End of year news

It has been wet in the garden! The sun shone today, and I finally got around to attacking the compost heap. First job is to take off the un-composted top and sides where the material is still too fibrous to spread. The outer fibrous material simply gets dumped on what will be next year's compost – the bin on the right. If the weather stays fair, we'll get the good stuff spread in the next couple of days – maybe 15-20 wheelbarrows full – vital food for the soil and, of course, masses of carbon collected from the air.

Elsewhere in the garden I spent a couple of hours pruning the rampant blackcurrant bushes, tidied up the greenhouse (pruning the grape vine) and making a new wire enclosure to take all the wood shavings from my woodwork.

I had a nice surprise a few days ago to find a newt pottering about on the floor of the workshop, no doubt looking for a cool frost-free place to hid. Truly amazing how the numbers of frogs, toads and newts proliferates when they have a few acres of ground without poisons.

So now the garden is essentially dormant for the rest of the winter and I will come back to it when I return from what I hope will be 2 months in the sunny climate of New Zealand. Hopefully I will be able to promote more of the emerging scything culture if woke concerns of health and safety do not get in the way!