Monday 6 June

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It is June and there are still things in my greenhouse that really shouldn’t be there. Marigolds for the dye pot. Cosmos sulphureus, ditto. Chestnut brown hollyhocks that got to an inch or so tall and then stopped. Trays of nicotiana that have started to flower. (I cannot recommend Nicotiana Bronze Queen enough. It is absolutely lovely. Tinkerbell, my other favourite nicotiana, is an F1 so I stopped growing it for the seed and so I am delighted to have N. Bronze Queen on my list. Dusky brown and open pollinated. I don’t ask more from my flowers.

But I digress. Enough is enough. Everything is going out. Shoved into pots in the courtyard and in between bigger plants in the beds. It is strangely satisfying. I feel like I am ready for the summer to truly start.

Tuesday 7 June

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Nature abhors a vacuum. No sooner have I cleared out the plants for this year, it is time to start thinking about next year. My obsession with apricot foxgloves has meant that I am determined to never again be without them so I sow seed liberally in small pots. The greenhouse is too hot for them, even under the staging in the shade, and so they are kept in a gravel tray on the old bench outside the studio. A place of dappled shade underneath my Malus ‘Butterball’ trees. Perfect for seeds. Perfect for a coffee.

Wednesday 8 June

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Starting the process of transitioning to organic has many similarities to starting a diet. Gone will be the instant gratification of a trip to buy in plants on a whim. Gone the ready meal of compost someone else has made. And so, like a diet, I have put it off; telling myself as every week rolls round, that I will start on Monday. No more. I ring Tim at the Soil Association and commit. He runs me through the admin and asks me if I have any questions. I ask what the smallest area that can be certified is. He asks me how many hectares I have. I answer 0.18, not even half an acre. He misses a beat and then assures me it will probably be fine. He does dairy farms though, he says, he is probably not the expert on small.

When I fill in the form, I have to put a name of the ‘farm’. I have been thinking about this for a while. My address is Church Cottages, but that is very much the house. My business name is Grace Alexander Flowers, but that seems a strange name for a piece of land. In the written form, it is known as ‘the flower field’ and in conversation ‘the paddock’. Hardly the stuff of bucolic dreams. I toy with the idea of simply calling it ‘Paradise’ (this idea is vetoed rather swiftly) and so it is named after all the apple trees in the orchard. Ten years and four months since I first put a spade in the soil and the field has a name.

Malus Farm.

(Do you think calling it a farm will put off people who are gardeners? Should I call it Malus Micro-Farm? Uglier but truer. I may be overthinking this.)

Thursday 9 June

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An absolute treat arrived in my inbox today. A whole video of Becca of The Garden Gate Flower Company arranging garden roses with dark, dramatic foliage, filmed for Gather. I watch it all the way through. Twice.

And then I go and cut my roses. The whole cottage fills with the sweet, lemony scent. Jude the Obscure never fails to lift my heart.

Friday 10 June

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Our ambition for the wood oven in the Malus Farm orchard increases weekly. As a change from pizza, we try a tray of potatoes and onions with rosemary and a bottle of balsamic vinegar. Jamie Oliver’s idea, incredible. I still cook from his At Home book often. I bought it from Camden as a treat for handing in my doctoral thesis and I think I use it more than any other. Both it and Gill Meller's Time have lost their spines.

In the falling oven, chicken over a base of butter beans, studded with freshly dug wet garlic from the kitchen garden.

Saturday 11 June

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I wasn’t sure how to talk about this, but my gardener starts today. She exudes calm whilst also being enthusiastic, which is a good trick to pull off. She tidies the beech hedge around the kitchen garden with secateurs (it is nesting season so don’t use proper clippers on any hedges of a meaningful size) and then magically restores the box around my perennial beds into neat rectangles of order. I even let her use my best hoe.

It feels like a big step.