Au revoir or adieu?

Sweet Juliet is still, this last day of 2014, in flower in our garden; and - below - the leaves of the Acanthus near it shine with promise for next Summer. We've sprouts yet to eat, and broccoli, Cumberland cale and rocket. There's even a picking to be made from the lettuce plants, protected only by being at the foot of the wall near the far North corner.

"I foresee the Paris Climate Conference as 2015's key event," I emailed yesterday to the Guardian, "and would like to lend a hand in making it a success. With your front page today containing only three stories, all bad news related to air travel, who will join me in a New Year resolve to give up flying?" Alas, I looked this morning, and it hasn't made it into the paper.

It's a day for resolutions, of which this year I have made several. One relates to this blog, now in its seventh year: have you noticed the posts becoming shorter? Maybe it's the proverbial itch, but I'm putting it to sleep. Perhaps forever. Thank you, if there's anyone out there, for reading it! And to those who may have Commented from time to time.

PS (2nd January 2015): I looked again in the Guardian Letters page yesterday. Still no sign of my letter. Ah well! But then today, a blistering leading article on the importance of the Paris Climate Conference, and in the bottom left corner of the next page - just when I wasn't looking for it - my letter (only slightly edited).

September's end

It's been a great month for sunshine, which continues today, and it's still sleeveless shirt weather. Raspberries fruit still in the garden, though the big apple trees have been poor this year. Those photographed in Prue Cooper's beautiful dish on our kitchen table are from one of the heavily-laden little trees.

Shades of green

40 came round our garden in the six hours for which we were open today as part of Cheltenham Green Doors. Five were children, but all seemed more or less committed to the quest for the shortest distance from land to mouth.

At four, we shut up shop and jumped into the car to drive up to Cranham, to see one of the other properties: it was open till six. That was quite a show-stopper: a green oak new build on the site of the TB Sanatorium where George Orwell had once been a patient. It's 1,000 feet up and thus with a fabulous view, over first open fields and then Buckholt Wood, sunny from breakfast to dinner.

My photograph shows the North side, where you drive in past a new lake and bund dividing the property from Cranham Sawmill. The facing here is a wall of Cotswold stone, the other side all glass, with sedum roof and both PV and solar thermal panels.

The owner indicated a line through the pond dividing Cotswold District from Stroud: the two Councils agreed, he said, that Stroud should deal with the planning application, which they were happy to approve, being "top eco".

Are such houses a sign of hope or of contradiction? I suppose the hope is that they can be the F1 racing cars of their time, justifiable on the grounds that they pave the way for more energy efficient roadsters. Because what we need of course is not just top eco, but middle and bargain basement eco too. Otherwise top eco will end up as unjust as Richard ("Eco") Branson's dream of Martian emigration.

Plenty of space

Our friend Maryse (now aged 80) invited us to tea today at her home on the other side of Cheltenham. She has been there seven years, and in that time has transformed her diminutive garden into a wonderland of fecundity and colour.

Homeward bound

After our three-week exile, we have returned to Gloucestershire. But not yet to Cheltenham. It is a pleasure to be staying tonight in a house made of stone of a lighter colour than ever we saw in the North. Driving down from Wakefield this morning, we stopped at Ecclesfield, a dark church both inside and out, but its scale and grandeur a reminder of the days when the parish was more than twice as large as Sheffield. We paused also for a wander around the gardens at Renishaw, dominated by a magnificent display of hydrangeas. (My photograph was taken from the lawns in front of the house, the view seeming to indicate a remote setting, but the trees hiding power lines and other indications that we were on the edge of a big city.)

Getting back into the car, the M1 traffic contrasted rudely with two such oases of calm.

Thixendale

Few farmers have pretty gardens. Where we are tonight is an exception. We are drinking tea in considerable comfort in one of the many "rooms" of the garden of our B&B at Manor Farm, here in the Yorkshire Wolds, not a cloud in the sky. It followed on from lunch in another pretty, but smaller garden further East, at Lockington; and a wander around a third, huge garden where we stayed last night at Normanton-on-Trent. None, however, appears to be organic.

Harvesting

The garlic and onions are drying nicely in this settled spell of sunny weather - the best June we've had for a few years I guess. Some of the onions have gone to seed, a bit like their custodian.

"The gay frivolities of Cheltenham"

Lunching out on a Monday is one of the perks of the retired; and we were given a good one today, in a terraced house near the centre of Cheltenham. Amongst our number was a descendant of Gloucestershire's most celebrated diarist, F.E. Witts. He it was who gave me the title for this post.

