While on the subject of spring and seeds, last weekend I went back to the gardens at the Villa D'Este in Tivoli. The connection is simple enough. The Wisteria buds are at that perfect pre-bursting stage when everything about them says "I promise". And back at home, among the germinating seeds are f...

Small volcano cones of soil particles have started to appear on the rough ground where the dog and I walk most days. The ants are waking up. What with the pink snow of blossom under the cherry trees, spring is definitely here. The ants' spoil heaps seem entirely appropriate at the moment, the right size for their builders. Later in the summer there will be highways, cleared of any and all debris, snaking for five or ten metres through the herbage. Some of them will be busy with ants going back and forth harvesting seeds, others completely bare. Then they'll switch around as new harvests become available.

Another perfect Saturday, sunshine and blue skies. A clarion call to the garden centre and the terrace. On the way to the garden centre I was distracted by the need to do weekly shopping at the supermarket where, Lo!, two-year-old olive trees were on sale at 5.90 each. So I bought two. Then to the...

It's been a day for memories. First off there was a care package from Rob and Lynn and Ellie back in the UK. Perched among the polystyrene beads were not only two fine videos and a CD, but a box labelled "Perishable! Eat me now!!" And inside that, four Chelsea Buns from Fitzbillies in Cambridge....

Just spent three or four hours enjoyably doing what passes for gardening around these parts. That's mostly sweeping up the debris that accumulates on the terrace and removing the adventitious plant life, mostly chickweed and pelletory with the occasional vicious Roman nettle, that establishes itself...