May comes around, and new arrivals are popping up everywhere.

Life needs a big plan. Then it is just a matter of small investments, optimism, some courage and good timing - possibly some luck. I...

Early April finds me home at Oaklands after 3 months in Dubai - summoned for a meeting at the office in London. I was due to come home...

Spring gardening and climate change.

Clearing a wood in winter

U.K. gardening in January

Another autumn return to Dubai from Herefordshire, and another chance to update the back yard #potager. Neil grew loads of veg here...

You have all the time and never enough time. The changing weather is a disaster, the changing weather can be an opportunity. The garden...

The contractors are finished and gone, the 500-odd pots are stacked away, and the new plants are settling in. The beds are immaculate...

Phlox, anemone, hydrangea, amelanchier, hawthorn, nepeta, witch hazel, bay, hyssop, lovage, aster, gillenia, kolkwitzia, miscanthus,...

I am back in Dubai after a month away and half of 2021 is done. Midsummers day (a misnomer right ?) has gone. This was the meant to be...

That explosion of life which I mentioned in my last post continues, and is all the more striking for having been away for a while. It is...

A long gap since my last post, but I will blame a shire resident who drove into a telegraph post round here a while back, and while...

The pandemic continues to exert its iron grip on international travel, so for the first time I am seeing a spring through here, from...

I am trapped in Dubai (again) by the vagaries of UK travel policy around Covid and back to living vicariously at Oaklands through the...

What is it good for, questioned Frankie all those years ago. And as I ponder war on rabbits, the inevitable response echoes. There may...

Bird boxes for the new season at Oaklands

Longer days, lighter mornings: I for one often associate “spring”with warm April or May days, when blossom is out and you might even risk...

Last week was the coldest I have experienced here. Overnight temperatures were down to -7, and the needle did not rise above zero in...