After two months in Romania working on our conifer syrup project, we arrived back in France to Eden. Our garden represented what Nature provides when man makes no intervention.  The wild flowers fight for their positions amongst the rampaging brambles.  The wild grasses grow tall towards the sun to hold their little seed children in the light to sow in the late Summer. The grass snakes find cool shady shelters and mice use the long corn ears to travel as they please avoiding the hunters.

It was a hot dry day and I escaped into a world of buzzing bees, caterpillars, black beetles, and happy spiders.  It was overgrown, colourful, wonderful and dangerous. The thorns scratched, the brambles tripped my feet and the insects sometimes bit.  I could imagine the Eden of no humans, just nature, and felt venerable, subservient to the insects and the flowers, who were in control. But it was beautiful.

But as for Eve my Eden ended. For although I love natures wild, I also love gardening, growing vegetables, getting muddy, picking herbs, lying in the grass under the trees for a quick snooze, and not getting hissed at by any grass snakes. The garden has now been scythed and composted to be returned to the ground. A very different Eden, but one I wont be risking eating an Apple to loose.