The next few weeks of darkness will be the toughest. Our circadian rhythm responding to the long nights. An alarm that rings whilst it is still dark and evenings that start sometime in the middle of the afternoon. The short days distil a refreshed awareness and I find myself pining for light when it is grey and uplifted when the skies are blue and the sun, tilted low, swings its lazy arc.

With dark prevailing the garden sinks into its deepest slumber and, for the first window in months it feels like there is time to take stock and in doing so, a responsibility to make the most of the daylight. This is when I write my winter job list, measuring out the few true weeks of dormancy against the jobs that can happen now and not when the growing season demands your attention. A carefully timed roster of tasks, one giving way to the next, responding to the weather and the gentle shifts in growth that happen despite it being winter.

The season of rich food is upon us once again and, much as I love comforting winter dishes sometimes a contrast is called for. Required even. It is for this reason that I have come to grow a wider and wider range of chicories and radicchios in the winter vegetable garden. Both raw and cooked the bitterness of chicory offsets the heaviness of winter food, stimulating the tastebuds and refreshing the appetite.

‘Belgian Witloof’, the roots of which I lifted a couple of weeks ago, have been replanted in covered pots in the toolshed to force them. I’m hoping they’ll produce pale chicons in time for Christmas Day. ‘Variegata di Castelfranco’, the pale green, red-speckled chicory, makes the prettiest winter salad. Sharply pointed radicchio ‘Rossa di Treviso’ and ball-shaped ‘Palla Rossa’ with their blood-red leaves set off by pristine white ribs both lend themselves particularly well to grilling or roasting.

The first serious frosts are forecast this weekend, so we have been busy these last few days. Bringing in the last of the tender perennials and putting trays of young plants grown from seed into the polytunnel to protect from winter wet. The frames are full to bursting with spring bulbs and all the things that need cossetting. Just this morning the gunnera were cut down and covered before the freeze withers their foliage. This last job of the season is a pleasure, crafting their winter hats, upturning their huge leaves, one overlapping the next, to protect the primordial crowns from whatever winter brings.

With the turn in the weather, the last of the autumn colour is being driven from the woods and hedgerows and, in the garden, we see the very last flowers. The final asters, speckled now and dimmed, a few brave kniphofias challenging the season and nerines holding still in their month-long reign of colour. But really this is it. The turning point from one season to the next.

With much excitement my order of Mediterranean plants arrived from southern France last week. It is no longer easy to import plants from Europe and the hoops through which we now have to jump are numerous. We once took such choice for granted and, as with so many other issues, we now find ourselves unprepared for such a radical change. British nurseries were not prepared for this severance from Europe and need time to gear up to start producing here. So we have to plan further ahead, go without or propagate ourselves if we are to negotiate the choices we might need to make for a changing climate.

The idea behind my sand garden has been to familiarise myself with a palette of plants that can cope with the extremes we seem to be experiencing in terms of winter wet and drier periods in the growing season. The ‘final’ round of planting for the sand garden this year are plants from the great Olivier Filippi and his Jardin Sec and nursery. His list of available stock was published in late summer and I secured my plants immediately to avoid the “feeding frenzy” that Peter Clay warned me about. Peter, the buyer for Crocus and holder of the requisite import licence, was my go-between for this order. First for certification in Europe, followed by quarantine in his nursery and finally on to here. All in all, my new plants feel precious.

A perfectly ripe fig, picked fresh from the tree. Heat in the fruit and the energy of a long, hot summer caught in sweet, juicy flesh. I can think back to specific trees that marked a moment in time. On our daily walk to the beach in Andalucia, in a baking courtyard in Seville, a dusty, walled garden in California or standing alone in the boulder-strewn landscape of Greece. Surviving against the odds, but producing such succulent fruit despite the stark contrast of their surroundings.

The equivalent fruit in our moist, forgiving climate might be the pear. At its moment of perfection, they are the most delectable of cool climate fruits. You can taste that they love the land like figs love the sun. However, our quest as gardeners is to always push the boundaries and have what we know might be out of reach. So we experiment, in order to capture a memory, or outmanoeuvre the limitations of our site.

Winter is coming, but I am still eking out the last of the summer vegetables in the kitchen. The approaching months of pumpkin, swede, turnip, celeriac, potato, cabbage and kale will last long enough, without extending the season further by embracing them too quickly. Although they seem like summer vegetables the reality is that peppers reach peak ripeness in the polytunnel in mid-October, as do the summer sown fennels in the vegetable beds. Together with aubergines and the beans I grew for drying this year, these made up the bulk of my harvest on return from holiday three weeks ago.

The aubergines we ate quickly, as they are not good keepers, but the fennel and peppers store so well in the salad drawer of the fridge that, although this recipe uses the very last of the fennel, I will be looking for more ways to use the peppers in the coming week, as this year’s crop was outstanding, with nine plants each producing at least six fruits. A romesco sauce is on the cards, though not made with our own walnuts as intended, since the squirrels got them all before me. A tomato and red pepper soup with a generous addition of our homegrown paprika will provide a warming lunch. And, if all else fails, nothing beats Elizabeth David’s Piedmont peppers, halved and filled with anchovies, oil and garlic before a blast in a hot oven.

Over the years of being at Hillside we’ve worked out that there is a breathing point in the season at the end of September. The apples will stay on the trees, we can delay autumn by heading south and when we return it will be the optimum time to get planting again. So, earlier in the month, we put down our responsibilities and took three weeks in Greece.

To cover for the break we made the usual flurry before leaving to bring in and store the last of the harvest and left instructions with the house sitters to water this and not that and to pick the pears and keep an eye on the seedlings in the cold frames. We also worked hard to ensure the design team in the studio had everything they needed to progress without us while we were away. Busy time. Heads in the future. Heads down to clear the time.

You were due an article by Dan today, but he has been taken ill on our return from holiday and so it falls to me to fill the gap.

We have taken our summer holiday in mid-September for as long as I can remember. In Peckham it was always too difficult to leave the summer garden at its peak and since we’ve been at Hillside there is far too much to sow, plant and harvest in August to think about straying too far. And, of course, the crowds have gone, the temperatures are more amenable and there is something particularly appealing about the feeling of places at the end of the holiday season. We are creatures of habit and have been going to the same island in Greece for the last twelve years. Before that it was twelve years on the Cabo de Gata on the east coast of Spain.

I returned home from a fortnight’s holiday earlier this week, during which time our regular weekly articles have been on hold. After an ebullient welcome from Wren I dropped my bags in the house and made a beeline for the vegetable garden and polytunnel.

I had spent the week before we travelled madly crossing tasks off a seemingly endless vegetable garden job list. First of these was to clear the tomatoes from the polytunnel, which had finally succumbed to blight. Given the cold, wet summer I had been concerned that we would not have a comparable harvest to previous years. I normally start processing tomatoes for the pantry in early August, but this year they did not come on stream properly until the third week. Then it was all systems go.

I visited Hillside in February this year as winter was turning towards spring. The dried stems of last year’s blooms scratched into the sky. Down beneath many forms of snowdrops were being inspected by Dan and near neighbour, Mary Keen.

It was now six months later and in early September I was back photographing a story about food. It was meant to be done a month or so earlier, but a disappointingly wet and cold August had set things back in the vegetable garden.