The windowbox rosemary is covered in late-January flower. The Bengal crimson rose is still showing bud. Unfurling flower. Even the lavender has bloom. It has been 15C this month. Welcome to the warming.
The Bengal rose was a gift from Howard from Great Dixter. A skinny stem just three years ago, now a rampant, vibrant bush, flowering through, full of leaf. I hope it soon gets a rest.
There are four vigorous hellebores in pots. Different styles in different sizes. They are making me happy. Particularly the deep purple. We are isolating, waiting on negative PCR tests before being released. I gaze longingly out past the window box, past the delicate rosemary flower, over the back gardens.
I wave at Kala holding a neighbour’s big ginger cat. I am impatient to tidy. To clear the nasturtium corpses extravagantly draped over her grass and her neighbours’ walls. To dig the last fallen sunflower stems. I notice one of her roses, too, still has crimson bloom.
The roof terrace is our outside space. The size of a smallish bedroom; I walk around it like in a scene from Porridge. A miniaturised exercise yard with an exercise bike facing out. I stop to stare at the flowers. To wonder about the semi-dormant spring bulbs. Too anxiously scanning for new life breaking through.
It is in these times when realise how much access to the plot has come to mean to me. I wonder how the contractors are doing. When they will finish the work. When we can get a feel for the new soil, the new space.
Until then, I obsess over the rooftop magnolia stellata, wondering which furry buds will become flowers, which will be leaf.
Soon enough we’ll be back walking over Hampstead Heath. Looking out over London. Scanning for comforting signs of early spring. After all, I tell myself, February is only a few days away.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
