I did a Saturday morning job in Wandsworth. There were 10 window boxes on three floors of a great big house, so I got to the Homebase across the bridge when it opened and filled the van with bedding plants - purple, silver and yellow. The final effect was pretty good but it was a heck of an ordeal carrying it out. Every window had to have furniture moved away from it, and window locks removed. I had to lug buckets of fresh compost around, trying not to knock the antiques. Each window box had to have the old plants and soil removed and new compost shoveled in before I could plant. It was almost impossible not to make a mess. I had to stand in the bath to do the bathroom windowsill, moving a forest of Jo Malone bottles first.

Then it all had to be watered.

I thought it was all done and was about to go, then saw to my horror that the white-painted front of the house was streaked with black soil that had been leeched out of the containers by my watering. I had to clamber around leaning out of windows with a cloth wiping the house down before they noticed.

They seemed happy enough, and asked if I’d like a Maison Blanc cake to take away with me. It looked fantastic – a chocolate work of art – and I accepted gratefully. As I left the woman said: “I’m glad you can use the cake, it’s yesterdays so we can’t risk it on the children.”

Later she phoned up to complain - about soil in the bath. I told her she’d poisoned me with a cake. I don’t think they’re going to become regular customers.

Saturday was a day that somehow got left off summer and found itself slipped into a batch of cold-and-wet late-autumn ones. It was warm and bright, and I celebrated by snoozing in the hammock for what surely must be the last time this year, and picking the last of the tomatoes before pulling up the now-withered plants and putting them in the compost.

We even had lunch outside, polishing off a dish of Kentish cob nuts my sister gave us from her tree in – you guessed it – Kent. They are wonderful – milky, slightly sweet and crunchy. I looked in the Nigel Slater cookbook (Kitchen Diaries – the best cook book I have) and found a recipe for Cob Nut Salad, which involved chopping them into a bowl, adding finely sliced celery and crumbling cheese over them. He recommends Ticklemore, but the Wensleydale we had to hand worked well.

The bare black earth where the tomatoes stood looks like an opportunity. I will try my own garlic again. I’ve had one success and three pretty miserable failures from garlic. One year it rotted, another the squirrels took every clove but not, as I later discovered, to eat. They redistributed them all around the garden, giving me garlic in the most unlikely and inappropriate places.

I know my soil is too heavy really, but my one successful year urges me to try again – that and the fact that even Waitrose’s Truly Bloody Expensive brand of garlic sprouts within a week or two of purchase. My own garlic lasted a year without sprouting, which suggests that the stuff we buy in the shops is already in late middle age.

I took a stroll round the farmer’s market after lunch, noting with satisfaction that my free cob nuts cost £3.80 a kilo there.

It’s one of the joys of the market as the season progresses – to check how much my own produce would cost if I had to buy it. To see, for example, that my artichokes – of which I had gathered 15 that morning - were £1.20 each, and that tomatoes on the vine were £5 for a measly punnet. I must have £100 worth in my freezer – and that’s just the ones that even with all my ingenuity and greediness I haven’t yet been able to use, but which I can thaw to a deliciously fresh tomato sauce right into winter.

The farmers’ markets take us Londoners for mugs. We were buying meat one day, and when we asked the rosy hued yokel selling us the brisket how we should cook it he said: “Don’t ask me. I eat in the pub.”

It’s time to tackle the quince mountain. The box of fruit I picked at the weekend will deteriorate if I don’t use it fast, and there is still half the tree to pick. I must have 10 lbs of fruit, and there are 20 lb more to come. I’m leaving the rest on the tree, taking advantage for as long as I can of nature’s life support system. If I pick them they lose their scent, their bloom, and grey pin pricks appear on the skin that translate into brown flecks when you cut into the flesh.

So, with the rain bucketing down this morning and gardens impossible to work in, I set to. I have some tried and tested recipes – quince and orange marmalade and quince and lemon marmalade. These are delicious; with the rosy red of the fruit once cooked and the tang of the citrus peel they have a real zing.

