The birds know - redwings have been skimming in small flocks across the top of the woods last weekend, and a firecrest has been calling in the yew beside the driveway.

A weekend of named storms, and the trees, yet barely coloured, are already being stripped of their leaves, whilst swirls of hornbeam seeds twirl and helicopter in onto the doormat and across the kitchen flagstones whenever we open the cottage door. The beech trees were beginning to turn tawny, contrasting with the silvered evergreen holm oaks, and in the garden my newly planted guelder rose is tinted red and the rowan is burnishing in the shelter of the fence. Blackbirds found the burgundy crabapples in the last few days, alternating between those and the scarlet fruits of the yew.

I should be folding the dry laundry, emptying the dishwasher… instead I find myself drifting from cookery book, to window, to kettle…

The wind has me unsettled, or perhaps its the thoughts of returning to work tomorrow after a week off, or the dull after ache of yesterdays flu jab, or the quietness of the house in contrast to my thoughts.

I have the perfect job to do, to settle myself. On the driveway a pile of logs lingers under a tarpaulin; the remnants of the initial fervour of autumn. The main delivery was tipped on the gravel by the log shed weeks ago, and has mostly been stacked away. One pile remains however, and despite it usually being a job I enjoy and take an unhealthy satisfaction from, I have found my motivation elusive. We have been stepping around the inconveniently sized mountain for long enough.

In the end, it took me an hour, in my slippers and a wholly unsuitable item of snaggable knitwear. By which point the laundry load had finished and was ready to drag out and hang on the airer in front of the log-burner. And I could, in good consciousness, allow myself to sink into the corner of the sofa with a hot drink, Delia Smith, and the first blank page of a note book with two words written at the top in capital letters: FESTIVE PLANNING.

With one main pay day now left before December, I’m keen to get my ducks in a row before it all becomes a last minute panic. Right now, there still feels like there is plenty of time, and I can indulge myself in the delicious anticipation, that to be honest, I probably enjoy as much if not more, than the celebrations themselves.

This year I am craving a winter that is rural and rustic, simple and pared back; crisp walks and pub firesides, armfuls of holly and ivy, a few handmade gifts for love ones. A home made christmas pudding made at the end of November, a tray of mince pies in the freezer, a glass of hedgerow gin, and just a few specially chosen ingredients that sing out from the plate, rather than a mass consumption. We have decided on a whole roast duck for our main midwinter meal, so I am on the search for a British farm that rears their birds in an organic, free range, high welfare, traditional small scale way; the antithesis of the mass slaughtered, high intensity produced, frozen supermarket turkey. The sort of supplier where you know the first names of the farmers, and exactly how many miles from field to table.

My Favourite Food in Season (UK) - November/December

Game and wild venison
Beef, mutton, bacon and gammon
Parsnips, celeriac, celery
Savoy cabbage, kale, watercress
Brussel sprouts, chard
Rosemary, sage, bay and winter savoury,
Cranberries, chestnuts
Wild mushrooms, nuts and dried fruits
Hard mature cheeses
Stored apples and quince

This year I would like to try Jerusalem artichokes if I can get any, and I continue my search for sustainable fish from British waters - and the confidence to cook it!

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October seems to me the perfect month to celebrate poetry: surely autumn is the most poetic season of all? It is certainly the time of year I feel most inspired.

This year the theme for National Poetry Day is ‘Wonder’. What can inspire more wonder in the everyday that love in all it myriad forms?

October, I Love You

Overnight rain washed the last of September down the drain,

October is there in the robin’s refrain.

I click my pen again, again,

stare out the silver-streaked window pane.

I do not hear the drops on lead, above my head, but raining beech mast nuts in woods, instead.

The crumble of leaves beneath my tread, and rings of toadstools where fairies wed.

We’ll pick plump pumpkins from the plot tomorrow,

Line them up in golden sun; a festival row,

with the pears and apples hanging, teasingly low.

Then take the walk home sweet and slow.

When l say I love you, you’ll say I know,

(You’d already heard so in the robin’s refrain).

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Tuesday. I wake

in that unknowable, unnamed hour

when the flooded heartbeat

is a slick oil pool, of black ink

that drips through fissures in the fabric of the world.

That is when the fox steps through,

entering into my darkness,

into our dulled dumb world.

I lie breath held,

trying to still – to congeal – atoms

of supernovas and rock and deep-earth

chemicals into the soft fatted form of

body between the sheets,

in which I’ve shrouded myself

to keep out the cold and the dark and the monsters that lurk in the shadows.

Thin, scant protection this,

and the fox slips into bed with me.

Then my mouth and eyes and skin are filled with fox.

And my caged heart barks at the glass moon.

In that staccato note I know

a symphony of all that is fox:

Maw skank with back alley bins,

and paw bracing the syllable of cat-ice on the metaled lane.

Ears a fine tune of rat squeal as breath

steams with wet blood heat, when delicately plucking blackberries from the August hedge

to taste the cold feather of a January sky.

Indifferent defiance, and noisy, knotted passion, between the school playing fields, and the edge of the woods were I first snogged.

Amber eyes that judge the mangey skins of our existence and turn to forage in dewed grass for frogs.

I think of other encounters I have had with fox.

Those times when one has crossed the street in order to translate the purpose of the night.

Conjured from street lamp glow and corner shadow,

the eye gleam glint of star and crushed can beneath the canal bridge.

Iron sweet.

My stomach remembers the want,

need,

to write poetry the shape of fox.

Half tamed poems that make brief eye contact,

then are set loose,

taking their own wild self,

unreclaimable,

out where the street stutters to stitches of strange distance,

running away, carrying in its musked jaws

the form of brick gate pillars and alley entries

and the shape of vanishing beneath blackthorn where the jetsom of the town snags in slutty drifts.

And I turn over in tangled polyester sheets, already asleep.

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I ate it gazing at the image on a set of harvest season/autumnal placemats which are a recent purchase from a seller on Etsy and came in their original 'Cloverleaf' branded box with a care leaflet tucked inside. Two large mats and 6 of individual size. One of the large ones is currently looking lovely, standing up as decor in my kitchen. I know it's a bit early in the year to bring out the berries and golden leaves, but I couldn't bring myself to tuck them away in a drawer when they look so cheering.

And don't we all need something cheering just now…

I'm having to block out the news to keep functioning; every time wildfire updates appear in my feed, my heart shatters for all the people, animals, wildlife, and landscapes affected. All that legacy of hard work by conservationists in ancient forests, all that fear for communities, for homes, and all that terrible terrible loss. And all that worry now, for future seasons and climate changes. Tears of helplessness and frustration and sadness are close to the surface, and I have to go and stare at a greenfinch, or a song thrush, in our garden for a moment.

