Promise

There is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky...
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The garden in France is still a building site, but it reveals itself in the golden sunshine of a few days in November. The light filters through the leaves of the large Norwegian maple which shades the ground where the aconites will be blooming after Christmas, but which now is covered in stone and plaster dust.

As I remove the annual weeds from the soil which has just drained after previous rains, flights of storks call to each other high above, on the way to their winter homes. Forty or fifty of them in strings, constantly changing position in the air – absolutely magical companions to an hour or two's gardening. They are a metaphor for the gardening year: nature moves on to a place where the new cycle can begin.

I retire to sit by the fire during the dark months of winter, to think and to plan.