At our community gardens we like to encourage each other to express ourselves in lots of creative ways related to our our growing.

So, whilst we were tying in the grapes, Nigel mentioned he knew some writing about grapevines. And in fact, he had the book in his bag!

Nigel's book is called Cato Major and was originally written in 40BC by a Roman author called Cicero. The author wrote about farming and society. And in the passage that Nigel translated for us he explains how grapevines grow and how to train and prune them to produce fruit. So, I asked Nigel to translate the passage onto paper for me.

"The vine, which by it's essence is a falling thing, and unless it is supported travels to the earth. The same vine, so that it may lift itself up, embraces whatever it comes upon, by way of support by it's clavicles, or little hands. And the art of the farmer is to cut back with a wandering tool or cutter, this wandering vine, lest it grow too thick with branches and is too abundant in all it's parts."

We discussed this theory and agreed that we still do the same thing (as farmers) by pruning the extra growth back to the fruits so that the plant will put it's energy into fruit production and not the 'abundant' branches.

Hopefully Cicero would be proud of our work on the grapevines as we know how much the Romans loved their grapes.

Watch this space for more creative arts at the community garden.