4 Rochester

I knew this time was coming. Pants becoming progressively tighter aren’t very subtle. And, even though I avoided stepping on the scale for as long as I could, one day I did it. It wasn’t pretty. And why did we ever teach Duncan to read letters and numbers, anyway? I still don’t know...

It’s not easy to find time to tend the garden with two little ones. Or do any singular activity, for that matter. They like to be involved. Our backyard, tiny as it is, is now strewn with kids toys. The turtle sand box, basketball hoop, water table, little slide and see-saw. I love it, honestly...

There’s something so satisfying about cooking dinner with food from my garden. Dinner tonight - currently bubbling away on the stove — features tilapia (from who knows where) cooked in a tomato and pepper sauce. The tomatoes, red pepper and herbs all come from the garden. The green pepper...

I love my compost bins, tucked away behind the garage. It’s so quiet and private back there (a big thing in a city backyard) and smells of leaves and rain and the forest. I finally got around to screening my compost. Oh, what beautiful stuff. It’s not such good work for my back, but good...

My mum sent me a link to the “Four Hour Work Week” guy peeing a hard boiled egg by blowing through a hole in the top. It sounded very interesting. I buy free range organic eggs, usually directly from the farmers (rather than the supermarket). They’re yolks are so rich they’re...

I had so much fun at Duncan’s birthday party that - as exhausted as I was - I had a hard time falling asleep last night. This morning, even though Kevin has Berry downstairs and Duncan is still sleeping, I can’t get back to sleep for thinking about it. All considered, everything went well...

I’ve been woefully ignoring my blog again. Must be too busy picking weeds out of the garden. OK, so I’m not yet a master composter. I was a bit desperate for soil to fill in a new bed, so I used compost that hadn’t been properly heated, and was full of maple tree seeds, and so [......

At the bottom of our garden in my childhood home in England, we had a large rhubarb plant. Every now and again, my step-mum used to send me down to pick a few stalks, which she’d usually make into rhubarb and apple crumble. I loved its tangy sharpness. As soon as I had a garden of [...]

My herb garden is growing. The blog article I posted a link to the other day reminded me that I do like growing herbs. They’re very satisfying - easy to grow and offering an almost immediate harvest. So far, we’ve eaten asparagus and rhubarb from our garden this year. Maybe I should make...

A decade ago (or more) I got interested in pesticides in food. I read Diet for a Poisoned Planet: How to Choose Safe Foods for You and Your Family and made some changes to what I eat and how I think about food. One of the things that struck me was reading about how children can [...]