The Green Man.

The vegetable garden and orchard are showing how hours of labour can pay off as everything comes to fruition. We picked the plums today, the corn is ripe and ready for the freezer and Heather already has jars and jars of pickles and fruit. The food-dryer has been at full throttle for weeks and the freezers are chock a block. We get a lot of satisfaction from this yearly occupation and all the rest of the year we will be eating pumpkin and squash plus all those preserved vegetables and fruit. And this makes a large difference to our monthly food bill - and we eat so well.

Now could we not simply buy all this from the grocery market and save the hours of work? Sure, but there is a satisfaction in this growing business that is difficult to quantify. While I may joke about Heather being mugged and pulled under the leaves in the Zucchini patch, I know that behind the humour is an awareness that the garden is our contact with the life force of nature – the mystery itself, clad in green leaves.

Seeds, soil, water, sunlight and voila!