Scary cut-out masks and comic carved faces are everywhere at Halloween – and mostly made from pumpkins these days in Britain.  But that wasn’t always the way: it’s a fairly recent ‘tradition’ that goes back only a few decades when the American celebration of Halloween found its way back to…

The autumn harvest is abundant with hedgerow herbs, fruits and nuts that will help you stay healthy through the winter. On Apple Island we have been picking the elderberries, dark, lucious, ripe and glistening on the trees.  Elderberries, with some added rosehips, are astonishingly good anti-virals, full of vitamins that boost the immune system and help both to prevent and cure nasty colds and flu.

Spiders have been with us for 100 million years and so – no surprise - are a crucial part of those ancient stories and beliefs, they conjure up fear and fascination, they are always with us in one form or another, sometimes poisonous, sometimes insect-munching benevolence; they are symbols of eternity, creativity, persistence.