Smokingboot

I've just gone out with a tankard of ale for Lugh. Every Lughnassad I leave a pint of foaming best on a pile of bricks in front of my green (brown really) man . This year, he was so deeply hidden under ivy, brambles, grass and untamed buddleia it took me five minutes to find him, never mind pull the greenery off him, so I guess something's working. He had a slug in his eye socket. I tried to convince myself that this was OK at Lammas but my sense of appropriate myth just couldn't convince the kid in my head, and the interloper got roughly bunged half way across the garden. Impudent things, slugs.

Quincey's got many more pears this year, and the blackcurrant bushes yielded enough in their first season to make a powerpurple crumble, cooked by larians. Our back yard clearly wants to be a kitchen garden, where he that fruits wins. If only I had known when we first arrived.

My beautiful red rose has suffered here...the soil doesn't suit her. So I took one of her few blooms and combined it with a passionflower from the trellis; not a traditional combination but it works, they look beautiful together in front of my Venus statuette.

This may be our last Lughnassad here for a long time, perhaps ever. We haven't loved the place enough, too busy dashing up and down the country, coming home to collapse, exhausted, in front of the tv. Now, just when I begin to understand what might grow in this soil without chemical involvement, it's time to leave. Friends came around today to cart off stuff we can't take with us - my big (and rather lovely) wooden table, chairs, bookcases. It's beginning to feel like a proper move. I hadn't believed in it before, not sure I do now.

Never mind. Lughnassad always has a slightly forlorn feeling to me, and it shouldn't really - it's all about the sun, after all! Here's to the little garden; it's given us some fun years, with frogs and pears, paddling pool parties and the occasional dodgy cocktail. Time to enjoy a pretty if shining wet afternoon.

Sunset is a while off yet.