Mrs B bought some Russet apples last week, which brought to mind a picture I have of my mother sorting russet apples on the lawn at the old place, around 1984.  Crops of fruit were always impressive with my parents ..read more

On Sunday we took an afternoon walk on Cadbury Castle, a place that stirs so many memories for us.  Sunday was particularly evocative as it was the first time we had rambled up the iron age fort since our lovely ..read more

We are coming to the end of sweet peas in the garden.  They are, to me, a bellwether flower.  Every gardener seems to grow them and anyone who sees ours in the bookshop feels compelled to comment on them, before ..read more

“So, a silver for Britain there in the Dachshund re-capture race.  I thought for a moment we had lost it in the second field there, but excellent rounding up by James, wearing good shoes, I am pleased to say, beating ..read more

Is that a carrot I see before me? May was a busy but nerve-wracking month in the Midlife Garden.  After starting our cut flowers in storage boxes, they germinated quickly and copiously, but by April we face the challenge of what to do with all those healthy looking seedlings when they outgrew their boxes but looked a little too delicate to go outside. We kept them protected in the greenhouse, with the lid off, but soon started getting leggy like a load of seedling Peter Crouches.   So, on 16th April, we took a gamble and planted them out in the raised beds, weeks before any theo ..read more

Amellanchier blossom Spring might finally be coming to the Midlife Garden.  Despite the continuing cold, wet, windy weather, there are signs of new life. The seedlings are bursting out of the storage boxes in the greenhouse so I will have to hold them back in case of frost, and in the borders, the plum trees and Amelanchier are in blossom and the apple is just coming on too. The sound of chiffchaffs and blackcaps has joined the symphony of birdsong.  It is a time of renewal and is a reminder of how the garden literally keeps me grounded and in step with the natural order. Last week M ..read more

Billy’s Beetle, by Mick Inkpen, was a favourite bedtime book for our kids when they were young, or perhaps I mean it was a favourite of mine, as reading it out loud was so much fun.  Whether the little ones enjoyed it as much as I did is debatable, but I often think of it still, particularly the character of the “sniffy dog” which its owner claimed would be able to help find the eponymous errant insect. In the Midlife Garden we have our own sniffy dog, in the shape of Badger, the dachshund.  Known formally as Mr Long, he displays the classic dachshund profile of long dog, long nose ..read more

February has been so mild; it feels like spring.  Which it almost is, isn’t it?  But we are not fooled in the Midlife Garden, despite the daffodils coming up weeks ago, wallflowers currently adding splashes of gold in the front border and even the Viburnum Mariessii about to come into flower.  It is still not spring.  OK?  But we are keen to get our annual flowers established in plenty of time for July and the Big Fat Somerset Wedding.  Over the years of the MLG, the trend is for me to be getting flowers to bloom earlier and earlier.  Whether this is due to ..read more

I love my cycle commute to school.  It provides a light workout as well as giving me time to de-tox from the rigours of taming teenagers.  And I have more time to observe the world around me. As I cycled through Lower Hadspen last week, I saw two large birds rising from the road in front of me.  I immediately recognised one as a buzzard and was pleased to see the other was a red kite.  These angular birds of prey are still relatively new to Somerset, having spread their territory down from Wales and the Midlands. I remember the first time I saw one in the county; it was ci ..read more

It has been a week in which reports of the C-bomb have been liberally sprinkled across the news, although the “C” that has affected us most in the Midlife Garden has been C for Ciarán as wind and rain have come on stronger than a Dominic Cummings WhatsApp message.  With flooded roads and schools sending kids home early we expected the weather to create the kind of damage not seen since a Downing Street Lockdown Party; but nature has proved to be a lot more resilient than any SPAD or tousle-haired PM.  The garden survived.  To quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters “the flowers ..read more