The mullein in the front garden is reaching high into the sky, with streaks of yellow flowers. There are bees. Under the feet of the mullein is a tromboncino which is running fast towards the fig tree. It has tiny fruit, like little pipes that will quickly extend and need to be eaten immediately, or left to harden and be sliced and fried. It’s a wild plant, an energetic plant, a raver. It runs under the pomegranate on its way to the fig. The pomegranate is covered with flowers and I have tried to transfer some of the pollen with a soft paintbrush, but I’m not sure it is successful. The pollen is not very apparent. The flowers look nice, though – lots of orange punctuation marks. The fig tree has figs, lots of them. They are not ripe yet, but I think they will be. Also it is growing frantically, a bit like the tromboncino. I need to prune it, but somehow I need to learn how to prune it every year. It has a complicated fruiting arrangement that I can never quite master. Behind the fig on the house is another goer, the banksian rose. It flowered a while ago and is now growing everywhere, waving long wands in the air. A pigeon has its nest in it, I think, and arrives like an out of control helicopter now and then, crashing into the branches. I don’t think its nest building skills are up to much either, because two of its eggs have fallen onto the top of the water butt below. At the other end the dead box hedge that divides us from number 37 had come back to life. I had planned to replace it with lavender, and I may still do that, but it good to see some green shoots among the carnage of dead brown stalks, massacred by a little caterpillar. The other survivor out there, the cordyline, the ti kooka, is reaching up quietly. It died in a severe frost a few years ago, but has returned. Death is less permanent in plants.

So yes, my front garden is rather full. It seems a long time ago that it was a carpet of forget-me-nots, but I’m sure they will return in the spring. The hart’s tongue fern under the wall is looking rather fine, there is lavender that I grew from seed, the Japanese quince has one or two fruit, its first, and the rose over the front door is waiting to produce a second flush of flowers. It’s amazing what love a small space can give you, if you love it first.