How long might you have to wait for an allotment in parts of Britain?   Answer here

In our garden we have several ways to get rid of our garden and general waste. There are two large bins: one is for rubbish which we can’t get rid of ourselves;  small bits of cooked food, although we don’t waste much, and the rest is mostly plastic: All that extra packaging which is considered necessary by manufacturers, but which we used to manage without. You know the kind, it takes special tools just to open a packet of biscuits these days. We bought some new tree loppers, and had to use the old loppers to open the packet that the new loppers came in.  It was almost as if someone was playing a cruel trick. 

There is another bin for green waste. We use that rarely as most things will compost eventually, even what are thought of as toxic weeds; thistles and dandelions, if I can catch them before they seed in they go. It was full this week as we had a tree hit by such strong winds that three branches came off and needed getting rid of.

‘The Good Life’ was a comedy programme set in suburbia in Southern England.  A couple were trying to be self sufficient  not on some remote hill farm in Wales, or in a Tuscan idyll,  but right where they were, a tube ride away from central London and surrounded by thousands of other people who were trying to live their own version of ‘The Good Life’ i.e. one where the golf club, the right schools and expensive holidays were the norm. The comedy came from the contrast between the two.

Every month I choose a photograph from Flickr to appear here.  Hopefully something interesting and informative.