Today, there is another layer of sadness, but also gratitude in watching the birds. I refer, of course, to the news yesterday of the passing of legend Bill Oddie. It's was through birds that I first encountered the bearded, glasses wearing, sometimes grumpy (but always ready for joy) man on my tv screen, although I came to appreciate his comedy and love of music later. Bill Oddie's infectious joy for watching birds and all of nature inspired a lifelong passion in myself, as I'm sure it did for many of us. Does any one remember the episode of one of his programs (was it SpringWatch or his own series?) where Bill was disguised as a haystack at the side of a river, with a stick for a kingfisher to perch on?! And the one where he danced around on the heathland waving two white handkerchiefs to attract a nightjar?!

As a child and then a teenager, struggling to fathom out the world's seemingly complicatedly contradictory muddle of expectations, it was Bill Oddie who helped to teach me how to watch wildlife. That is where I found my refuge. I'd grown up on Sir David Attenborough's Earth series’ and Simon King's Big Cat Diaries, but it was Bill who showed me that I could connect with that same sense of natural miracle on my own doorstep. And how to tell a dunnock from a sparrow.

I have missed him on the tellibox this past decade or so, and was saddened to read of his long health battles. Don't worry Bill, I'll continue to tell anyone who listens (or doesn't!) that that bird going 'teacher teacher' in spring is a Great Tit!

Three cheers for a true 'Goodie'. RIP

I'm off to stare at some house sparrows - they really are doing wonderfully well in our hedge this year...

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Or, maybe it’s just the Dog Days of Summer.

We have all perhaps heard this phrase, associated it maybe with those delirium-hazed sultry days of July and August heat as the school year faded into the blurred rules of summer-break, those days that were gagged with the smell of sticky tarmac, and charged with the electro-static white noise of insects in tinder grass. Goose-grass seeds in your plimsolls, the anticipation of a thunderstorm, (is it just me, or did a 90’s childhood have more thunderstorms?), tongues stained blue by ice-pops, car horns blaring.

Thousands of years ago, it was all blamed on a star – all that tendency to flare up, to go out in the midday sun like a mad dog, the impulsiveness and nervousness of a sizzling summer. All that fire energy, and breathless rabid recklessness.

From early July to mid August, during the hottest days of the year, the Dog Star, or ‘Sirius’ - the hunting companion to the godly constellation of Orion – rises with the sun and hangs at its considerably brightest in the summer sky. Ancient Greeks, and Romans, both believed that the star’s influence accentuated the searing heat of the sun, exacerbating a tendency towards either madness or languidness, or ‘mad dog’ behaviour in people and animals, viewing the period as one prone to drought and disease. This time became known as The Dog Days of Summer, after Sirus’s supposed influence, and the idea of it being a time of unrest has persisted through the centuries.

Of course, we now know that the relative visibility and conjunction of a star and the sun cannot reasonably have exactly that effect – but which of us hasn’t felt a touch of madness under the unsolicited attentions of the summer sun?

This July has been a challenge, and I have definitely begun to feel entrenched in those Dog Days. Little niggles have accumulated to larger battles, and the intense heatwave has been testing all our resilience. Illness took away a beloved member of our little flock of chickens this week, and we witnessed helplessly the failing of a nest of Wrens that had been build above our bedroom window. Unexpected costs have dropped into the laps of loved ones, and tensions in the workplace make certain situations feel unsettled. In a country typically characterised by the changeability of its weather, the consistency of the forecast is almost unnerving as day after day crawls by in an intense repetition of sweat-soaked hours and febrile-stasis. UV levels are high, and the world feels bleached, stagnant, and breath-held, pinned by the glare of an overheated sun.

There has been glimmers of course: Saturday mornings spent gathering ruby strawberries at the local Pick-Your-Own, the delicious combination of garden rose and annual seed grown phlox, and the kindness of friends.

The weather for the forthcoming weekend and into next week seems settled in, with an undercurrent of anxious abnormality. The days stretch ahead; all full sun and 30 degrees; as hay ripens and cereal crops turn golden, the harvesters will be early to the fields to cut their losses, praying the dust will settle without flint spark. And all the while Sirius hangs hidden in the glare of the sun; maybe that impulsive feeling you may do or say something not quite of yourself, is the influence of a star after all.

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Spring is the green thin-needled skin-flash of the first fresh nettle.

Winter comes wrapped in woven blankets and long velvet ribbons, studded with citrus peel. Dusty down feather and soiled sawdust from the hen coop. The gift of brittle syllables of cat-ice on the metalled lane.

It is my ever reaching for the texture of things, the weft of the season, that I think means I don’t bond with Summer the way that Autumn is easy to love.

When the chill notches the sunset and mornings are tart as half-ripe apples, and the reassuring weight of wool settles once more on my shoulders I come alive again, but Summer is hot, sticky, and I’m reluctant to touch even my own salty skin.

I live within a deep need to know the feel of things, to be held by them: the way wood smoke cuts the throat, mulled then by amber hued scents from November meals. The dry touch of kindling. Congealing sap gum on the bruise-bloomed skin of plum. The lumpy, clumpy talismans in my pocket; wave-ground pebble, conker, knotted twine.

Wood grain and pottery all cry out to be handled, hefted, held. I’ll choose soft furnishings as much, if not more, by feel than style; clothes too – a cord trouser or denim jean for different moods. Even the cottage itself has texture: painted timber beams all knot-hole and woodworm burrows, russet brick hearth, ever-cold kitchen flagstones, and oiled wooden counter tops scattered with crumbs. The heavy black metal of the ash-swept stove contrasting with blonde faces of rough hewn logs. In winter we haul in the leathery elbow-patches of ivy, sweeping brushes of fir and resinous pine. In summer, perfumed silk-petalled roses.

It has become a learned thing, that texture adds depth to each day; keeping me rooted and my mind from loosening, else I fear it’ll all spin off away, untethered. Even light and sound and words have texture if you feel hard enough.

In Summer, I have to purposely take myself out to lay my body down on the scratch thatch prickle of mown hay grass. Teach me to pause and press my thumb into the fuzzy cheek of a ripe peach or delight in the pull and squelch of tearing into another ball of mozzarella. The questing tip-tap of the butterfly lighting on the sweaty crook of my arm.

Summer is all high light, and running shadows, and I, feeling small, race after as a young child might an older sibling; never quite catching grasp. Breathless and spinning, and laughing because the breeze and the flowers laugh, but always something, some knowing, just out of reach she doesn’t see in full.

I must make it my mission this life to learn the world by its lightest touch, to recognise its face with just a pressing of my fingertips. So that when I cannot see the beauty, when I am so clouded and inward looking or blinded by the light, I will still have a touch map of the things that lead my soul home to itself. The resistance of cake batter against the spoon, the brown papery promise of daffodil bulbs plunged into humus-rich September earth, the delicious stretch of brine-dried skin that keeps the dreamy shifting sea within reach for all the car drive home.

Love, Thyme xx

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There is a Robin singing outside the front door on New Years Day; a sign of hope if there is any. And buds in the daffodils that I planted last autumn, although that mostly just reminds me of my eco-anxiety and the fact everything’s all blooming wrong, the whole lot of it, so that’s less welcoming I suppose.

