Today is my mother’s 90th birthday. She was born at home in a lovely old house in Kentford. When ever I drive past this house I look up at the large bedroom window and imagine her opening her eyes in...
“Wow £4.19 for 15 strawberry seeds. Is it really worth buying these?” Danny shook the seed packet pensively. “We couldn’t buy 15 plants for £4.19. Even at the church fete. I want to grow enough for...
My food dehydrator is turning out to be a winner. For years I’ve often had the frustration of running out of an essential ingredient and having to adapt my cooking plans. I now have access to a large...
Working in the vegetable patch is muddy. There is also a long grassless path straight down the lawn – this is where the Min Pin gang pounds up and down. It’s the most direct route to the mouse hole...
I dragged in the thoughtful gift from Anne Mary’s Caledonian pine tree and started to pull off the needles. They came off reasonably easily but they had a little brown husk on the ends that attached...
I was thinking the other day about the time when I collected my first colony of bees. I had been helping out on the Cambridge Bee Keeping Association stall at a country fair. One of the gang of...
I can be a bit of an ostrich when it comes to animal cruelty. I’m happy to donate but I can hardly bear to see or read about the plight of animals trapped in a hellish world. So many humans can get...
This is another in our skinflint soup series. This delicious soup was run up with leftovers that could easily have just been thrown away. They made an elegant soup. The two key ingredients are...
I love the light in a lot of Carel Weight’s paintings. He often favours dusk – the time the French call day for night – the brief drift of minutes when everything seems to shimmer in a strange...
It was Danny’s turn to buy the Balsamic vinegar last weekend. Someone had put an expensive bottle of Balsamic beside the cheap ones in Tesco and he ended up paying five times more than he could have....
