I use the period between Christmas and New Year to potter about, think and completely change my mindset. In that easy no-man's-land between Boxing Day and New Year, loins are girded and mettle readied. It is time, as we voyagers bid farewell to the old year, to fare forward.
Blackthorn has wicked spikes that are highly brittle and tend to snap off under the skin and then fester horribly. This means that they can only really be part of a hedge that you do not want to get too close to.
That first snowdrop, the flowering of the rose you pruned, a lettuce you grew from seed, the robin singing just for you. These are smallthings but all positive, all healing in a way that medicine tries to mimic.
If I'm honest, the thing I am proudest of is my varieties of wild flowers in the hay meadow.
Any British household with a scrap of land has always grown herbs for the kitchen. From the superb monastic herb gardens down to the humblest cottage, a supply of fresh herbs would have been considered essential.
Many gardens are hijacked by their plants and end up looking like a room overstuffed with furniture.
I was a sickly child, and it wasn't until I was 19 that I realised I was quite a robust, vigorous person. Since then I've taken ill health to be an irritating interruption into what is a fairly reliable stream of good health.
When our jewellery business went into receivership we avoided bankruptcy by selling our houses and possessions.
We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise. That is easy to see and evaluate. It inculcates high levels of well-being. That is undeniable and needs little measurement.
Plant breeding has been going on for millennia and it's a gradual process.
Modern man has a very abstract idea of what a wood is. I guess that if you stopped anyone on the street and asked them what a wood actually was, they would see it as a place where big trees grow.
As September rolls into October, I become obsessed with apples. Now obviously this is provoked by the ripening fruit clustering on the trees in our orchard, but it is as though all things pomological ripen in me, too.
Organic is loaded with a sense of rightness, with a set of rules. I would much rather someone bought food that was local and sustainable but not organic than bought organic food that had to be shipped across the world.
No apple is reliably self-fertile, so each tree needs a pollinator. A neighbour may well have an apple that will do that for you, but it is better to always plant at least two trees to be certain of pollination.
My favourite thorn belongs to the rose with a name like a mouthful of broken teeth, Rosa sericea pteracantha. It is grown almost entirely for its astonishing ruby-red shark's fin thorns that are at their lapidary best in early summer, especially when backlit by a low setting sun.
The Romans brought with them spices such as ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and herbs including borage, chervil, dill, fennel, lovage, sage and thyme, all of which have remained staples of the British kitchen.
Coppice management depends upon the chosen tree being cut when the shoots are straight, vigorous and, critically, not shading out new growth.
I always see gardening as escape, as peace really. If you are angry or troubled, nothing provides the same solace as nurturing the soil.
By having a direct stake and involvement with the process of plants growing, of having your hands in the soil and tending it carefully and with love, your world and everyone's else's world too, becomes a better place.
Tony Blair is a dreadful man; really truly dreadful.