I have put off doing quince cheese, because I’ll be stirring for the rest of the day. Quince cheese has nothing to do with cheese but is very good with it. You make it like jam but then keep on cooking and stirring until you have a mix the consistency of toffee, and a deep red. Poured into deep trays it sets into a beautiful jelly that you slice into thin, translucent slivers of concentrated fruit.

But I needed some new recipes. And the recipe books failed me. That’s the problem with quince – and even more with mulberry, our other home-grown big crop. So few people have the trees or use the fruit that the cookery books pretty much ignore them.

I had found on Google some while ago an Australian university site with personal recipes. Someone called Jennifer Quince had one for quince and tomato relish, and someone else for ginger and quince butter. So that’s what I made this morning. I used three pounds of fruit on each. I’d give you the full url but the page seems to have disappeared. It starts http://cres.anu.edu.au but when I went there and tried to search for Quince I was denied access. The relish is delicious, it will be great on burgers and sausages, the ginger butter I’m undecided upon. The ginger works well but it has a pale sickly colour because you don’t cook it long enough to turn the fruit red.
Anyway, here are the recipes. (I reduced the amounts)

GINGER QUINCE BUTTER (for toast, pancakes, etc.)
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 11:52:59 -0800
From: peggy morrison
3 pounds ripe quince (5 or 6 fruit), peeled, cored, sliced to make 8 cups
1 1/2 C. water
1 C . apple juice
3 T. lemon juice
Bring to a boil, then simmer, partially covered, about 30 minutes or until tender. Stir in the rest of the ingredients:
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. honey
1 T. grated lemon peel
1 T. chopped fresh ginger root (or 1/2 tsp. ground ginger)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
Cook, stirring, another 5 minutes. Puree in blender (or in food processor with a metal blade). Cool, then put into freezer or refrigerator containers and cover tightly. Can keep frozen up to 3 months. Makes about 5 cups.

Quince and tomato relish
My name is Jennifer QUINCE. I have a delicious recipe for quince and tomato relish peel and slice 4kg ripe tomatoes 3kg diced onions 5kg peeled quinces place in a large dish sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of salt and let stand overnight [I ignored this in my impatience to get on, and it didn’t seem to affect the finished product] then empty into large pot bring to the boil and add 3kgs of sugar and 2 x 250ml cups of vinegar stir until sugar is melted than add 4tbsp of dry mustard 4tbsp of curry powder boil gently for approx 2 1/2 hours stirring often than add 1 cup of plain flour stirring for approx 15 mins until thick I hope you enjoy your relish!

That solves the problem with most of the picked fruit, but I may have to delve deeper for ideas to use up the rest. The same site has a recipe for quince hand cream. Now there’s a thought

We’re under a lot of pressure to get another cat. Partly it’s the children, but also the garden needs one. We found a mouse nest under the back of the house in the summer, and yesterday a couple of squirrels chased each other into the house. Luckily I was on hand to shut the door from the garden room to the kitchen to stop them tearing round the other rooms and up and down the curtains. One fled straight out of the back door, but the other hurled itself at the glass of the full-length windows for a couple of minutes before, concussed, it found the way out.

I’ve had my strawberries, apples and tomatoes eaten, and last week a pair of fat pigeons started on the rocket. I thought they were after the cabbage at first but oh no, your pigeon of today turns its beak up at basic English veg – only something continental and expensive will satisfy them.

None of these pests would have troubled us in Luigi’s day.

Luigi was an Italian cat, as his name suggests – owned by my Italian brother-in-law until he married my wife’s sister and she said the cat had to go. The children were little at the time, and we hit upon the idea that the cat only understood Italian as a way of trying to get them to start speaking the language. They would stand at the back door with his food bowl, calling: “Luigi, manga.” and “papa Luigi, papa.”

Rarely would be come. Luigi was an outdoor cat. Indoors he became nervous. A closed door blocking his exit to the garden would have him mewing piteously. Outdoors was his domain. He prowled the back garden like a small, slightly bowlegged tabby tiger with a tatty ear, never venturing beyond the triangle of territory enclosed by the houses in our immediate neighbourhood.

