The relentless summer rain has given way to golden autumn sunshine. A chocolate box blue sky is decorated with perfect puffy flat bottomed little clouds gliding majestically across the valley. Sloes, fat and shiny fill the hedgerows with plump black wild plums and glistening blackberries. Orchards are heavy with fruit. Golden stubble fields striped green…

  I wake abruptly at three o’clock to the sound of more rain beating on the window panes; more rain and still more rain. Will it never stop?  Nervously I look out of the window into the first shards of dawn light and watch a veil of water drifting sideways past the window. The wind…

As we march into June the valley puts on its thick summer coat. The skeleton shapes of winter, clothed, oh, so gingerly in spring, are suddenly engulfed in furry foliage. Shapes merge and disappear; hillsides take on different contours, swathed in green lushness. Strong winds blow huge cumulous across the transparent sky. Giant shadows come…

Take two red peppers, ten tomatillos, ten plumb tomatoes, three large cloves Elephant garlic, sprinkle them with olive oil and put them on a roasting tray in a very hot oven. Keep a check on them and remove each as they become soft. The peppers will take longest, up to 20/25 mins. Skin the tomatoes…