Driving back from Merignac airport one darkish evening I was rather tired and cross – anyone would be who had just fought their way through Gatwick South to a plane. Fortunately the rocade is not the bumper to bump jam in the evenings as it is in the daytime. ...
June was a wonderful month, even allowing for the excessive heat. In fact it was hot enough to wash Gregory Bear, much loved successor to Artur van Gelderen. Now in the Bethnal Green childhood museum – somewhere. And, gosh, was Gregory dirty! Gregory...
The orchids started this summer at La Chaise with a most odd behaviour. Usually they are in small clumps of two or three plants. One extreme exception was the spread of the early purples under the ash trees – from a distance they looked like a rash of clover. ...
For the past couple of months we have woken to the glorious sounds of frogs revelling in the Black Pond in the woods. In the evening the sound is always as great. We have missed them for a year or so and wondered why. There were flies enough, strange things...
The La Chaise chicken house is worthy of a picture postcard. It is not very high, roof tree about two metres from the ground level, wide roofs slope down to thick walls way less than a metre high. There is a skylight in the flat mechanical terracotta roof tiles...
February has been an unexpectedly wonderful month, the spring flowers came early, the wild boar stayed sagely in the woods, the grass has started growing and lambs continue to be born in the barn. Everything flourished, even the camellias came out in flower –...
Spring is hovering in the woods at La Chaise – also the barn. The first of the 2019 lambs was born the day before grandson Nathan’s sixth birthday – overnight that came to be January 29th… Only just back from Spain, I went down to the lambing...
We have a wonderful range of fruit trees and bushes at La Chaise. There are the wild cherry trees that are the star heralds of spring. From the main road down to the Farmhouse there is an avenue of blossom. Any day I expect a group of Paris based Japanese to come...
In a rather lost corner of La Chaise meadows, land properly titled Les Fontenelles where there are indeed a few wet weather springs, there is a curious (to me) square of land that has been defined by the fencing. Half is grassland, half is scrub trees. Gradually we...
Obsessive, compulsive gardeners have many enemies – grass is a major one as it persists in growing everywhere it is not wanted for ornamental purposes whether in gravel-strewn paved or cemented walks. Those who are trying, sporadically, to ‘garden’... 
