Home & Garden

Home & Garden

I’ve lived in the Cotswolds for over forty years. My first house was a big old house with a ramshackle garden with the bones of good design still visible in the trees and hedges. When we took possession, I couldn’t tell an oak from an ash, had never grown so much as a tomato plant, and had little idea where to begin. But ignorance truly is bliss, and gardening quickly became addictive. I loved all my attempts at tree planting, making borders, growing veg – until they failed.

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Once a friend told me “Gardening is all hard work and disappointment.” Well yes to the hard work, but along with the disappointment you get some successes too: the fantastic buzz of picking your own broad beans, the smell of the lawn just cut, or burying your nose in that wonderful rose with the crazy French name “Cuisse de nymphe emu” (Aroused nymph’s thigh — generally more prudishly labelled “Great Maiden’s Blush” in the UK).

Summer Gardening
Home & Garden

Summer Gardening

SUMMER GARDEN I used to think cooking much more satisfying than gardening because a morning’s work produced results by lunchtime. But as I’ve got older and wiser I’ve realised that...

Picnic Parties
Home & Garden

Picnic Parties

A picnic can be as low key or as high brow as you want but for me, the perfect picnic is simple food, with great friends/ family in a shady...

Our New Garden – Two years on!
Home & Garden

Our New Garden – Two years on!

Our new garden, like almost all gardens, is a mix of delight and disappointment. The delight comes from the new trees, mostly doing well and the grass gardens, which survive...

My latest Novel ‘The Lost Son’ – out in paperback now
Home & Garden

My latest Novel ‘The Lost Son’ – out in paperback now

O the relief of seeing, The Lost Son, the third and final novel of my Angelotti Chronicles, finally out!   I was warned by my publisher that a trilogy is...

It’s a dogs life
Home & Garden

It’s a dogs life

Dog lover Prue surprised her husband with the ultimate wedding gift… a puppy We have both always loved dogs, it’s how we met, dog walking at weekends. When John and...

New Kitchen
Home & Garden

New Kitchen

Not too many cooks get the chance to design their own kitchens. And I’ve had the good fortune to do that quite a lot in my long life: in my...