Our local villages had an open day recently - and I went to have a look around a neighbour's saffron farm. I had not realised until...

I love June - the start of summer and the weather is starting to feel hot but not, usually, unbearably so. Flowers are at their peak as...

Tender edibles can go out into the garden now - tomatoes, chillies, basil, aubergines, peppers, courgettes can all be planted outside...

The popular shrubby salvia is really easy to propagate and now is the time to do it. If your friend has a nice example of Hot Lips (the...

Our chickens have been laying some pretty odd eggs of late. We have had beautiful.large spotty eggs, small ones from our new pullet (a...

TS Elliot called April "the cruellest month" and, although the context is different (he was writing about Europe in the wake of the first...

It is raining heavily today - at last. The garden is grateful and, as the first rain fell, the soil gave up a distinctive smell - called...

I always think that Pope Gregory Xlll must have enjoyed a joke when he created February. It is the shortest month, but it is one of the...

We are on holiday - island hopping in the Atlantic while our alter egos, Dick and Susie, (yes really) stay at our house in France to...

I write this on New Year's Eve (sad person that I am) having come inside from a glorious afternoon outside. Today we saw temperatures of...

In 2004 we bought an old farm which still had a few old plum trees on it, but they produced very small fruit. A neighbouring farmer...

The name was new to me and I have kept hens for most of my life, but another family member identified it immediately. One of our little...

I know this is late and there has been significant radio silence from the blog for the last six weeks, but activity is resumed and, if...

We have a large clump of bamboo. It was here when we arrived, has the potential to be highly invasive and we should have taken it out at...

What needs to be done in the garden in September depends so much upon the weather. It is one of those change-over months which can mean a...

On our kitchen windowsill - tarragon macerating in white wine vinegar, some rather optimistically taken soft wood cuttings and ripening...

This evening I am wandering around the garden at what I hope will be the end of the last canicule of 2022, notebook in hand. I want to...

I have never known heat like this. It has been sustained for week after week and we find ourselves in the third official "canicule" -...

I write this on June 30th as we approach sun baked July (it is currently raining heavily). At least that means that I should not have to...

And now it is summer…expect rain imminently. Or possibly. Despite a very wet early spring already there are water restrictions in France....