The machinery that publishes this website has been through several changes, and at each stage I have done my best to convert old items into a format that the new machine can deal with. It is slow going, though, and hard to keep motivated. After a burst of energy starting at the beginning and moving...

This has been a good week for excellent news on the plant front, quite apart from no deaths taking place while we were away. An orchid and the big frangipani are showing renewed signs of life.

I could not be happier. Three weeks ago, I was moaning about the difficulty of using a pump to boost the pressure in my watering system. It turned out that the “clockwork” timer I set up for the pump was just too inaccurate to reliably switch on just before the main watering timer. Too often, the pump had automatically switched off before the water came on, and, as noted, although it has an auto-off, it does not have an auto-on. The plants nearest the sprinklers were OK, but those further away depended on the kindness of friends. Nothing died as a result.

First day of the holidays, and the third year in the same place, which is so comfortable in its familiarity. First sea swim of the year too, which immediately posed a problem. You’re swimming along in delicious water and you suddenly hit a cold patch, and it is on the surface. Your feet remain delic...

The plants on the terrace are looking particularly lush and verdant this year, probably the result of a rather cool and extended spring. Now that the hot weather is here, keeping them watered is a constant problem, possibly the biggest problem of plants in containers (after the depredations of pests in an environment that does not encourage predators enough). The bigger the container, the easier it is, but we keep adding small pots of lovely plants that seem to dry out in minutes.