I started the day outside at pre-dawn, the sky a dark plum grey and air frigid with cold. Everything felt paused, as though I were a stranger that had walked in on a locals pub and all chatter stopped.

The chickens were waking, hungry and fluffed and I placed their feed and water in its spots to the run before retreating to the beckoning glow of the kitchen door. Something stopped me on the threshold, and I turned back to the shrouded garden. The sense of living things had resumed, inertia broken; the morning swelling into lightness. And far off in the wood came the sharp crack of the foxes yell, repeated. I could feel the grey breath, gold glint of eye, fire heat of internal spark that urged the animal to voice in the depth of winter dark.

Indoors, I turned the calendar to ‘January’, and crept back into white sheets that still retained a hint of warmth from a nights rest, and lay awake watching the room slowly pale and lighten.

New Years day, as ever, the brighter sister to New Years Eve. The latter has always made me feel a bit uncomfortable and a bit sick, like when someone pronounces a word totally wrong, or over boils vegetables. Forgivable, but awkward to witness.

I’m all for brightening the dark of midwinter of course, but I’ll save new whatever for the energy of spring, thanks very much.

Despite my misgivings, a fresh calendar year does offer an opportunity - its a useful date to start counting from. And this year, I’m counting birds. Most years I start off this with good intentions, but by the summer, have misplaced my notebook and got distracted by a myriad other things...

I have always been a birdwatcher; from early childhood begging my Dad to buy and help me hang up half coconut filled with fat, and red net bags of peanuts, then craning up at a steamed up bedroom window to watch as flocks of sparrows and starlings, and acrobatic blue tits, came to the garden bird table. My fascination with birds peaked in my teenage years, but my involvement with the hobby has rather tailed off in the decade or two so since. These days I’m more of an accidental birdwatcher: I still notice them when they cross my path, but I haven’t sought them out with purpose, for a while.

My first bird of 2026 was a Red Kite. Yes, a Red Kite. Anyone with an interest in or knowledge of UK wildlife conservation will recognise the significance of this statement. I saw my first Red Kite in the South Downs on a Saturday afternoon in 2006, and in the two decades since, things have progressed to the point where going even a few days without spotting one of these beautiful birds of prey on their approx. 6ft wingspan, somewhere overhead during my daily activities, is a rare occurrence. But it wasn’t always this way. Red Kites are an example of a hugely successful conservation effort here in the UK, (almost to the point where in some locations they have started to become so plentiful they are becoming victims of their own success) thanks to a number of incredibly prolific reintroduction projects. In the mid-1980s Red Kite numbers were staggeringly low and at risk of extinction in the UK, with perhaps less than 50 pairs remaining in a relict population in the Welsh hills. Now, 40 years later, there is an estimated population in excess of 4,4000 breeding pairs across the UK; 17% of the worlds Red Kites live here, both in our countryside and urban fringes. And as I opened the living room curtains onto a bright frosty garden at the very start of 2026, one of these majestic birds soared high in the winter sunshine, forked tail twisting in the air currents, long languid wings catching the pale yellow light. ‘Oh!’ I thought. ‘A Red Kite! That’s nice.’ and went and put the kettle on.

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I felt slow, and soft, quiet as the new moon. There were of course, plenty of jobs to do around the house, prep for festive gatherings in the coming week, but I couldn’t bring myself to move to start any of them. I wanted just to sit with the morning, breathe the stillness of the house, wait out the dark through this suns long pause.

Thoughts and intentions clustered and nudged at the edge of my mind, but scattered like wild animals in the flame light of a direct look, their form not yet fixed. The ageing year has been one of reflection, coalescing, introspection. Soon it will be time to drive forward, to put on new growth, but for now there is only to wait, know. To gather awareness, and ensure we are gently but well planted before the sap rises. We have worked hard to get here, we can afford to rest.

Am I ‘ready’ for christmas? Probably not. But am I ready for that week between christmas and new year when no one expects anything of anyone and I have no plans beyond finishing the remains of the festive cheese board at 11pm, and poking about the garden borders with a stick in one hand and glass of red wine in the other looking for snowdrops….oh yes certainly I am!

Dusk crept in as early as I’ve known it, washed down from heavy skies by leaden rain rods that catch like flint sparks on blackbird alarm calls in the holly hedge. Even the moon has turned her ancient face away. We are in the deep dark, the womb dark, like the papery bulbs planted in the good soil we settle and shift deep underground. Even the cat chooses the light of the fire side, watching in approval as I light a candle in the lamp in the window. I mean it as a defiance against the dark, and yet it seems to solidify the darkness beyond the glass, calling to it so that it presses tight up against the pane. This will be a long night. Tomorrow, the snowdrop spears will stand just a little taller, the thrush’s bell will chime a dawn, and cat will venture out again tiptoeing into winter sunlight. And I shall drink tea in the doorway, and wonder why we were ever scared of the dark at all.

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The hedge along the side of the garden, sits dense and scruffy edges; purple from the stems of hornbeam and dogwood, evergreens of yew and holly adding to its bulk. Small birds dart in and out along its length, hard to make out in the grey rain. as the evening clears and dries up for a spell just before dusk, a performance starts. A Song Thrush has chosen and emergent branch of yew as a theater, the rise of woods behind he sound board, the low finger of weak watery sun his spotlight. His pale breast is uplit against the rain darkened surroundings, vibrating with the force of his dropped notes.

The long leaf-rustling walks, or the lure of the wooded bank sides in spring when the first primroses poke through. Collecting eggs from the hens, still warm in the chopped straw. Coming home to a slow cooked stew. Woodsmoke, roses bursting bud, a cosy fireplace, splashing in the edge of a crystal clear stream…

The sore pull of muscles after a long day stacking wood, or cutting out dead branches from the hedge. The damp bedding hanging musty in the cold kitchen whilst you hug tight the rapidly cooling mug to tea, remembering you forgot to buy bread and cheese and craving a far away takeaway. The thick caking of mud around your boots (and seemingly everywhere else!) that you’ve just found have a leak where the foul water seeps in, trying to kick them off at the door to save walking chicken poo across the flagstones, fumbling with the weakening head torch with your other hand – no streetlamps here, or clear swept pavements. The car is due its MOT next week, a too-long ignored rattle probably means it will need expensive work to pass – but we can’t be without it this far up a single track lane. The lane that delivery lorry drivers hate because of the low Victorian railway bridge – trains long halted.

Countryside living takes resilience; its not always the picturesque image from those old chocolate box lids, and Waitrose commercials. The village pub with its roaring fire, is doing everything it can to desperately draw in more trade, the primary school only had a handful of of new September intakes.

Today’s lesson in rural resilience came in the shape of a small grey very angry rat. Generally speaking, if something looks like a rat, runs and hides like a rat, and squeaks like a rat, it probably is a rat – especially when it comes into your home in the jaws of your beloved feline friend. To say I was not particularly overjoyed to see said rat pinned behind the (unlit!) log burner by The Cat, early on a Sunday morning when I was still in my pyjamas, is perhaps the perfect example of classic British understatement. I was home alone, my husband having taken our one car to drive to work in a town over half and hour away.

