This is the first year I’ve had a garden to grow in, and what a year to begin growing. With surprisingly little effort, we’ve had quite a harvest already; broad beans, spinach, plentiful coriander and a solitary cucumber. Now autumn is sliding into winter and I like to take the baby outside to watch the leaves turn on the pear tree sapling and monitor the ripening of all four of my pumpkins. I made chutney with the green tomatoes left forlornly on the vine with less and less sun each day to ripen them and it is much more tasty than I had imagined. There’s still harvesting left to do, more spinach and chard that pops up after a rainy spell and of course, the roots. I like imagining the carrots and parsnips swelling in the soil, resisting the childish urge to dig them up to see how big they’re getting. It’s a bit like having a novel in progress; something growing in the darkness that you can’t yet name or describe, something that needs to be kept warm and watered to give sustenance in the spring.
I was thrilled to be asked to talk a little about a flash fiction story of mine that appeared in The Nature of Cities anthology in 2019. We spoke about writing climate change and the possibility of optimism, and there was a surprise guest appearance from a member of the next generation! If you’d like, you can watch it here: