I've just returned from a smashing holiday on the island of Elba and in Italy's Cinque Terre.  The area is a revelation - a true delight for artists of any persuasion, botanists, mountain bikers, walkers, foragers, gourmands (if you ever catch me using the term 'foodie', shoot me), bird lovers, animal lovers, door lovers, lovers and friends.  I came away with the fullest sketchbooks I've kept whilst travelling for a very long time (see subsequent post), and probably the most photos as well (mostly of doors).  I also kept up my daily haikus, which more than ever acted as a handy kind of short, snappy diary - carefully concise descriptions of things I'm seeing or doing.  Elba is beautifully tranquil, rugged yet densely vegetated (many of the steeply terraced wine vineyards that covered the island's hills were replaced with trees in the last century so I found it unexpectedly lush and verdant) with all manner of fascinating plants, many of which are wild herbs that fill the air with delicious fragrance.  I had the most splendid time on a mountain bike, in the sea and on foot, and there was some pretty crazy weather as well as very welcome sunshine - all in all, a good bit of everything and I'd highly recommend visiting both places, but perhaps waiting a little while till the pound's calmed down a bit if you're a Brit!

Whilst away I read Barbara Kingsolver's fantastic epic The Poisonwood Bible - the third book about/set in Congo that I've read in the last few years (the others being Heart of Darkness and the interesting but somewhat distasteful Blood River) and an absolute cracker: characters, plot, history, description - rich and compelling in all aspects.  Two passages about voting really struck a chord in these Brexit nonsensetimes, this one in particular: "To the Congolese, it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plum loses.  That means almost half the people will be unhappy and, according to Anatole, in a village that's halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it.  There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line".  Another vote happens a little later in the book, where "some of them that voted for Leah were put out with [the village chief] and some were put out with [an unpopular outsider], so everybody ended up getting what they didn't want, and now had to go along with it".

So, once again a seasonal post.  As everyone knows, Autumn is the best season, and indeed for many people and in many aspects it's the start of the yearly cycle.  Hooray for Autumn.  I produced this image a few years ago but was looking over some old work and decided it could do with improving, so I did so, and here it is.

Here are some photos of some food from the amazing walled garden at Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset, where I recently helped out with a spot of digging and chopping and harvesting and so on. Rather nice it was too.