There are a few essentials very rural household should own – a large torch of course, wellington boots obviously, a broom for sweeping hard floors…. draught excluders, and a rat trap. I rapidly closed the internal doors, blocking the gaps beneath with the draught excluders, lined up all the books, baskets, boxes and the like that I could lay my hands on to create a sort of corridor to the open back door, and peered into the fireplace to try and identify where the inconvenient critter had gone. Silence for a long while had me almost convinced that it had died of wounds or shock, forming a new worry of how would we remove the body, before we next wanted to light the log burner (can you imagine the smell…?!). Death was unconfirmed however, so there was nothing for it but to swing the rat trap into action. Thanks here are owed to my parents, who, living just over the hill, popped to the local hardware store once Sunday opening hours commenced, to purchase me a large metal humane cage trap. I really hate to use poison for a number of reasons, and didn’t want to put down deadly snap traps that could injure inquisitive paws, whiskers, or human fingers, and without transport I wasn’t able to reach the shops by myself.

The Cat and I both heard the trap spring. A bait combination of cat biscuits and peanut butter was never going to fail. By lunch time, the living room was returned to its usual configuration, and the rat had been transported far away along a bridal way to a field edge through the woods. There it can feed on spilt grain, and become food in turn for owl or other predator. Perhaps by sparing it, it will sate the hunger of the fox, keeping that creature in turn from the hen coop door.

Cat of course, is curled up fast asleep. Dreaming dreams that squeak and scamper no doubt.

I on the other hand, need to finally tackle my Sunday to do list – muck out the chickens, clean the kitchen floor, check the level in the oil tank, sweep wet leaves from where they have turned the brick path slippery as an ice rink, empty the dehumidifier tank and try to get another load of laundry dry. At least the views are prettier here, and most people don’t care if there’s twigs in my hair.

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Note: I realise that talking of rural resilience the weekend that is reeling from the aftermath of Storm Claudia, my seem insensitive. My rodent difficulties, pale to an easily hopped speed bump in comparison to the mountain faced by the individuals and communities facing devastating floods and damage in the wake of the rain or stormy weather in other parts of the UK. some of the videos and photos emerging on the news and social media are truly terrifying and heartbreaking for all concerned, and all watching on. My thoughts and compassion, although of little practical use I know, are with all those affected.

Of course, I have also started a little festive excitement, and indulged in a little shopping… not all of it for me! I am looking forward to a special Christmas Market outing next weekend, and I might get to the local lights switch-on too.

With all these goings on, the garden has been a bit neglected. I have at least moved the tender plants into my sunny shed – the standard Fuchsia, the Lemon Verbena, and the Auriculas – but the weather has been incredibly mild for the time of year. Looking at the forecast however, all that is set to change, with temperatures predicted to fall into low single figures at the start of the new working week, with clear bright skies. Oh… I’m talking about the weather; well, some things never change!

The window is open, and I can hear the high notes of a Robin singing from the hedge, answered by another from the brambly apple beyond the side gate. The scents to wet leaves, and woodsmoke from chimneys is worth cold toes and fingers as I sit and type. I can just see a branch of the old top-heavy pear tree beyond the window, bereft of any leaves and long stripped of its fruits. Maybe I’ll ask for a squirrel-proof bird feeder for Christmas, to hang just there. The make up of the congregation of birds I see in the garden, and my walks to and from work each day, has completed a total shift in characters from the summer months. Long gone now are the softly swooping Swallows, and the lightly flitting Warblers. Here instead are sharply pointed Firecrests in the evergreens, the staccato alarm calls of Blackbirds, the Mistle Thrushes hard rattle, skulking brown Wrens, and a black watchfulness of Crows. Occasional small parties of thrushes interrupt the grey sky, a thin cold ‘seep-seep’ call identifying them as migrating Redwing.

I am still drinking tea from a pumpkin-shaped mug, and craving sticky ginger cake, and iced cinnamon buns, but I am thinking about pigs-in-blankets, gravy, and fairy-lights. I think I’m ready for the rest and reset that winter is bringing.

Thank you for bearing with me over the past couple of months, and especially welcome to new subscribers who have joined in recent weeks. I really do appreciate your support.

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This post is just a brief note from me to let you know I’d like to be writing. For anyone who loves seasonal changes, and autumn in particular, September is full of inspiration. From dewy orchards and apples piled in wheelbarrows, to evenings in the potting shed starting hyacinths for winter blooms, and memories of sticky-back-plastic and new school shoes. I picked up my first conker of the season this week.

In the meantime however, my laptop has croaked and rolled over, all it’s metaphorical feet sticking up in the air and stiff as a board. I’m hoping my tech support (my brother) can enact a successful resuscitation… but until then, I’m restricted to a few ‘Notes’ from my phone, to share moments and Small Things.

I hope to be back to writing full articles soon. Oh well, guess I’ll pop the kettle on. Everything’s better with a cup of tea… right?

Keep noticing things,

Sophie

Husband and I sat around the firepit last night, cooked supper of potatoes over the flames, drank sloe port made two winters ago. I can still smell the smoke on me. If I breath it in deeply enough, it’ll taste of raking piles of damp autumn leaves, the tang of a glass of apple juice, cold goose-call air, a warm hand held.

The toaster pops, and I reach for the jar of bramble jam.

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The universe can sometimes work in mysterious ways. I had planed a short cycle on my trike in the early morning cool, before the paths got crowded with bank holiday weekenders – there is a new section of cycle path close to me, an extension along the old railway line that passes the cluster of cottages, that has just opened. A problem with Beatrice’s brakes however, meant I set out on foot instead. If I had cycled, I probably wouldn’t have locked eyes with the roe deer in the berry laden scrub, or picked a ripe juicy blackberry from the brambles that reached out from the embankment, or been in the right place at the right time to watch a raven playing in the branches of a dead tree. I also wouldn’t have taken the diversion via the footpath, down off the railway line into the village, skirting the cricket pavilion with its scent of creosote with an imagined hint of leather, and, on a spur of the moment impulse, popped into the Weald and Downland Living Museum.

