Mid-September, 2025. Heavy rain in Midlothian VA the last few days, so a welcome respite from shoveling 25 cubic yards of compost onto Midlothian’s ubiquitous clay and sand soil. In fact, the soil is not all that bad, but every square inch cries out for vegetal matter, hence the mountains of compost still waiting to be spread.

The rain has meant a welcome break, and time to reflect on what we are trying to do with our garden. The question is important, not only for what we can do, and what we should be doing with a garden in the twenty-first century. Considering my title might be a good first step. Many of you will know that the first part is the English translation of the famous memoir by the French author Marcel Proust. Its French title is A la Recherche du temps perdu, which translates literally as In Search of Lost Time. In some ways I prefer the literal translation, as it indicates, in a way not possible with Remembrance of Things Past that, in the face of climate change, remembering the past is not enough. Rather we need to search out what has been lost: to time, to modern life, to the capitalist-industrialist complex that seeks, and far too often succeeds, in denying the individual’s relationship to the earth we all inhabit.

What is to be done? There surely cannot be one answer. But we all have the chance to make a difference. Our Midlothian garden, as we have insisted from the beginning, is but one tiny response to the problem, and then only if we get the mix right. Yet community engagement is surely the answer. Considered globally, our garden is infinitesimally small, but two gardens have twice the power, and a hundred constitute a community, while a million promise to begin making the kind of difference that is needed. We cannot wait for governments, whatever their political persuasion, who have shown themselves to be in the pockets of big business. We need action now.

The term “community action” suggests a popular movement. It may be that, but who needs labels when our very existence is under threat? We each need to act, on the devastating results we see with our own eyes, and confirmed by the climate scientists who are currently silenced by authoritarian regimes around the world. To return to my title. Remembrance is not enough, we need revision, revival, and redoing; in other words, a determined fresh start. I have a photograph of my maternal great grandfather in his garden in Ilkeston, Derbyshire UK, some time in the early twentieth century. He is clearly proud of his garden, and well he might be. Most “gardeners” like Great-grandad were employed in mines, factories, offices, and as laborers. But come the evening, or the weekend, they worked their gardens and allotments to feed their families and provide the necessary sustenance (and aesthetic pleasure, flowers were always important in these men and women), that alone made the mines and factories tolerable to the average worker.

The past, then, is not another country. It is a journey that beckons us in the here and now. We  need to step up to right the wrongs of an economy that considers profit above all other considerations, and cares not at all for were our climate abuse is leading us. Let us not be the Pied Piper of Hamelin, seduced into following those who claim colonizing Mars is the answer to the Earth’s ills (does anyone really believe AI will ever be able to grow a lettuce on Mars, or anywhere else?). Join the only revolution that matters – a return to understanding that we have one Supreme Being, Higher Power or Ultimate Authority, and that is Nature, not as we might like Her to be, but as the Egyptian goddess Isis reputedly put it: I am all that has been, all that there is, and all that is to come, and no mortal being has lifted my veil. We should pay attention to that warning; Nature is not ours to control – quite the opposite.