Over the Garden Wall
Bryony Lewis

The leaves are falling and being added to the compost heap. Most of the garden is now well past its best and I been busy pulling up spent annuals and adding those to the compost heap as well.
The trouble is that my attempts at composting this year have produced mixed results. One of our bins seriously smells like a blocked drain and has been taken over by giant orangey-brown slugs – ugh! The other is much better but it still seems to be taking an age for everything in it to break down. I have followed all the books to the letter what with regular turning and dousing the shredded cardboard with water. I wonder whether it simply hasn’t warmed up enough? Any suggestions most greatly received provided that they do not involve use of chemicals.
So here as September draws to a close with very strange humidity, there are a few apples still to be picked, the rhubarb is growing away , and I have just picked the last half dozen or so courgettes. But as I wrote in my piece for the August/September issue it has been a disappointing year in my Cornish garden. I have been keeping a tally of what we have picked and eaten. It is bordering on pitiful especially when you consider how much sheer effort went into it all. But as my neighbour says some years you have a sheer abundance of everything, most years are pretty good, and some years are best forgotten. 2007 belongs to the latter category for me and I am now working out where to plant and what to plant for next year and will be making a few more raised beds in a bid to get lettuces and other crops that the slugs and snails decimated this year up out of their reach. Or at least more of challenge for them to get to.
I have just learned that my job is to be phased out next March which means that instead of commuting from Cornwall to London I will be looking for some kind of work closer to home. Work that will, I hope, enable me to get my garden in proper order and to enjoy everything this area has to offer. My partner has already spent most of the past year working from our Cornish home and I must admit I have really envied him being able to breathe in all that fresh air when I have been racing around the metropolis. On the plus side it enabled us to make the move of a lifetime and to be able to earn enough money to start renovating our house…. And now, with my redundancy pay in the pipeline, we should be able to knock a chunk off our mortgage and as it were “buy” me the time to find another job. It will also give me the much needed time to get started with renovations on the two outbuildings – former stables – that came with the house. When you work away as I have been doing you’ve no sooner arrived home for the weekend when it’s time to start getting ready to go again. For me 2008 will bring great change to my life and I can’t wait to embrace it. It will mean my being able to join local clubs and groups and to play a fuller part in village life and perhaps even to make a start on the novel I have been itching to write. In the meantime, I’ll have my nose buried in the seed catalogues choosing what to try and grow next.