In his entry of a week previous (30th June 1827), Witts rails splendidly against the Season: "...The [Talbot] family is in town: so it is that fashionable people desert their country seats, their rich parks and lovely gardens in the finest season and live there only in the gloomiest months of the year; for when the London season is over, fashion dictates a second edition on an inferior scale at some sea-bathing or watering place or some rambling tour in search of ever-eluding pleasure."

Our "lovely garden" was looking particularly colourful this morning, as we breakfasted outside.

Trench Hill

With difficulty, we found our way to the garden which was open for members of the Gloucestershire Organic Gardening Group tonight. It was worth persisting in our search. A magnificent evening, and a garden filled with colour and interest! Celia Hargrave must work all the hours that God gives to keep on top of it. The view down towards Stroud alone should sell it for anyone looking for a garden to visit in the NGS list. In the foreground just out of this photograph there are wild orchids, as big as any I have seen in Gloucestershire.

Dame of the rose

Roses used to peak at the end of June, or am I imagining that? Anyway here we are a week away from the end of May, and with 19 different roses in flower. With my mac on over my dressing-gown, I went out into the rain and picked one of each this morning for Caroline's birthday. This afternoon and evening, it was celebrated with Leo and Mini, scones, cakes, a Jakobsweg slideshow and a pulsating Champions League final.

Skyping

We sat in the garden this afternoon, talking to Thomas in Lisbon via the iPad. Agnes photographed us on her phone. The wonders of technology!

Listen with mother

Though it's a pity to bin the borage when still in flower, the garden does look a bit like a hayfield: we are gradually working towards restoring some order. Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to have Agnes and Ida here for a quietish weekend. One of the Sadler's Wells stories is on the go.

Kindling

Friends have lent me a Kindle to take with me on my walk next month: we went round to collect it yesterday morning, and I had a lesson at the same time. As Ida was staying, she came too, and was given a look into the beehives at the bottom of the garden. (Our own bees have sadly died.)

This evening, I've been planting potatoes, Duke of York and Pink Fir Apple this year: it's too early for the latter to go in really, but the ground is right, and I don't want to leave them chitting till early May.

"City of kites and crows"

Shakespeare's Coriolanus is not a bundle of laughs. But it does have one or two memorable speeches and phrases. An earlier NT live performance relay - we were turned away in January when the connection to Cheltenham failed - was encored yesterday afternoon.

My companions left at the interval: I admit to being tempted to follow, but on balance I'm glad to have sat it out, bloody though the hero's (literal) comeuppance was.

Josie Rourke's Almeida production fills that small stage with action rather than props. It's a pocket battleship version, and you miss the scale of unfolding events: I have a dim memory of Peter Hall's epic 1959 rendering at Stratford, with Olivier in the name part and Edith Evans, Mary Ure and Vanessa Redgrave as the three main women (Diana Rigg, Ian Holm and Albert Finney in minor parts). Tom Hiddlestone at 33 looks and may inevitably seem lightweight when compared to Olivier at 52, but his coiled energy, if not his mainly soft-spoken poetry, makes for a compelling performance.

Meanwhile, our garden boasts neither kites or crows, but a robin settled happily on my spinach basket this morning.

Foucault's pendulous

By way of explanation of this laboured post title - more laboured even than usual - "floppy" is said to be a synonym for pendulous. And flop the blind cat, Foucault certainly did, onto his master's lap last night after dinner. Though it was the six of us who had eaten so richly in one of Cheltenham's more elegant basements, not necessarily the cat.

This photograph of a distinguished contemporary of Frank Auerbach, Bridget Riley and Peter Blake might or might not be recognised by him as a tip of the hat to Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy.

Our host was in sparkling form considering he underwent major surgery last year, but he told me he had felt less anxious about that than the recent hassle he'd had over renewing a tax disc. "Into thy hands I commend my heart."

I've been anxious about pruning the apple trees. A couple of years ago, the experienced Martin Hayes began to take them in hand: today another Martin has been my generous guide. It's really a question of summoning up the confidence to tackle what's a huge task, when trees have been let go like ours have.

Root ball

Ten years ago, we inherited two ornamental box trees from my mother. They fitted easily into the car, as they lived in plastic flowerpots on her tarmac driveway. We decanted them into the soil of our back garden, placing them as sentinels at what was then the end of our vegetable patch.

Well, the vegetables have crept well beyond their previously tolerated limit and the trees have grown considerably. So, it's been decided they must go - in the interests of food security. Caroline managed to move one before Christmas, and it's now settled in elsewhere in the garden (we hope). The other - much larger - remains, so far resisting our efforts to uncover its roots in full. The axe hovers.

Well Close

I acted for the Community of St Peter when it purchased Well Close some three decades ago: the house turned out to be riddled with dry rot, which the nuns' surveyor somehow overlooked - leading to more work for my firm in the shape of a negligence claim.

