Good enough to eat

A hand-scoop of shower gel, the colour, texture and zingy scent of the lemon squidge from lemon meringue pie.

Lucky dip

A plump rosy radish with three mouthfuls of crunch, or a faintly blushing root with a kink.

Breakfast

The blueberries let go of their stalks willingly, nestle in my cupped hand like chicks.

After torrential rain

Take great gulps: the air is clean, like billowing cotton sheets hung out on a line.

Faulty mechanism

The clock inside me is running too fast today - I'm losing time.

Windy afternoon

The wind strokes the leaves upwards like a careful finger under a lover's chin. The silver undersides shift and shine in a glorious mosaic.

All I need

a single sip of ice-cold water quenching an ordinary thirst

Watching rain from the porch with the door open

Feather-soft sounds, a fresh green smell, the cold brush of air on my cheeks.

Start again

I look closer and realise that my healthy crop of radishes is actually a healthy crop of weeds.

Floor manager to employee

'Are you OK, Catherine?'
'Yes, I'm fine.'
'Good.'
'I'm always fine.'
She doesn't sound fine.

Wooden beam above the window

How old is this wood? It holds a clutch of nails, dark brown and bent over, woodworm holes, knots, ancient reverberations of the voices of those who've lived here, time, sunshine, and healed-over scratches on the bark where a sweetheart wrote two names.

The yoga class chant ohm

The ohms slips under the door from a room down the corridor - a distant repeating fog-horn, a giant furred creature tunefully snoring, the distilled sound of calm.

Walk

We stop and admire the rock rose petals, paper-thin and crumpled like a rejected love poem.

Summer fete

Who will win the dog with the waggiest tail?

morning colours

the baked golden glow of a field of wheat, and then poppies, the blooms risen to the surface like a gorgeous blood-red scum

Poor Fatty

It comes out with a yank. This biting burrowing tick has as much right to life as any of us. I don't believe it.

Washing line

I wasn't paying attention when I pegged them out, but now it looks like someone spent hours deciding what should go where: chocolate brown, jade green, navy blue, bluey-green, pale green, chocolate.

crossing the road

the garbage truck leaks a stink that curdles the air

Hunter, late morning nap

He's exhausted himself truffling about in the hedge, eager for the scent of vole or fieldmouse. Yesterday he carried one whole in his mouth, only the tail drooping out sideways. He lets go of his body, laying it across the rug like a body on a slab.

lemon butter cake

who made this luscious cake for the regatta cake stall? where is her kitchen? who is her husband? what does she dream about at 3am?

field

pale papery pink pea-blossoms hover over the green like stoppped butterflies

Feeder

Her son sits patiently on the beam of the feeder as she drops to peck peanuts from the mesh tube. He hunches a little, like a teenager. Again and again she rises and passes him food, mouth to mouth.

Robin

He has to imitate a hummingbird to get at tasty seeds behind the mesh.
Or maybe he is tired of hanging on, prefers instead to sit upon the air.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

He swoops in towards the feeder; the red on his belly snags my eyes again.

Bees and orange blossoms

There are a fountain of branch-arms, each feathered with elegant oval leaves and tipped with a clutch of bright orange blossoms, perfectly spherical, the size of boiled sweets. Each one holds hundreds of simple flowers; even close up they look like concertina-ed paper, miniature Christmas decorations. The bees find them delicious.

a line of poetry floats into view

....birds skip from tree to tree...

bloody ants

they keep eating the basil tips just as they greenly rise to meet the sun

Lord Montague's house

The garden is unloved. Inside, the walls are plastered with paintings of his family - his second wife Fiona, his daughter in her wedding dress, his son at eighteen - some good, some clumsy and amateurish. He smile from a wall of photos. Here is a life.

forty new plants

easing their roots into the earth like tucking forty children into bed