Except when it was very cold, he preferred to sleep beneath a bush rather than in his basket. Even the heaviest rain could not drive him indoors.

He was ferociously defensive of his territory. Squirrels soon learned they had to keep to the very treetops. Birds, that they would lose their eggs, their young and their lives unless they were very careful.

Other cats should expect a fight as the price of a short cut across our lawn. With foxes, Luigi was more circumspect. He’d watch them, standing his ground, while they sniffed at him, agreeing a truce.

When I gardened, he was my constant companion. No sooner had I taken a fork or hoe from the shed than he’d come over the wall, content to sit at my side as I laboured. Maybe there was a streak of Robin in his mongrel blood.

But then he died. A sudden loss of weight and a dulling of his glossy coat told us something was amiss. He stopped making even his brief visits indoors for food. The vet told us his kidneys had given out on him. His last meal was of ham – his favourite – taken from my hand, and a drink from the pond which, for Luigi, had always held the sweetest water.

With Luigi’s passing, the ecology of our small plot altered radically. The squirrels, once the most fleeting of visitors, now played chase across the lawn and up and down the mulberry tree. The expressway of mingling branches that had once sped them overhead was now used to deliver them to a feast that had always been denied them. They found our redcurrants greatly to their taste. The heads of our sunflowers would be torn off and eaten like big fat burgers. We learned early on that we would never enjoy a crop of nuts from our new hazel. Even the cucumbers would suffer an exploratory bite which left them limp and weeping on the vine.

We acquired a mouse. He took a particular liking to our strawberries, carving a neat arc from dozens of fruit in each evening’s feast.

We got birds. A pair of blackbirds which had not nested with us since before Luigi’s arrival returned, setting up home in the climbing hydrangea on the back of the house, unwisely close to the top of the high garden wall between us and our neighbours.

We got used to their persistent alarm calls, but one day they went into overdrive. The three beaks we had glimpsed in the nest were now three purple, chewed and rubbery messes on the lawn. At first we suspected a neighbour’s cat, but the birds’ rage when a magpie came and perched on the mulberry showed us where the blame lay.

Despite their bereavement, the blackbirds stayed, and were joined by blue tits, wrens and a robin. All proved industrious. They worked the garden like panners gleaning gold from a stream. For the first time we could dispense with slug pellets, because the birds coped with these pests for us. Our roses were free from greenfly, our flowers from blackfly and our cabbages didn’t end up like green lace doilies.

Without Luigi standing guard, the garden became fair game for the other cats in the neighbourhood. As is usual in the suburbs, there were far too many. One had a liking for frogs. So, when the dozens of tiny froglets went pinging around like tiddlywinks they promptly got munched. And now there is no spawn in the spring, no pleasure in watching the tadpoles come to life on hot afternoons.

So, Luigi’s passing brought plenty of changes to the garden. I welcomed the birds, and I didn’t miss the slugs. But I do miss our garden cat. And it may be time to try to find another. Except, I fear he is irreplaceable.

Two weird clients today. No, not weird actually –just typical. I’m seeing the pattern: Spoilt, demanding and always right. Just like teenagers. This morning it was a very grand house on a square in what I’m sure they call Islington but which I call Kings Cross. As usual I had to park a couple of streets away, feed the meter several quid for every hour and lug the gear.

He’s a senior editor of a national newspaper, she’s a writer, or so the Philippina nanny told me when they’d rushed off to work in twin black cabs and she was relaxing with a coffee while the kids wailed – ignored - in another room.

I’d got off to a bad start with him. He answered the door in a white towelling bathrobe looking bleary, and showed me out of a side door to get my stuff. He put it on the latch, but when I returned the door wouldn’t open. So I had to ring the front doorbell again. There was no answer, but when I came back five minutes later I got him again, and he was very huffy, insisting the door was on the latch. He yanked it to show me, at which point the bathrobe came open. He grabbed at it in a way that suggested he didn’t have anything else on, and when the door refused to budge he harrumphed and stomped of. Always right you see.

