Veg Plotting

Last year I took part in the first #springnaturediary , an Arts and Humanities Research Council project which is also taking contributions this year. I'm chuffed last year's diary made the final cut and can be read as part of an illustrated booklet. Now the world has changed for us all and it's useful to mark these strange times with another entry for this year's diary. Read on and you'll see everything has changed for me in another significant way. NAH had a heart attack on our wedding anniversary in early March and against the background of the looming Coronavirus pandemic - declared as such the day after on my birthday - I wanted to record a moment in our increasingly shrinking world. Thankfully NAH's home now and started on the slow road to recovery. It was obvious the hospital was beginning to make preparations for the pandemic whilst he was there. All that can't be squeezed into a 150 word entry which focuses on the vernal equinox, but there is...

On Wednesday I took part in a project commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. They invited anyone and everyone to write a quick 150 word nature diary to mark this year's spring equinox. Regular readers know I love this kind of project, reminiscent of the fun we had with #MyGardenRightNow a couple of years ago. You can read my [lightly edited] entry below. 80+ submissions and photos from around the country are available here . It's a wonderful celebration of this year's arrival of spring. How's spring (or autumn) looking in your neighbourhood? Today's dawn was special as the first chiffchaff of spring announced its arrival. It's a fitting way to celebrate the vernal equinox. Nature's changing so fast now. The apple boughs have just burst into leaf and my herb bed tells me there'll be mint for our potatoes this Sunday. My small urban garden is full of microclimates; demonstrated admirably today by my potted St George...

Write away is an occasional series on my writing experiences and what I've learned along the way. It's inspired from joining a WI writing group last year, who've gently taken me to all kinds of places and forms of writing I never thought I'd go. In this post, I'm going to tell you a little more about the practical side to my recent Postcard from Fishguard , where I joined a workshop aimed at gaining an income from travel writing... My previous experience of writing workshops isn't good; for me they usually result in writers' block, so I approached a whole weekend immersed in the world of writing with some trepidation. I needn't have worried - and once again I did have a (temporary) block - sympathetic and knowledgeable tutors, a great location (and weather!) with the company of 50 or so like minded people made the whole weekend an enjoyable one. Our tutor Simon Whaley created a relaxed vibe for his class of just two ladies. He has a ...

Last year I joined a creative writing group. Unlike my friends, writing fiction at first was way outside my comfort zone. Listening to the birdsong from my bed one morning, led to this piece of longform nature writing instead. It seems fitting to offer it to you in celebration of this year's Big Garden Birdwatch  which takes place this weekend. The links below will take you to the RSPB's information and birdsong audio file of each bird mentioned, so you can listen along as well as read. One day - possibly in January and definitely by February - there's a sense that spring is beginning to win its fight with winter. At last there's a hint of warmth behind the sunshine and the air seems washed clean, leaving a sky of benign blue. The clincher for me is the first song of the year from the great tit . You may know it; the loud call which sounds like a squeaky gate or a wonky wheelbarrow. It sounds clear and true in the trees at the side of our garden, and someti...

Another excuse for a view of Great Dixter: the Sunken Garden this time :) Emma Cooper, that all-round good egg of garden blogging has come up with a great challenge for April: spread a little blog love . I found out on Monday, because I was one of the first recipients :) In her kick-off post Emma says: It has been a bit of a gloomy old start to the year. The sun won’t come out and play, the NHS is being dismantled and anyone with a blog has been battling spam comments every day [too right - Ed ]. Now we can’t do anything about the first, and it feels like we can’t do much about the second, but we can bring some love to bloggers everywhere (because we do love them, don’t we?) and so I am starting the April Blog Love Challenge. Emma is commenting on 5 blogs a day, then sharing those posts back over at her blog. Hers will be a combination of old favourites and new discoveries. I've modified her challenge for my purposes because I've been trying to comment on 5 blogs a d...

Gayla Trail at You Grow Girl has started a creative writing club for gardeners called The Grow Write Guild . Every fortnight she's publishing a prompt. It's up to the reader to choose the medium in which to respond: writing, photography, artwork, a poem. Anything goes. The idea is to tell stories in some way, and that's great. The first one was posted a few days ago: My First Plant . I can't remember mine, but that's fine. It's OK to relate the story of the first plant which resonated with you, so that's what I'll do... My first plant ... was the humble radish at the age of 17. I know I was aware of and grew plants before then, but coming from a family of non-gardeners, not a single one has stuck in my mind. The radish was the first plant I chose to grow and I grew it at school for my A level Biology practical project. The Nuffield biology syllabus I studied placed a great emphasis on practical learning (e.g. we looked at Mendel 's original...