The place is awash with tulips.  And to think I used to think them vulgar, gaudy, like plastic beakers for a children’s picnic, not my thing at all because I was too shy and introverted.  But these sing and dance and do the cancan, and all I can do is take hands and join in, and laugh. They’re mostly Apeldoorn varieties, plain Apeldoorn, Golden Apeldoorn and Apeldoorn Elite, because these are mostly perennial, coming up year after year.  The fiery colours mix well. (One year I had in nearby pots some purple ones, which looked most disapproving. It might have worked if I’d mixed...

April 1st.  The trees boom in the wind –something is happening up there. I was reading The Lord’s Army, about the army of children in Uganda who murder, burn and steal as best they can.  They are organised  by a man named Kony, who believes he is God.  Spirits are everywhere – and Kony is possessed by a murderous spirit.  But, though the book is about this evil in a corner of Uganda, I keep glimpsing beyond in the rest of Uganda and in Africa a glorious animism .  Everything is alive with spirits, and the churches are full, and a woman jumps up and laughs, such is her joy in the Lord....

The garden: sacred sanctuary, place for scientific study, haven for solitude and thought, or just a space for sociable delights?  Children’s playground, sculpture park?   For me it’s a bit of all of these but especially a private place where I grow plants and sow seeds, weed and exult over a plant I’d thought lost, where I interact with nature and am blissfully at one with it.  I don’t have to talk with anyone.  I put my arms round the birch, my lady of the woods.  Together with plants and trees extending new shoots, I stretch fingers to the sun and yearn for its warmth.  In the...

March 13 The snowdrops are fading, their souls are elsewhere, they no longer speak, only their plump green ovaries glisten above the dry brown petals.  Soon they will go, leaving not a trace as leaves die and fall on the soil.  It was only when I picked some a month back to bring inside, that I realised they had a glorious honey scent. For the moment, I’ve already dug up and replanted some of Ma’s Mules Ears (maybe Armine, or Benhall Beauty?  A thick green band above the bridges) in a position where I can see them from the house.  I broke some, no idea they had dug down so deep.  Nearly all...

Jonquil had to choose between her bedroom with its sky view, and her basement with its garden view, and she chose the former. I thought she was mad, but now I understand. I lay in bed, sleepless. The dark sky became dull gold, then bruised yellow and mauve, then it had a band of brilliant rose against blue, which faded, and it became stippled with little clouds. It changed each moment. It was my garden in the sky. An effortless garden. Every day different. Then I fell...