The museum has become world famous in recent years, thanks to being host to the TV phenomenon ‘The Repair Shop’, but my relationship with this wonderful place goes back much further. The sun was beginning to heat up with a late august swell, and stepping out of the visitor center and strolling across the cobbled market square, the air was instantly filled with that distinctive familiar mixed scent of herbs, lingering woodsmoke, and warm roof tile. Originally opened in the early 1970s, the museum covers 40 acres of hillside, with woodland, gardens, a mill pond, and of course 50 historic buildings dating from 13^th to 19^th century. Each building came from the local area of Sussex and Kent, and was painstakingly reconstructed piece by piece on the museums site, by passionate and skilled crafts people. Now, the heritage of these buildings is kept alive with demonstrations and hands on activities, tended gardens and traditional skills, for the enjoyment of countless visitors and the education of students alike. I was a volunteer at the museum myself, some 15 years ago as an older teen/college student, but have also been visiting since I was a young child. Wandering between the flint and brick, the fennel stalks and hawthorn berries, on this visit, I realised how much I had missed the place over the past few busy years, and how there is something incredibly restorative about the ambience there. Just knowing there is still somewhere I can go, so close to home, where marjoram still pushes through wattle fencing, wood-shavings pile up on warm workshop floors and geese graze beneath orchard trees, where jackdaws pull thatching straws and the sun ghosts through smoke swirls, pigs rootle beneath beech trees behind a cottage, and a kettle boils on a black stove…. I feel I can breathe easier that I have in a long time.

I didn’t get home until early afternoon.

It was bramble jam again for supper. The hens were in roost long before they were just a couple of weeks ago. The afternoon had been warm, but a damp began to drop in with the night. The soft thud of windfall fruit came now and again from the open window.

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Mid-August, and I am preparing for my favourite time of the year. Have you seen it beginning? the subtle shift as growth tilts towards harvest, the Northern Hemisphere begins its slant away from the sun, and the next season waits in the wings.

For the first time in months, my early Sunday morning cup of tea on the back doorstep was clasped in chilled fingers, and goosebumps rose on my sun-dried flesh. I moved further out into the garden, marveling at the cold air, and the dew that would soon seep through my slippers from the scorched grass. My neighbours were all still tucked up in their homes; this is a stolen hour when all the world is mine alone. Marigold flowers were still tightly closed, borage bowed over, and out in the meadow beyond the garden a silver mist shifted low over the hogweed stubble and bleached stems. The warmth of my tea mug contrasted deliciously with the fresh sense of chill, and my mind felt lighter and clearer than it has for weeks. At first, it appeared the Grey Squirrel was the only other up and about this early, even the wasps were quiet, but the scolding of a Blackbird from the corner of the garden behind the compost heap seemed to be the alarm for other birds: Wood Pigeons ploughed heavily from the tops of Ash trees, Song Thrush ascended the Elder bush. Liquid metal trills of a hundred or more House Martins filled the clear blue sky, swirling like glitter, as the flock morphed and spread, high over the roof tiles of the cottage, appearing closer to the slice of moon that was still hanging above the garden than to my upturned face.

Logs are stacked reassuringly in the two cupboards either side of the fireplace, ready to to be laid in the log burner when times comes. Blankets fill the basket beside the hearth.

I have sown Wallflower seeds, in the raised bed where I cleared the old wiry skeletons of Cornflowers and Sweet Peas. They germinated in 3 days, and need watering daily. A bag of Daffodil bulbs rattles around the boot of the car; an impulse buy in the supermarket this weekend.

I have a four-day-weekend including the summer bank holiday Monday, and have been researching recipes for apple herb jelly, and counting seed packets of salad leaves. I have started buying Sunflowers; a private tradition in August when British grown bunches arrive in the shop, a counter point to the Narcissi that fill my vases in January.

We sanded and oiled the wooden kitchen counter tops, and have mown the wildflower meadow area in the garden to help scatter the seeds. Autumnal mugs the shape of pumpkins and cauldrons or patterned with berries, have been dug out of the dresser cupboards and replaced those florals we’ve used all summer on the kitchen hooks. Favourite jumpers have moved to the front of the hanging rail in the bedroom.

We have a list of jobs on the coffee table: clear gutters, charge head torches and stock up on batteries, service the car, buy heating oil, visit new bookshop that’s opened in town, re-waterproof wax coat, try out new cinnamon pancake recipe, check tide times before holiday.

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Northern Hemisphere Midsummer; longest day and shortest night. (Summer Solstice: June 21^st)

It’s always been a turning point in cultures and calendars throughout the ages.

This is when the sun switches from lengthening days to lengthening nights, seeming to pause in her transit of the sky for a long breath.

The earth has reached her peak growth and now it’s time to bloom.

All of spring builds towards June, the mid point of our calendars, the pinnacle of growth and canopy. The oak leaves are filled with tannins now; and will grow increasingly dark and dust-filmed. The frothy effervescence of the lane sides has taken on a heavier breath and the first hint of hay-hues creep into the fields.

Go gently on the heaths and hedge boundaries. Adders bask, and the Roe deer doe has her twin kids hidden, dappled in the shade. Brambles begin to bloom, picked over by fledgling goldfinches. Midsummer days promise runner beans and garden gates, calendula in the veg patch, and evening walks to the point on the lane where a gateway suggests a place to stand and stare. The years first fruits, and the garden’s best butterflies fresh from the meadows.

June; a maiden still, flitting on butterfly wings across the heath. July hangs slumbering by the waterway. August ripens with golden, golden glows. September’s wood-seams are richly steeped in inky bramble juice. October flames against the dying light. November gets sharpened by the first frosts cold touch. December we turn in and gather, lighting our own lights in solidarity with the sun that sits as its most diminished – a counterweight to full-fired Midsummer. Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice is my best-loved time of year, with the harvest festival of the Autumn Equinox my pinnacle highlight, (I’ve often said my favourite colour is ‘October’) but it all starts with Midsummer.

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This week has been my birthday; I was a midsummer baby. (I often wonder if this is why I love the late summer and subsequent autumn: as my new eyes first learned to focus, it was full-bodied days of mists and fruitfulness – ‘Keats days’ that formed the world that greeted me.)

There were a few requests I held for my birthday; a good thunderstorm, a midsummer garden party with friends and family, to stay up with the sun into the solstice night, and a tricycle.

In the end, I willingly exchanged the thunderstorm for a morning on the beach, ate copious amounts of cake and drank home made iced teas under metres of bunting in the garden surrounded by flowers and family, beside a firepit that blazed bright into the evening, and I did indeed become the owner of a tricycle (more on that later).

Husband had some errands to run for family dependents in the morning, but it was low tide and the beach was calling. He dropped me off by the cafe, and I purchased the largest, stickiest, Belgian bun from behind the counter, for my birthday breakfast, eaten of course from the paper bag. The sky, open, bright, and blue, canopied above me as I picked my way over shingle, avoiding eye-contact with some seagulls that reminded me of school bullies loafing on the bus-stop corner. A curving sweep of white beach huts, each with a deft eye-liner stroke of coloured paint along the roof ridge, gazed out to sea engaged in their ever-long conversation with the weather. Today, it was sunshine, heat, and glint. I went in search of the sea. I found it a long way out over the sand and green seaweed, wet stones and mussel beds; over sand so saturated with seawater it jiggled and shifted as I tiptoed amongst grey rocks topped with inhabited shells, until the pools and waves merged and melded and suddenly I was ankle deep and the water swirled not just tantalisingly ahead but beside and around and behind; I was in the sea. Standing firm, but in a place that wasn’t solely land. A liquid liminal space; at once air and light and water. I tried to imprint the impression of the moment that was that place, onto my minds eye; the full face of sun, the white lift of the Little Egrets wing and trailing leg, the hard vulnerability of Periwinkle and Mussel shell, the liquid light of water that tasted of sharp salt on my tongue without a drop passing my lips.

