My Dear friend Vicky,

Thank you so much for your lovely letter, yes it feels like an age since we were in the woods camping and preparing food from our allotments. I love the way we combined delicious recipes and ingredients without any pre-discussion…but I think that’s what happens when you use seasonal food as seasonal food, by design, tends to complement each other anyway, e.g. courgettes, beetroot red onions, carrots, and tomatoes- yum! 

I really love the way you prepared a delicious salad with greens and a splash of soy sauce for roasting some seeds to create a delicious umami taste. The fact that the whole bowl held out after a sprinkling of rain overnight to be munched with breakfast was extraordinary.

I loved that we could use the tripod over the fire and properly cook all our food over flames. All accompanied by our Flower moon, Lilac wine and Blood Moon, Oakleaf wine, both just a month old but already delicious. How was it that we both found a rhythm with our wine making and the full moons?  Perhaps it was over lockdown where we had more time to connect with nature, the seasons, and the lunar cycles etc. Btw, I’m planning to make my first rose petal wine on the next full moon!

The woodland itself was so beautiful, the way the trees are tall like majestic vertical pillars fanning out their collective canopies. And as you say the ground was so soft with the hay from the bluebells – bluebell hay… how poetic! 

There were so many poetic moments over the weekend, for instance, when we were lounging after a hearty brunch in the sunshine intermittently reading and chatting together, when from no-where a swarm of dragonflies began circling our camp like tiny helicopters over a war zone! Apparently, the correct term is a “cluster” of dragonflies. Who knew? 

According to ancient Hindu beliefs a dragonfly is a symbol of change, transformation, and self-realization. It teaches us to love life, to rejoice and have faith even amidst difficulties. Which, coincidentally, I think was something we were attempting to do on our little trip to the woods. 

Yes, I too loved the excitable conversations we had that day, about our childhoods, playing young Witches in the garden shed, making concoctions and brews from collected foliage and flora and how we would set off on our bicycles with friends, staying out for hours; spending entire days out, playing on bales of hay, up trees, in derelict cottages and old barns and making those leafy camps in the woods; the countryside was an endless playground back then. I love those memories, just being intrenched in greenness and only summoned home by the waning light and lengthening shadows. I don’t think I ever felt unsafe, lost or disorientated on those excursions, for the freedom in the wilderness felt like home.

I know life has changed so much for many young people today, as most of their playtime adventures are virtual ones, abstract and two dimensional. Without wanting to mythologise, I do believe that my childhood has equipped me to be able to engage with the natural world with confidence and gratitude, to hold an innate understanding that there are treasures still to discover.

I love the sound of your fig leaf wine. Mine is still brewing and cloudy but I’m hopeful. Today I returned home from my day job at Charleston to drink the last of my Kombucha – the second ferment, fused with my favourite herbs (still the budding witch): sage for my hot flushes, lovage for purifying the blood, nettles for the immune system and raspberry leaves for menopause.  It’s slightly fizzy and delicious with a slice of lemon and a top-up of sparkling water.  

I sat at the end of my garden in my favourite spot to watch the sunset, the arbour which as you know is nestled in the back hedge and now surrounded by clematis, climbing roses and fruiting honeysuckle and I thought at that moment as I sipped my witches brew that it seems the imaginary world I thrived in as a child has reformed itself in my adult life, reclaiming my comfort zone, camped out once again in the green. Bliss!

Much love and gratitude,

Tan x