"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow, " said Audrey Hepburn apparently, in her humanitarian phase. It’s a concept that all gardeners understand and I can't think of a better one for the first Sunday of October.

I promised myself there would be no excuses this year, and I'm overjoyed to report that the bulbs have finally made it out of the kitchen. Some years they have made a brief trip to the shed and are unearthed in January, looking rather sorry for themselves. This year there are daffodils going in in guerilla gardening style in the grass verge outside, a scattering of alliums for late spring in the borders and some tulips in pots by the door. Kneeling in coldish soil with a trowel and a mug of coffee going lukewarm on the garden table, I thought once more about how bulbs are an act of faith

Almost the end of September. The Autumn Equinox. A Full Harvest Moon. A slight nip in the air. The earth is in balance, and it's the perfect moment to look back and look forward.
Around here, the winter wardrobe is coming out, boxes of bulbs are waiting on the kitchen floor (last year's bulbs made it as far as the shed, only to be unearthed in January, so this year there are NO excuses), and any spare minute is spent putting the garden to rights for next year. There's a fine crop of quince to harvest, even if the apples were poor.

Harvest is one of my favourite festivals. At next week's Harvest Supper we'll share food, fun and news with friends we haven't seen for a while. It's a time to be thankful and to connect before moving indoors for the darker months.

“It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air.”

There’s a nip in the air when I go for an early morning wander around the garden. Spiders’ webs glisten on the hedge; a faint smell of woodsmoke in the air; the borders are a riot of golds, oranges and deep, deep purples; and of course there is foraging to be done. Somewhere nearby lustrous bunches of elderberries hang just within reach. I love them even more than the blackberries and gather them in my basket, carrying them home to make elderberry tincture, surely the easiest of all my elderberry concoctions. I have my eye on a bumper crop of sloes but should wait until the frost has touched them. It’s a race between me and the birds. If I get too impatient, I’ll gather them anyway and pop them in the freezer.

August brings “the promise of golden sunsets, reminding us to find beauty in every ending.” I’m quite good at endings. It comes with practice I suppose – all those exam classes and drama productions which require your eyes to be fixed firmly on the end of the ‘project’ from the very beginning. Despite being the height of the school summer holiday (except in Scotland), August seems more like a beautiful ending. Harvest is in full swing; the leaves are turning; there’s plenty to forage in the hedgerows; chutney-making starts in earnest and if you’re lucky there’s a trip to a sunflower field, a saunter round a maize maze or a beach sunset to enjoy. This year, more than ever as the drought and high temperatures has brought everything forward. My garden is awash with brown leaves and I’ve been picking blackberries for weeks.

There’s no better way to spend an hour than in taking a glut of produce from the garden and turning it into chutney to fill the pantry for the winter or to pop into Christmas hampers. I don’t follow a recipe but add apple cider or red wine vinegar, brown sugar and a spice mix to whatever gluts we have of fruit. If you’d be happier following instructions, ask friends and family members if they have any heirloom recipes laying about. Chutney-making is the perfect opportunity to keep the past alive.

Have you been watching the Chelsea Flower Show this week? Perhaps you fought your way through the crowds on the site itxelf. Several of the good folks who came to our gardening club plant sale yesterday were keen on the idea of naturalistic planting and pops of colour. Planting for pollinators all year roundis much more popular these days. Those of us who grew up with cottage gardens, where veg nestled cheek by jowl with cutting garden flowers would have felt right at home at Chelsea this year. May really is a great time for a flower show and a plant sale.

"May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope" wrote Emily Brontë and that is certainly true in my garden. Whilst the spring bulbs have gone over, everything is lush and green. Perennials are reappearing to fill every available space; there are plenty of seedlings to plant out; the dahlias are underway; paeonies are blooming and, if I’m lucky (or vigilant), the roses are free of blackspot and greenfly for a while. 

I popped into the new Grow for Life garden up at the local hospice on my way back from school this week to scope out the site for my new little cutting patch and got myself stung by the patch of nettles growing at the gateway. It was my own fault - dressed for an exam briefing/motivational speech to year 13 prior to their first A Level exam rather than gardening. This is one week when we should be celebrating nettles and can legitimately pretend that any nettle patch in allotment or garden is by design rather than default.

It’s Be Nice to Nettles Week, a “vibrant annual event that shines a spotlight on the humble nettle plant” and encouraging us “ to appreciate the ecological and health benefits of nettles”. May is all about wildness rather than cultivation with No Mow May as well as this celebration of nettles, so I am leaning into it.

It’s been the best year for our front garden laburnum tree. I planted it not long after we moved into our current home and despite its deserved reputation for being beautiful but poisonous, it was a deliberate choice.

Full disclosure: this was the house I never wanted to move into. There is a particular grief in moving to a house you didn't want. Not the grief of loss exactly; more a persistent ache of resignation, of accepting that life will be different from the one you had planned. There is nothing wrong with our house in purely practical terms. It is absolutely fine. The rooms are fine. The street is fine and not too busy. The neighbours are friendly. It’s a short walk into town and to school when the children were little. Everything is fine. But fineness, when you had wanted something else entirely, can feel gently suffocating. Like living in a a world of pastel shades when you want jewel colours.