I filled my soul (and then returned to the cafe to fill the physical with a full English breakfast, alongside my returned husband, at a window seat overlooking the beach).

A short to-and-fro discussion about what to do next, eventually led us to a family-run bike shop an hour along the coast road. I have passed this shop for years; it’s been there for decades, a true inter-generational business. The shop itself sprawls in a tangle of spokes, rust, tyres, and expertise, over the ground floors of a terrace of lime-and-brick cottages set back from the road by a pavement and cycle-path. The bikes spill out the front door onto the pavement in an assortment of frames and styles.

“One day I’ll have a tricycle!” I declared, when passing the shop on the way to a family-favourite birdwatching spot, peering out the back window of my Dad’s car. (I probably proceeded to inform my parents, who were by now used to my rambling fantasies, that I would also have a scruffy Jack Russell terrier to run alongside and would fill the back basket with picnics and books.) I was likely just single figures of age, and having never fully mastered two wheels, had been the only child in my school year to have to sit out of taking their cycling proficiency test. Well, it has taken the best part of 25 years or so, but I now own a tricycle*, complete with front wicker basket, rear wire cargo basket, and a bell. Sadly, I am yet to adopt a dog, but I do still have a penchant for picnics and books.

*My thanks to Reg, of Barreg Cycles, Chichester for his advice and service.

A few hundred metres from my doorstep, is the Centurion Way cycle-path, built along the route of the old railway branch line. So this is where I took the newly named Beatrice, for our maiden ride. Beatrice is a 32 year old, blue, Pashley Picador, and her arrival means that Sunday mornings will never be the same again. A little more practice is needed before I feel brave enough to take her out in traffic, and certainly there is some work to be done on some new muscle groups formed by the Sussex hills, but as I coasted along between Skylarks and Whitethroats, past ripening fields and hedgerows filled with pink bramble flowers and twisting bryony, I was stuck by a sense of escape I have only on rare occasions found since childhood. Every kid loves that moment of freedom when they first head out alone on their new bike; it’s just that for me, that moment came aged thirty-three.

Already I have plans to go out again – I have earmarked a potential new birdwatching patch, a hobby I have greatly missed in recent years, just five-and-a-half road-free miles from home, complete with bike rack to chain Beatrice too, and benches for a thermos of coffee and a rest, to which I plan to return very soon. It is a community park, consisting of a number of paths around lakes and reedbeds; a paradise for early morning runners, dog-walkers, birders, and local residents; created as mitigation for the environmental and community impacts of building a nearby housing estate. Standing water and wetland habitat is rare in my locality, at least within walking (or cycling!) distance, so I look forward to visiting with my binoculars and/or camera as the summer drifts into autumn and migrant birds begin to appear. Then riding home for a roast dinner, with thick glossy gravy and a dollop of home-made hedgerow jelly… ingredients foraged from the seat of a tricycle named Beatrice, and carried home in her basket.

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Now, as we approach another summer I thought I’d bring an update on our chicken keeping journey.

Betty and Ginger will now be approximately 2 years old, and I am pleased to say, seem fully recovered from their bedraggled condition that they arrived here in. Both hens moulted in the autumn, and regrew a full set of feathers in time for the winter, patching up the gaps in their plumage. They have filled out their frames, no longer scrawny now that they are enjoying a good diet, and they have really blossomed in confidence and personality too, with their own distinct place in the flock pecking order. That pecking order was disrupted slightly this spring when Mabel, our Light Sussex hen, passed away in March, exactly a year to the day that she and her companion dolly came to live here at the cottage. Dolly, our aloof and slightly snobbish BlueBell, quickly took advantage of the top spot, becoming dominant hen. Ginger saw her chance and made a lot of effort to cosy up politically with Dolly, with Betty ending up as the lowest ranking member of the flock – although, she’d not adverse to reminding Ginger that she too could’ve been up the pecking order if she’d been bright enough to act quicker. They are a closely bonded pair – more often found together than apart, and their closeness and anxiety is more apparent when Dolly is in the coop egg laying and they feel like they are without their leader and protector.

During a recent weekend, I decided it was time for a complete reset of the (4mx3m) walk in run, and spring clean of the coop.

We have a Nestera coop, which is made from recycled plastic and clips together with metal pins, making it super quick and easy to take apart, hose down, and reassemble. I am really pleased that we made the decision to buy this coop, rather than a traditional wooden one which would need far more maintaining. I removed all the items from the run, and racked all the detritus from the floor. Sticks and leaves, woody stems of vegetable plants, and of course plenty of chicken poo. I sprinkled some ground sanitising powder, and than spread a fresh thin layer of builders sand. I use sand in the chicken run as it makes a soft, free draining, mud free surface, that is good for the hens’ feet, and easy to poo-pick and keep clean. The coop went back in once dry, and I repositioned it to get better shelter from the winds, as we find they tend to blow through the run from end to end. I added enrichment in the form of logs, hanging peck treats, and a swing. My girls have never yet used the swing that Husband made them, but I live in hope! Fresh bedding in the coop (chopped straw), clean a refilled drinkers, and their feeder of layers pellets were last to go in, and finally I could call the ladies in from the area of garden we allow them to graze free range. Throughout the process all three chickens kept trying to ‘help’ and were very excited and intrigued by the goings on. Once they had explored the new run layout, it was apparently time for an afternoon nap…. And I couldn’t agree more!

Now that we have owned chickens for over a year, I have to say I can’t imagine that I’ll ever not have hens in my life. They are a commitment, and of course hard work at times, and a worry at other times. It was very sad to say goodbye to dear old Mabel when her final night came. But they also bring so much joy, and a soft routine to my day that has become a vital part of my life.

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As I read Mums cursive handwriting on the back of the postcard whilst I drank my tea a few days ago, I was reminded of the visits I have made to Wembury over my lifetime; first with my parents and brother, later as a teenager, then again, after a long gap, in late 2019 with the man who during that holiday became my fiancé, and I have since married. After that last visit, I was inspired to write a blog laced with nostalgia and memories…

The following was originally written and published on my Wordpress blog May 23, 2020

“ We have reached late May, and just over a week after a late season frost, the sun beats down with force. There’s no rain forecast for at least two weeks. A fine film of dust is settling in the leaves of the oaks, the first layering which will dull the spring growth to its darker summer green. Great tit chicks in the tree hole are soon to fledge. From above, the knitted canopy now plunges the woodland floor into shadow; this is what the early spring flora were racing against, the dying of the light. Clouds of pook flies sparkle in sunbeams. Summer is not yet mature, but spring grows old. Breeze winnows the cow parsley in the lane, thinning the petals from the airy heads.

