Things were very quiet after I returned from China.  It rained a lot in Somerset, even when it snowed over the rest of Britain.

Although we’re continuing to work on the allotments, Glastonbury Town Council has promised the government they will sell the land to developers.  I expect there will be letters to the Gazette. The Resilience Handbook Community section covers the basics of setting up a local organisation – you never know when you might be ambushed by outside forces!

Consequently, the Resilience Garden will be coming out of its fallow period, so plenty of work ahead there.  I wanted to see how it would perform for edibles if left alone for a whole season.  The leeks did well, and the self seeded broccoli has given a steady harvest of green leaves.  I did plant out some courgettes and squash in the summer; their huge leaves and sprawling vines were a great weed suppressant.

It’s the Chinese Year of the Earth Dog now  – I wonder if that’s auspicious for digging? I got the bus to Bristol, to meet up with my friend Val from Swansea, for the New Year celebrations at the Wai Yee Hong Chinese supermarket.  They lay on a stage, host a street food market, and hire the Lion Dancers.

The supermarket itself is entertaining enough for a visit.  The gaudy labels sometimes condescend to have a English translation stuck over them, but there’s still enough mystery for shopping to be something of a lucky dip.  The range of exotic fruits – tinned, dried, crystallised, salted – and the unique cuts of pork….

….anyway this is getting to sound like an advert.  Be careful though – I ended up in China itself after my first New Year Lion Dance here!

My intrepid publishers at Magic Oxygen are on an expedition to Kenya.   They’ve been funding tree planting and building school classrooms in Kundeni, initially through an annual literary prize.  Now they’ve formed a charity, the Word Forest Organisation, to further these projects.

They’ll be back in time to host the Magic Oxygen Literary Prize Giving in Lyme Regis on March 31st – I’ll be there to answer questions about resilience – then add the finishing touches to ‘Recipes for Resilience’.

Routine life provides a backdrop to exciting travel adventures in the way that a simple chain highlights the jewels strung on it.

However, there are mysteries to be discovered in ordinary settings and one of these, pictured above, is the legendary Town Tree Farm…..

….more next week