I’ve been in the garden today, doing a few jobs that needed doing (grass cutting rabbit shit shovelling, weeding and sorting in the veggie garden). I’ve been followed around as usual by Sherri – my faithful hen who potters around behind me and makes sure she gets all the bugs I unearth on my journey. She’s such a grand companion.

I had to turf her out of the veggie patch because I noticed my spinach getting tatty where she’s been eating it and last year the hens had the whole lot in the autumn. So, I shut the gate behind me and was surprised a few moments later to find Sherri back at my feet. How did she do it? She realised she couldn’t get through the gate so she went round the back of the greenhouse and pushed over the fence panel that was blocking their way and there she was……now don’t tell me she’s not a sentient being – she knows what she wants and she knows how to get it. Not bad for a critter with a brain the size of a pea, huh? She’s a joy to have around, along with the rest of our little flock.

So, tonight’s supper is going to be home-grown stuff and once again I feel pretty smug about that given the hours I work and the limited time I have for such things.

I was oiking out some weeds that had been sucked into the passion vine’s tendrilly grasp and noticed how many fruits were hanging off the plant – despite a poor summer, sunshine-wise. Even now, there are dozens of flowers open and opening – they’re mixing with the fruit, ripe and unripe and I came to thinking that it’s the tenacity of the plants in the garden that I admire so much. Summer’s gone and yet the plants are still hoping for one more seed set, one more chance to propagate before the winter comes and stops growth dead in its tracks.

Here then is a celebration of the riotous plant that is creeping all over the trellis that separates the dogs from the hens. The full circle of its existence – it’s a small circle but nonetheless a beautiful one.