Maybe I’m writing about change this week. And staying the same. Each week there is a new flower to focus on, yet in the greenhouse the little seedlings don’t seem to grow at all. The lettuces are too small to eat, unless you’re a fat snail, in which case they are delicious. In the kitchen walls are coming down, and new windows are arriving. Change. Yet we still eat porridge for breakfast, and make sandwiches, and eat supper in the garden.

When we were having breakfast this morning we saw a tiny caterpillar moving around the edge of a pot. It was one of those loopers, anchoring its rear end before waving its head and body around to find the next place, then reaching down to fix its head end before releasing the rear part and moving forward. It was very energetic about this, not happy with only finding more pot. I hope it finds a destination before the sparrow that was bathing in the pond decides it’s breakfast time for him.

We’ve been watching the Mirabelle plum tree too. It flowered beautifully this year, its first flowering, and then it was completely overtaken and denuded by aphids ( I think). We don’t spray, even with soapy water. We rely on ladybirds or sparrows or hedgehogs (I wish). But what this means is that in order to encourage the predators there must be prey. And while the balance is being created there will be losses. There are also gains: the looper was fascinating, and if he provides breakfast for the sparrow, so be it.

The picture this week is a flag iris that grows on the edge of the pond. If you look very carefully you might spot an aphid on one of the petals. Above this, not in the picture, the Mirabelle plum is growing new leaves – no fruit yet, but elsewhere there are tiny cherries and medlar and apples; blackcurants and red currants and autumn olives; gooseberries; strawberries. Rhubarb ready now. If the snails leave them alone, courgettes will come. It’s a long list, and a happy one! And from the allotment the broad beans that I never thought would even germinate are producing bean after bean, quite delicious.

It’s all the same, and it’s all different. A constant flow.