Being a member felt like the right thing to do – and it was a boon during the pandemic. But oh, the emotional labour. I can never look at a turnip again

Last week, as summer gave way to pumpkin season, I found myself contemplating the final squash. Like the horror movie trope of the final girl staggering out of the woods after the massacre, this squash is the sole survivor. All her sister squashes had either been cooked and eaten or left to rot. Now, my killing days were almost over. There would be no sequel.

Or, to put it less dramatically: after six years, we have quit the local organic veg bag collective, which delivered to a nearby pickup point a bag of organic, local seasonal veg once a week. And as a result the mental load and emotional labour of having to contemplate and devise a use for various esoteric kinds of veg is finally, mercifully, over.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

The temptation is to sit at home and hibernate, but beating the winter blues can be done. Here’s how to embrace the coldest and arguably most beautiful season

Stephanie Fitzgerald, a chartered clinical psychologist, used to dread winter. Like many, she coped by keeping busy at work and hibernating at home, waiting for the cold, dark days to be over. But this approach wasn’t making her happy. So she sought out the science that would help her embrace the winter months, rather than try to escape them. In her resulting book, The Gifts of Winter, she writes: “I fell deeply in love with winter … It is a captivating and truly gorgeous season.”

How did she change her mindset – and can the 42% of us who say summer is our favourite season learn to love winter too?