This garden is amazing. The poles came from your wood, Jonathan, and the hazel. It is your funeral today. You never saw this. This is where I sit every day in the summer, under the plum arch. The collared doves are moaning and a goldfinch sings – the song containing the call. The distant road files past. Here is wood avens, forget-me-not, dandelion, herb robert, red campion. The yellow plums are tiny green pips at the moment – they produced fifty pounds last year! There are grasses with beads of dew on their tips. Behind me I can hear the sparrows arguing, and one or two fly past, trying to get away. I hear the wings of a wood pigeon clapping. I didn’t know you very well, Jonathan. A relation, not a friend. I’m sorry about that. You sold your house and bought a wood, I know that. That is rather wonderful. This morning I saw pictures on Facebook  of the making of your coffin, and I know something I did not know before – how you were loved by your friends. I’m sorry I wasn’t your friend – a blackbird has landed on the top of the mast just beyond the end of my garden. Blackbirds often perch on the top of the poles in my garden – my Alhambra pillars – peeled western red cedar from your wood and arranged here to give me a flavour of the Alhambra. Beside me hazel sticks support the plum arch. I got those from you too, not long ago. Yesterday I hung bird feeders on them and just now a gang of sparrows turned up – don’t mind me, I thought, and they didn’t. It’s quite cool this morning, early, but it will be hot later. A wood pigeon calls, ‘Fetch two poles Josie, fetch two poles’ and another answers. I pause and look down at my wild garden, my wilderness. A wilderness full of fruit trees and wild flowers and herbs. I can make a salad from this garden, a leaf here, a flower there. I can make herb tea – peppermint, nettle, herb robert, raspberry leaf.

There is a blackbird on one of your poles now, right now, preening busily, getting at that bit that’s so hard to reach under each wing. I’m sad today. What a hole you must leave in your family.

There’s a snail, one of the one’s with a black striped shell. I think it’s looking for somewhere to sleep for the day, out of the sun. I’ve planted an Amelanchier at the end of the grass area, a focal point between the Alhambra pillars, and there is a Bramley apple down there too. I need a thin hedge behind them to divide the view, to set them off. I’m going to plant elder and keep it thin. I will get elder berries from next door and sow a line across the garden. I don’t know if it will work, but I expect it will. I’m a fairly nifty gardener.

The wood pigeons go on and on. A female sparrow lands right beside me, eating peanuts.

We live and give. I think you gave more than most, Jonathan. Go well.