My love,

I don't know about you, but it does feel like life is a bit much at the moment. It feels like there is something to be worried about at every turn, but also a sense that worrying won't change things much. And maybe it won't, but if you do happen to have a spare £10, can I suggest you direct it to an organisation such as the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust? The climate needs everything we can give it right now and groups of voices will always be louder. Or buy some seeds. Seeds work if you are happy or sad, in hope or in despair. I have bought lots of seeds this week, as well as, on Shane Connolly's recommendation, a properly heavy, cast iron urn…

Monday 19 September

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A Bank Holiday, which means that our usually quiet evening dog walk to Netherclay and back is full of other people and other dogs for Hugo to shout at. It is not peaceful. The maize harvesting has started and some of the machinery seem to have knocked into the oak trees, or perhaps it is the effect of the prolonged drought, and there are branches strewn in the fields and across the paths. There are a lot of oak trees around the village. They once marked the road to town.

As we walk, I plan how to sneak some of the boughs back home, although they are bigger even than my Land Rover and I can barely lift them. A sign of the times perhaps; all the anxiety about keeping warm this winter has clearly seeped into my consciousness and activated my deepest foraging and gathering instincts.

Gathering is the theme of the day. I spend the rest of my evening removing ferociously hooked burdock seeds from dog feet, ears, and tummies.

Tuesday 20 September

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More dahlias. Experimenting with the warmth of the café au lait and the cool blue of Rosa glauca stems and leaves. I am not sure it works, but any excuse to fill the kitchen table with colour.

Wednesday 21 September

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I had such visions of stocking the freezer with apple slices and eating them until the rhubarb in the spring. I am not sure if we have the wrong variety of apple or if I just did it wrong, but even with great care and attention, they go mushy and brown when I try it. I cut my losses and put huge pots of apple with cinnamon in the bottom oven to collapse and stew. Some of it makes it into jars, but I also eat it by the bowlful to keep me warm. I am refusing to concede to the sudden cold snap and to light the fire.

Thursday 22 September

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I cannot quite believe it, but we have escaped the frost. It felt cold enough in the night but this morning, the dahlias are heavy with dew but thankfully nothing else. A day for tidying (if you are feeling like life is getting away from you, I cannot recommend sweeping a path enough) and packing orders. Outside the post office are some deep yellow violas for sale. They are unbelievably cheering. I bring them home and plant them in the trough between the crème brulee phlox plants which I think are entering their fifth month of flowering.

I will never be without CB phlox, even if I can’t stock the seed in the Gather shop because I can’t cope with the stress of how awful it is to germinate.

Friday 23 September

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I know, you thought the highlight of my Friday was my flying visit to the Strawberry Hill Flower Festival in Twickenham, and it was wonderful, but I also managed to fit in lunch with the lovely Naomi today. We eat at No. 57 in Ilminster, a building which makes me want to pull every residual sign of modern life out of my own cottage. Not that there is much left. No. 57 is exquisitely restored and all the textures and imperfections that I love. Highly recommended.

And then I hot foot it home, dash the dogs out, and motor up the A303. The cornus is reaching peak claret in the verges, and there are more rosehips than I have ever seen before. A sign of brutal weather to come perhaps? I pass Stonehenge on this evening of the equinox and send up an appeal to the gods for a clean, clear cold, winter.

Anything less means endlessly muddy dogs and a spring full of slugs.

[Pictures of No. 57 below.]

Saturday 24 September

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Having returned to Malus Farm from Strawberry Hill House in the early hours, the only reason I leap out of bed this morning is because there is a box from Piper’s Farm by the front door. If you have been following me for a while, you know my Christmas isn’t Christmas until my cheese box has arrived and today, there is a bonus gift one in a big box, with a book.

You may not know that Piper’s Farm and I share more than a love of cheese, we share a photographer. As expected, Matt Austin has done an incredible job of shooting this lovely cookbook, and I can’t wait to cook (and eat) my way through it this winter.

Have a wonderful week. Let me know if you have lit the fire yet, or if you have sown your sweet peas… I am doing mine on Thursday this week (biodynamic flower day) and will be sharing videos, tips and how to's over in Gather.