What image do you see when you close your eyes? When I dream, the land is forever later on in the year on a soft slide from summer into autumn. (The land in turn dreams in trees.) I though, am above the land, detached on a voice of breeze. And the Great Mew Stone rises before me from the bountiful seas. Flint-glint of gannet, salt-stiffened wings, headlong angled, a wind-puppet with absent strings.

I’ve been thinking about this place a lot recently, it seems to haunt me. Wembury bay, where two headlands dip to allow a streams chilly waters to giggle out over the sand to its mother sea. I am not a natural dweller of the coast, my natural habitat is that of the woodland edge and field hedge, the wild garden and downland combes. I visit the beaches now and then, as I wrote in one of my poems; “as though to check the sea’s still there.” I cannot swim and am wary of water. Plants and creatures of the maritime seem remote and unfamiliar in both character and name. There is however one section of coastline that would, if it asked, beguile me into forsaking my grassy knolls and ant mounds, beech hangers and totty land. I’d leave Sussex for a life bewitched by a view of the Mew Stone.

The inspiration of a place can be subtle and uncanny. For years, if you asked me to doodle a drawing of an island, all would have the same distinctive slant, the same rocky footings, a shifting sea-sky that was hued by my mood. It was only last year when I reconnected with a childhood holiday location that the clues fell into place. I stood in the valley mouth, cold stream water eddying over my feet, and gazed at the island that lay off the bay and felt a link click. Wembury, nr Plymouth in South Devon. I remembered towering foxgloves, but this was the last week of August so the June blooms had long since faded, and I’m taller now. The smell of salt on sun ripened blackberries, the robins’ twittering in the valley shade. Gull-white against clouded sea. And a triangular island, rocky footed with a distinctive slant…all just where I left it two decades before.

I don’t remember exactly what age I was when I first stayed at Churchwood Valley, maybe 6 or 7. I recall images, like mental postcards, rather than specific holidays. It must have been May break, or early July when school had finished. Each day we’d breakfast; I’d prefer to feed my crusts to the birds, insisted my dad put out a few peanuts purchased at the park shop for the squirrel. Bickered with my elder brother over the jam, or who-kicked-who under the small table. We’d leave the chalet in dappled sunshine and dubious shorts. Foxgloves grew tall and spire-like on the banks; bee-throated and just faintly unnerving. It seemed like we never reached the end of the lane before the drip drip patter of rain beat us too it. Did we really have cream tea every afternoon? I have no memory of spending time on the beach and rock pools back then, maybe the coverlet of tide was always pulled up to the shore. Walks on the headlands are recalled only in the impossible solid tremor of a hovering falcon, fixed hunger-eyed above the rough. I smell gorse, hear their seed pods pop to a cracked twist, but that is a memory that belongs to another place, I’m not sure there’s any gorse on Wembury’s headlands. Hydrangeas in the valley, crooked pines and sea campion, yes, and brambles.

I returned to Churchwood Valley and Wembury bay, the summer I left school. By then I had caught the wildlife photography bug, and viewed much of the holiday through a camera lens. There still was squirrels on the patio, robins at breakfast. A pair of bank voles climbed the brambles below the windowsill of my parents room.

This time when I returned I delved deeper into the place, revelling in each reveal. I needed to know it, to form a new and equally valid connection between the spirit of place and my own self. Forge new associations and new memories fit for a different phase of my life. The Wembury I discovered last summer, (one of rock pools and starfish, pipe fish, winkles, hidden crabs, silky leather touch of seaweed, walks after breakfast and so much more), may have shared the same soul as the one I knew in childhood, but we met as strangers and I delighted in that new bond.

I keep a postcard on my desk, propped against the lamp beside my books, tattered maps, and jars of findings. And sometimes when oaks and chalk meadows and flint-faced cottages become dulled by familiarity, it’s good to gaze on the image and know the view of the Mew Stone will be waiting when I return. Maybe even now, the falcon hangs on this stiff breeze that has picked up, hunger-eyed above the rough on the headland.

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In the past I have apologised (on my blog/social media) for the dip in posting frequency at this time, but I have been busy; this is the season of being busy and of happenings, and that’s ok. I have been planting tomatoes and trying to raise seedlings, juggling frantic work days with keeping our small household fed and clean (husband has picked up the slack, for which I will never be ungrateful). I have been making fresh bread, and cleaning out the chicken coop, and watching house sparrows pick grit from the cobbles by the garden door. And spending time with visiting overseas family, soaring above the Sussex coast on a helicopter flight, and taking the train to London for Chelsea Flower Show. Building a pond, not mowing the grass. Re-watching early90s episodes of ‘TimeTeam’, and eating platefuls of fried leftover mash potatoes, black pudding, and egg, on days when my hormone cycle demanded the calories. Adding flowers to salads.

May started with a bank holiday Monday and one of my favourite tasks: stacking wood. We have oil heating and hot water here at the cottage, and although the hot water is obviously essential, we try to eek out the fuel by turning down the thermostat and using the log burner throughout autumn and winter. Most jobs around the cottage and garden are shared out with my husband – we don’t have many things which we designate exclusively to one or other of us. Stacking the log store however, is something I try to reserve for myself alone. Husband doesn’t get bank holidays off work, so I was home alone that Monday morning when I stood facing the 3m³ pile of logs that had been tip-delivered onto our driveway the Friday before. I ensured all other tasks were done: chickens fed, washing on the line, made a cuppa in my favourite enamel mug, and set to work. I had a system; 12inch logs on the right, 8 inch to the back and left. Two rows deep, any logs with mould or fungi put to one side for the next firepit burn. The paper-sap smell of the timber, the rhythm of the movement and the satisfaction of the perfect fit… but best of all that slight ache in the muscles at the end of the day and the reassuring sight of a whole winter’s guaranteed warmth, stored and promised, and tangible.

The tempo picked up when my parents-in-law landed at Heathrow from Canada. Despite the high prairie of Alberta certainly now being their home since emigration 17 years ago, the joys of England in May shall always be a lure to those who remember it.

My mother-in-law is a keen pilot. Flying is her passion. So, when the opportunity came up to book a helicopter flying experience, it wasn’t to be missed. We happily agreed to help out as taxi for the morning, heading to Shoreham Airport (recently renamed ‘Brighton City Airport’, but it will always be Shoreham to me.) just an hour or so away.

I never thought for a moment that I’d see the Sussex coast from that angle. I certainly never thought I’d be sitting in the back of a 4 seater helicopter (a Robinsons R44) with my mother-in-law, watching whilst my husband had the opportunity to take the controls and fly us over the sea, and countryside, surrounding Worthing and Littlehampton. During my MIL’s flight, husband and I sat in the back seats alternating between gazing down at the toy town of Brighton beside the blue green sea, and grinning madly at each other. It was an unforgettable experience.

I thought, after spending the final few day’s of the family’s visit to the UK doing days out with them, I was going back to work for a rest…

But this was May, the busiest month in the gardening calendar. Chillies to pot, tropical displays to manage, cacti in full bloom, wall-trained stone fruit growing by the day. Loofa plants and fuchsias, coleus and begonias, passionflower and peppers… the summer displays were taking off. (If you bump into a glasshouse gardener, in fact, any gardener, in May… maybe make them a cup of tea?!)