The Anglican Benedictine community had run a large house near Stonehouse for some years as a home for vulnerable girls: I remember a large aviary there, the pride and joy of the solitary nun who was still actively involved, the characterful Sister Pauline Mary.

Until fairly recently, the front garden of Well Close, large considering it's in a fairly central location, was unproductive. Thanks however to the efforts of Miggi Lorraine, Peter Clegg and others, it now hosts a community composting area, and plans have been hatched to increase its usefulness further. It was in this connection that Peter asked me to bring my camera along to today's hedge planting. The local paper sent their photographer, but my angle  - see my website - would have been different.

Some 60 of us were there: besides the Mayor, Wendy Flynn, there were various Councillors and other nobs, staff and children from Christ Church Primary school and residents of Well Close itself. Between us, we planted 150 saplings (mainly donated by the Woodland Trust and Chris Evans' Butterfly Project) in less than an hour - a happy occasion, and proof that many hands make light work.

The overall aim is to increase local biodiversity, the garden becoming available for the residents, local school children and people with learning and/or physical disabilities to grow their own organically produced fruit and vegetables.

Live from the Oluvvier

50th birthdays undeniably deserve to be celebrated properly, and last night's 150-minute live relay on BBC2 served as a very proper big birthday bash for the Royal National Theatre.

Most of those still alive who have, over the half century, given greatest service upon the RNT stages were there: many of the famous dead (Olivier, Gielgud, Richardson R., Scofield) were brought back to life through film clips. As the evening galloped along, Caroline and I watched enthralled. Undoubtedly some gobbits worked better than others: the two Stoppard extracts fell flat, compared with a sublimely funny and moving scene from Angels in America, for instance. But it was the French lesson from The History Boys, with its creator Alan Bennett as Hector (a role he never played on stage, so far as I know) that stole the show.

Proper, improper? The good old BBC prefaced its broadcast with a foul language warning: more appropriate would be a foul (fowl?) behaviour warning for Miley Cyrus's recent award ceremony cavorting - but what a great David Attenborough twerk tweak! Unwittingly, old Attenborough, prophetically commenting upon our sad times, may have found himself a new, young audience.

Three of our apple trees must be 50 years old or more: they have fruited this year as if it's a jubilee. I'm off out to climb the ladder and pick more, before the winds blow them all down. This one was photographed at Schofields.

Tewkesbury, unjustly neglected

This photograph was taken in the late Peter Healing's garden of tranquility, by the North side of Tewkesbury Abbey. Having discovered it last July, I'll try to return there whenever I'm in Tewkesbury. Old acquaintances staying nearby had invited me to lunch with them yesterday: they told me I had more than repaid their kindness by walking them to this garden. In a month of cornucopia, Creation Time no less, the vine and fig tree are loaded, and berries weigh down the shrubs either side of paths: you hardly think there would be room for them.

On our way there, we stopped to glance down one of Tewkesbury's alleys: there must be upwards of 50 of them. The house on the corner of this particular one belonged to a man known as Cork Legged Packer: he rented it to the eponymous Mrs. Lilley, a widow who ran a china shop.

We said our goodbyes, and seated at the bus stop a pony and trap trotted past. Falling into conversation with a man on a day trip from Pwllheli, I learnt that 95% of its population speak Welsh: he only acquired some English when refugees arrived from Liverpool to escape the Blitz. It made me think of the continuing blitzing of churches in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, not to mention the mayhem caused in the shopping mall in Nairobi; but it reminded me also to offer a prayer of thanks for at least a measure of peacemaking this week in Syria and with Iran. As well as for the sobering - hopefully eye-opening - new IPCC Report.

Troy and destroy

John Bell was the speaker on Thought for the Day this morning. He came on immediately after someone salivating over the prospect of life on Mars. John reminded us that "Adam" meant "earthling", and that the earth does not belong to us, but we belong to it - by decree of its maker.

You feel this when kneeling on warm soil to plant garlic and onions, as I have been doing in this lovely spell of mild weather. Softneck Thermidrome garlic this year, and 500g of Troy onion sets - netted against the birds, who enjoy tweaking the sets out of the soil.

I was slow to fix the mesh tightly round our sprouting plantlets earlier, and the result is a plague of caterpillars. It's either I who go into destroy mode, or they who remain in it.

The Autumn raspberries don't look up to much either, but the late Summer canes (seven foot tall in some cases) are still fruiting plentifully. As are the beans and Caroline's tomatoes and figs. She even presented me with her first melon the other evening.

The back lawn is littered with apples, and both lawns are also littered with rose and other prunings: we need more room in the deep freeze for juice and a couple more brown bins.

I photographed these onions this time last year on our visit to the National Botanic Garden of Wales.