I had to power wash the York stone, which was a very messy job. The garden was a tiny courtyard dropping in two stages to a well alongside the house.
The well and steps seemed perfectly angled to send my jet of water blasting back over me, and the machine kept cutting out. I had to bang it repeatedly on the floor to get it going again. So I got soaked and filthy, but the dull grey stone was transformed to a lovely soft golden colour.

And it poured with rain all the time I was working. I had the cable and socket in a plastic bag but was ready for an electric shock at any time.

This afternoon it was off to Richmond to an American woman. On the phone she’d said she wanted her lawn re-seeded, but when I got there she said she wasn’t happy with its shape. It sagged in the middle, and what she wanted was a gentle mound. So it was off to Homebase for some topsoil. As I piled up the soil she’d come out and say “Higher” or “More rounded.” It had taken a couple of tons by the time she was satisfied. I only have a small van, and it was rearing up like frightened horse each time I loaded up. I had to pile bags on the passenger seat and under my feet to balance things out a bit.

I finished off just as the rain came down once again. As I left she asked me how long until the lawn would grow. I told her the seed should sprout in 10 to 14 days, and she looked disappointed. No, she looked more than disappointed; she looked like she was sure I was cheating her with inferior slow grass when she was paying for Speedy Green.

“Well,” she said, “I guess it better had.”

Demanding you see.

I got a call from a big-time garden designer today, and met up with him on my way home. He is putting a £50,000 garden behind a £1.5m house beneath the M4 flyover in Chiswick. This garden will have 1,000 plants squeezed into it. He said that an expensive garden is the latest must-have for people in houses where they've already got the high-tech kitchen, conservatory and quite possibly pool, hot-tub or sauna sorted. But what most of his customers don't realise is that a garden needs to be looked after - that plants die if they aren't watered, so they really need a gardener too. Which is where I come in. He'll give my name to anyone he thinks might need me.

Another garden designer who’s put some work my way says most of his customers have no grasp of the fact that plants grow, so they expect them to arrive at full size, and if they get any bigger they complain. He insists he puts in an irrigation system in any new garden. This is James, who says all garden designers come to hate their clients in time. I think I can see why.

The bloody yucca has fallen over again. This happened the last time it flowered. So you get two flowerings in almost 25 years, followed by a major collapse.

This time it took an apple tree down with it – the feeble little Kids Orange Red that I bought as a replacement for the canker-prone Orange Pippin.

I dragged it upright and propped it against the fence like a drunk, but not before it had stabbed me twice in the hand and once in the head. It really is a vicious brute. Once again I found it had hardly any root, yet it’s very much alive, so I anchored it with a couple of bungees.

I just pray that the next time a burglar legs it down the back gardens he lands on the yucca when he leaps the fence. It would make it all worthwhile.

I’ve been asked how you can become a gardener accidentally. I wouldn’t like to generalise, but this is how it happened to me.

I was at a loose end one day and decided to power washing my front drive.
An elderly lady walked past and said: “You can do mine when you’ve finished”.

So I did, and when she asked how much that would be I said £200, and she paid it!

At the time I was at a pretty general loose end professionally, and wondering what I might do next. I had also started a correspondence which would lead to the Royal Horticultural Society’s General Certificate in Horticulture, and was spending a good deal of time in my own garden.

We get a free local glossy mag through our door once a month, and have used it to find decent – if expensive – plumbers, electricians and so on.

Looking through the listings there were pages of garden designers, but no one who seemed prepared to do the dirty work – clearing, weeding, mowing and a spot of planting. So I placed my own ad that read: “RHS student will maintain your garden to the highest standards.” Which was true, but did lead those who called – and they did, from day one – to expect a keen 18 year old rather than a man of middle years.

And I’ve never looked back. I get calls from well-heeled punters – you only get the mag if your house is worth over £500,000 or something – who are delighted to find a middle class gardener who will keep things looking nice. And I’m delighted to find something I can do in my middle age.