From this viewpoint.

Yesterday, on Mothering Sunday, and again today, we woke up to a light fall of snow. I decided to stand at one of my vantage points from where I take monthly photographs to ring the changes in the garden throughout the year. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to look at my archive of photographs and make up a calendar showing this particular view.

When I was eight years old, I had a wonderful teacher who encouraged the class to bring things of interest to put on the nature table. For the week leading up to Easter, we brought in different kinds of narcissi, no doubt prompted by the fact that we were learning the chorus ‘At Easter time the lilies fair, and lovely flowers bloom everywhere’. Each April when ours come into bloom, they are accompanied by the purple pompoms of primula denticulata and the pink-coloured lungwort, pulmonaria rubra redstart.

Not long after we had moved here, on his way home from work one evening, my husband noticed a Garden Centre selling off all the spent daffodil bulbs. Knowing, quite rightly, how excited I’d be with his find, he not only filled up the boot of the car with box-loads of the bulbs, but also the passenger seats and the inside floor of the car as well. With Wordsworth’s ‘A host of golden daffodils’ ringing in my ears, and hoping ours would ‘flutter and dance in the breeze’ too, we set forth and planted the first few boxes under the catkins of the silver birch tree.

In early June each year, it’s amazing to see the transformation in the weeping silver birch tree, from a wispy silhouette into one with lush foliage. Underneath the spireas bush out, and tall spires of pink lupins in full bloom hide the evidence of the previous month’s host of golden daffodils.