Dark, wet, stormy days have cut my connection with outdoors. One dry day and a rummage through my seed box sees me overdosed on creativity and a renewed life force which I thought was dead and gone for good. Gardening can do that; it can put you back in touch with who you really are.

One of the problems of discovering again who I really am is that I have to face the fact that I am a hoarder. I use my Kitchen Garden as a living larder; somewhere to store and stock-pile fresh carrots, beetroot, brussel sprouts, parsnips and leeks during the winter. Outside in the Kitchen Garden there are still beds full of vegetables. Indoors, rows and rows of gorgeous Golden Hubbard squash line up waiting to be cooked. It is nearly time to start planting again…and my living larder is still full, despite the fact that I pulled up 20 lbs of carrots on Boxing Day!

So, its time to pull and preserve or cook and eat the remaining produce in the living larder and to remind myself that the demise of the old makes way for the new. It is both the law of nature and of creative destruction and as Pablo Picasso said’ Every act of creation is first an act of destruction’.

Why not take a look at my Living Larder? It’s muddy and wet, but it’s bursting with colour, life and produce! See how with a few packets of seeds you too could be providing fresh vegetables for your family all through the winter. As for me, well, I could just about feed an army.

Click on the picture to walk inside……I hope you are wearing your Wellies!