Q.

Hullo Dick it’s nice to chat for a change rather than just receiving and posting your monthly articles, which by the way are always well received by our readers. I gather that you have now written something special for our readers in the form of another book.

A.

Likewise I appreciate the chance to chat. Thanks for the opportunity especially as my new book will be out by the middle of the month. The title is ‘ Living Well from Our Mediterranean Garden’.

Q.

That sounds interesting. But I note that this is written by yourself and not jointly with Clodagh this time.

A.

There is a simple reason for that. One theme of the book is how important the development of our holistic and ecological garden, and the self sufficiency achieved from it ,  has been to me in recovering emotionally and physically  from two cancer operations back in 1993 by natural means. Also the story starts nearly ten years before I first met Clodagh and II had written seven non gardening books before meeting Clodagh.  Since then it had been fun to to write seven gardening books together.

Q. So what is ‘ Living Well from our Garden in Spain’ and how did it begin?

We  had thoughts about a book along these lines for some time and especially after we gave a well received talk on the topic to a U3A conference on retirement health and another talk on Spritual Gardens to a social society. Further for a number of years we have had a blog titled  ‘Health from your garden’ on the important ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You ‘ site www.wddty.com.

In a nut shell the book explores how one’s garden can be of immense help to ones overall wellness which is defined in the book as comprising ones spiritual, mental, physical, gastronomic and economic wellness. It gives guidance on the overall development of a beautiful beneficial garden, how the traditional Mediterranean diet is a good start point for wellness, what can be grown in a garden that is beneficial nutritionally and for other reasons, and the possibilities of moving from a focus on gluttonous fast food eating to real gastronomy from one’s own garden.

Q.

That sounds interestingly and timely. Is it another big book and who is publishing it?

A.

In fact it perhaps best called a booklet. It is only 40 pages but with the font size a very dense fact filled book.. It is a very natural follow on to  ‘Your Garden in Spain’,’ Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style’, ‘Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’. These four books were published by Santana Books.

But  the new one is self published with the help of the marketing/design executive of a printing company who is also interested in achieving overall wellness for his family. The reasons are threefold. I needed the book fast to support several talks in the autumn; a wish to keep the costs and price down – it will be only 3.90 Euros ; and thirdly keeping the postage rates down for those who buy direct.

I did look at the possibility of an EBook but there are a number of tables of information in the new book that are impossible to present intelligently in an eBook format.

Q. In fact how can it be obtained?

A. Short term the easiest is to senf your name an d address and a payment of five Euros to Clodagh Brown, PO  572, Correos, 03730 Javea , Alicante.   By the end of september we hope that you can purchase by Paypal via www.gardeninginspain.com.  Also  we hope to give more talks on the topic up and down Spain to gardening and sociall club,s and cancer support charities where copies will be available. Lastly  we expect that several bookshops including Bookworld will stock it.

Naturally we will rush you a copy as soon as we have from the printer. s Hopefully you will be able to do a book review next month.

Q. No problem with that. Well Dick thanks for updating us on your writing activities. Will this be the last book.

A. Probably not as writing is I understand, as 75 next birthday, a good way of keeping Alzheimer’s  away.

(c) Dick Handscombe .www.gardeninginspain.com September 2011.