And then I volunteered to take a day out to support my employer’s trade stand at Chelsea Flower Show.

I am still planning to write a separate Substack post about ‘My First Chelsea Experience’, so for now I will simply include a gallery of just a few of my favourite moments and views from the day.

Those are all the ‘write home about’ moments of May, but the month was filled with small joys too. I found a no-kneed bread recipe which has allowed us to have a fresh loaf of bread most weekends. We built a pond in the garden which was visited by a dragonfly the very next day, and been a hit with the resident pair of goldfinches for drinking and bathing. I weeded out all the billions of forget-me-nots from the garden borders. And we finally had rain.

Usually, (hopefully), June is when I take a breath. It is my birthday month too, so I shall be celebrating another trip around the sun with family and friends. I'll be eating fresh bread with real salted butter, inhaling the heady scent of roses, and chasing those beautiful summer eves.

June is honeysuckle and shrub roses, picnics and bunting.
And the month when a very special flower has put in an unexpected appearance in my weedy eden of a garden.

Tell you more about that soon.

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That first nest was in a birch-log styled nest box, wedged in the crook of the drainpipe, outside our ground floor 1980s-extention bathroom. For the next two weeks, whenever I was sat in the bath with its chipped enamel, (noting the cobweb and damp patch under the back of the sink basin, which I could only see from this angle), 5inches of water ebbing lukewarm around my pale limbs, I could gaze up at the bathroom window, wooden frame propped open, and hear the ‘tsee-tsee-tsee’ chatter and blurred movement of small birds behind the dimpled glass.

Blue Tits are the colours of a spring day in bird form; forsythia blooms against a clear sky, with a patch of white cloud on each cheek. Possibly one of our most familiar garden birds, Blue Tits, or Cyanistes caeruleus to give them their scientific name, are estimated to have a European population of up to 40 million pairs, with an approximate 3,600,000 breeding territories in the UK each spring and summer. Even in winter these birds are a common sight, often in large roving flocks, teamed up with other species tits and similar small birds, regularly coming to gardens in search of food. Naturally a woodland edge species, Blue Tits readily adapt to garden habitats, with their wide ranging diet of insects, fruit, nuts and seeds, making them easy to attract and cater for with supplementary feeding and/or wildlife friendly gardening methods. Nest boxes offer a similar niche for nest building as the Blue Tits preferred tree cavities, so are quickly accepted and utilised if well located.

I am writing this substack post, sitting at our garden table, listening to the high pitched squeaking of a whole new brood of Blue Tits. The nest box is a few metres away on the side of our outbuilding, tucked in amongst the buds of a climbing rose. Busy parent birds are dashing back and forth with a clockwork regularity, bringing a steady supply of caterpillars and other invertebrate food to the hungry chicks. The pear tree on the corner of the patio, not in full leaf and bereft of the glowing white blossom it produced earlier in the spring, is a favourite perch, and, the first thing the chicks will aim for when they take that first precipitous flight. From there, its through the garden border full of Aquiligea, and into the thick cover of the native hedge the forms the garden boundary.

If the weather is kind, the adults may well have a second brood, doubling their chances of sustaining the population into next spring.

Blue Tits may be common place and ‘ordinary’, but their presence is an essential component of my garden. From my earliest memories, gardens have always included Blue Tits – from buying red net bags of peanuts from the pet shop to hang up as feeders on cold frosted mornings, to begging my Dad to help me build a bird bath, to the first fledging from a nest box I provided…

Each year now I wait anxiously for the day the Blue Tit chicks fledge from the box, like the return of the Swifts in Ted Hugh’s poem, a small personal moment of reassurance: there was enough caterpillars in the oak trees, the world’s still working.

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It is evening, 9^th April 2022, 5.30pm, and I am standing at the cooker stirring parsley into an unpromising mixture of root vegetables and oats flavoured extensively with paprika. I am following a recipe for ‘Vegetable and Oatmeal Goulash’ from a little book of 1940s cookery, which has become one of a small collection that have formed the guiding principles of my culinary efforts for the past three weeks. I am longing for a big bowl of cheesy pasta eaten mindlessly in front of another episode of ‘Escape to the Country’.

There is still some debate over who’s idea it was first; Husbands or Mine, but however the conversation began this was the result. For four weeks, 1^st April to 8^th May, the two of us would attempt to mirror an approximation of a 1940s life, sticking to a restricted diet based on British Food Rationing figures. (We both still had full time jobs to go to – so we retained the use of our cars for that purpose, and did not venture into the world of soap rationing, nor disconnect the washing machine! We did however alter our habits, turned off the TV, and spent free time engaged in era-suitable pursuits.).

As the month approached we did a final stock of the single kitchen cupboard we would allow ourselves access too, and shut the freezer door tight. That meagre cupboard, and the fridge (in lieu of a cold pantry), our weekly shop from the butchers, the milkman’s delivery, and our fortnightly veg box delivery then became our provisions for the duration of the challenge.

Rationing restrictions fluctuated during the years of, and after the Second World War, not completely lifting in the UK until the early 1950s. We took our figures from a consensus of a number of books, and were working with levels similar to that of 1942.

It was a fascinating month, eye-opening, sobering, reconnecting, and challenging. You can still read all the details from day to day here at my old ‘LifeThymes Blog’: Victory Rations Project – LifeThymes

But here we are three years on. Another VE Day, has passed, but is the connection I felt during the Victory Rations Project still there? Well, yes and no.

These days I am less specifically focused on replicating 1940s style and life; my hair is too short for victory rolls, I grab the ready rolled pastry in the supermarket. We fall back on ready made pizza more often than I’d like to admit.

And yet… There is comfort in knowing that if I needed to, I could make that pastry. Onions are still rarely used whole, half always being saved in the fridge to spread over to another recipe, despite them being inexpensive now.
I still worship cheese.
One dinner, regularly makes two or even three: we love our leftovers. And I will always have the voice of all those recipe books in the back of my head to give advice, and indeed comfort, if we find ourselves in time when we need to tighten our belts.

Having been born in the first couple of years of the early 1990s, husband and I are very aware how fortunate we are. Tap your finger and shopping is delivered to your door. Tap again and the knowledge of the world is displayed in front of you. He doesn’t ask me who I vote for, or have to have his name on my bank account. The washing machine has a 30 min cycle, and there’s a spare freezer in the garage. But we have also lived through repeated recessions, government lead austerity, global pandemics… grown up desensitised to news coverage of war, famine, and hate crime. We are part of the renting generation with little hope of owning a home, always just one or two paychecks away from disaster.

These days, I might cook some vegetables and potato pastry in an imitation of the infamous Woolton Pie, just for fun. I might also cook it, just to remind myself how much we can make from very little, and be grateful for the days we don’t have to.

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