The seventeenth day

It was an intimation of spring in the garden. The sky was blue and the day warm.

The breeze stirred the blackboy fronds into an abstract painting.

A sprinkler was turned on. I remembered being a child, running through the water spray, laughing in delight.

The sixteenth day

Everywhere I looked in the garden today there were patches of colour, largely provided by the daffodils. Drifts of them are blooming, with many of them still in bud. In my imagination, their golden trumpets played a tremulous, tentative melody. The kookaburras seemed to be listening to it intently.

Tiny rolled on the ground joyfully.

Time ebbed away as I leant on a sun warmed wall and watched the bees gathering their pollen.

Still the garden waits.

The fifteenth day

I went to the garden very early this morning. There had been snow in the mountains and I was nervous that it might melt before I could get there.

As it turned out, the snow had settled only lightly on leaves and flowers and shrubs. Water in the bird bath had frozen solid. White ice glittered and sparkled everywhere I looked. One lilac coloured flower had frozen too, looking more like a cake decoration than a living part of a garden.

The sun traced its rising with golden fingers of light.