It was October 1998, and I was a thirty something, mostly out guy just trying to sort everything out in my mind just trying to work out how to reconcile honesty with not losing everything. My life was forever turned upside down when news broke that a student from the University of Wyoming in Laramie, had been brutally murdered. He had been beaten, tied to a split-rail fence, pistol-whipped and left to die in near freezing temperatures. It was shocking, it was sickening, and it left people [and me] wondering why.

For six days I was glued to the news and hoping for his recovery, but on October 12, 1998, Matthew Shepard's battered body finally gave out and he died. During that week the world discovered the reason that Matthew had been beaten and left to die: He was gay.

I can’t quite believe it’s been a month since I last posted something on my blog. Where does the time go? Especially at this time of year with the actually daylight hours rapidly decreasing it seems there literally isn’t enough hours in the day. So what have I got to tell you all?

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
stand, shadowless like Silence,
listening to silence

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the question I get asked the most is “Don’t you get lonely?” I suppose it’s a reasonable question, I do spend much of my time alone. Steph often works in far away places and even when he is in Sweden he keeps normal office hours. There is however a dark undercurrent to the question, an unwritten assumption that being alone is a bad thing. There seems to be a fear of being alone, a presumption that being you are alone because you are unworthy in some way. For some this may be true. I don’t quite see it that way.

It’s never been the most popular job in the gardener’s calendar, but now is the time to start thinking about next years vegetables. So go find your spades people and forget about the gym. It’s time for some real exercise – digging over the vegetable patch. The main objective here is to bury the annual weeds, to add manure or compost where necessary and to aerate and improve the soil structure. And, if it’s done now leaving the rough soil exposed the winter frosts will break it down even more and by spring it should only need superficial attention. That’s my plan anyway.

You might say my investment in Alisher Rizoev’s farming enterprise in Tajikistan is paying dividends.

You might just be wondering how the hell I managed to invest in a farm in Tajikistan anyway - and you'd be right. But then I’ve also invested in a chicken farm in Tanzania, a farm in Cambodia and another in Vietnam as well as another farmer in Azerbaijan. Extraordinary isn’t it?