Before breakfast I did a lap around the house to check on the progress of the spring flowers. Daffodils topped with growing yellow-tinted bulges. A purple primula. A rainbow of crocuses – sunshine yellow, royal purple, white with delicate purple veins.

I visited the veg patch, which is across a rough piece of land at the end of the garden. It’s surrounded by high posts and usually completely covered in net, but the February snow weighed too heavily on the canopy and split it into pieces. This happened last year too – I might rig up a cross-hatching of string before I put a new net up again.

The purple sprouting broccoli (which was already a failure after I let a butterfly stay inside the net for long enough to let her babies loose on it) had been completely nibbled by deer. Definitely need to get that net back up.

When we moved here there was a big rhubarb plant growing near the door. I uprooted it roughly (I’m not the gentlest of gardeners) and split it into two, re-homing it in the corner of the veg patch. It looked pretty dead by the time I’d finished. I thought I’d try my hand at forcing it just in case, and this morning I checked under the two black buckets. It’s alive! Wonderfully, pinkly alive, and just pushing its way out of the dark.

On the way back (for cinnamon bagel breakfast), I spotted rows of green shoots. My garlic is growing! The soil had shrugged half of the cloves out of the earth, and I covered them back up with handfuls of dark soil, pushing it down as if tucking them in. Grow, rhubarb. I’ll make you into crumble. Grow, garlic. I’ll make dauphinoise potatoes, garlicky bread, I’ll eat whole baked cloves with my Sunday dinner.