variety that produces leaves throughout the year – multiple years, in fact. We eat a lot of kale, so I immediately began searching for seeds so…
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Good riddance to 2022. It was hard on just about everyone, and it was cruel to us until the very end with the death of a much-loved pet and more than one horrible diagnosis for a family member. But it’s nearly over and I won’t dwell. Instead I’ll look back on the things I accomplished.…
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Wishing everyone love, peace, and hope for a better future.
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Five years ago, I bought a Mulberry backpack handbag. I’d been coveting it for ages and spent hours looking at it online. I travelled to Edinburgh to the Mulberry shop and inspected it closely to ensure I really liked it, and I tried it on to be sure it wouldn’t look weird on my short…
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My corporation tax bill arrived this week. It’s down 50% from last year, which isn’t a surprise. Sales are down by about the same because ‘The Party of Business’ is making it impossible to run a company in the UK. Businesses now have ridiculous trade barriers with our largest export market, skyrocketing energy bills which…
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Fig and Pen 