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.

National Botanic Garden of Wales

We enjoyed visiting this magnificent garden in May six years ago - not so long after it opened. Today, we called in again, on our way back from Pembroke, and found it altogether more filled out. And of course the colours were this time those of (almost) Autumn.

The double walled garden is I think my favourite spot, with its Tropical House now looking particularly sensational - so many weird and wonderful specimens. (This is a leaf of Alocasia macrorrhiza.)

I feel so totally ignorant about plants when I visit a place like this.

Susurrus

En route home from East Anglia, we paused in Oxford in order to go to the Botanic Gardens. I'm ashamed to admit it was my first ever visit. Nor even this time was I there principally to see the Gardens themselves, but because they were the venue for "Susurrus".

This is one of the Oxford Playhouse's "Plays Out", put on to encourage audiences to think differently about theatrical work and where it's performed. At the entrance, you pick up headphones, a miniature iPod-type device and a map. At each of eight different points, you are invited to sit down and listen to a passage on the tape, with appropriate music as you walk round in between.

Susurrus - meaning a soft murmuring or rustling sound - is perhaps not the most appropriate title for a play being performed quite so close to the Oxford traffic. Though the content itself is dark, the musical reference points (Britten's Dream, Janet Baker, and Maria Callas's last UK concerts) and the beautiful setting of the Gardens made it, for me, both a nostalgic and an enlivening experience.

For Caroline, it was rather less so, but both were glad we had made the effort to set aside an hour to go. Susurrus is on till 27th, I see from the theatre's website: if you are anywhere near between now and then, I recommend it.

I certainly hadn't appreciated how extensive and impressive the Botanic Gardens were, nor how close to the Cherwell: next week, with the new term starting, people will doubtless be in these punts if the weather holds.