I was cooking a pasta sauce the other day, and as I always do when I’m cooking pretty much anything, I went way overboard on the garlic. Who doesn’t love garlic, after all? It makes everything taste better. As is often the case, though, I was being shadowed by my cockatiel, who was very interested … Read more

With the festive season around the corner, I’ve been stocking up on one of my seasonal favorites: walnuts. I’ve always loved walnuts but I only tend to eat them around this time of year—I think it keeps them more special this way. In any case, this year will be the first time we are joined … Read more

A rather eccentric neighbor of mine came round the other day to offer me a big bag of sunflower seeds as a gift. He grew sunflowers on his big allotment a few miles away, but he was just overwhelmed with the size of the most recent harvest. I told him I would definitely take them, … Read more

A friend of mine has an allotment, and is always bringing us the jams and preserves he makes from what he grows. It has been a particularly good year, though, and he recently brought us two pots of jam as well as big bunch of raspberries. We were, naturally, thrilled—freshly grown raspberries are always welcome … Read more

It won’t surprise you to learn that as long as I have been a parrot owner, I have also been an avid birdwatcher. I’ve always had some kind of bird feeding station in my garden, after years of battling to keep squirrels away. One thing that it never occurred to me to try, though, was … Read more