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As we encourage Marc outside into the garden, surrounded by nature, our garden’s flowers are appearing in ever greater numbers and colours. Each acting as a beacon, both guiding and calling to his senses, calming him and stimulating his mind.

Daphne ‘Perfume Princess’ is widely considered the most fragrant daphne, boasting large, sweetly scented, pale pink flowers and a more vigorous, robust growth habit compared to other varieties. It blooms from mid-winter to spring, offering a stronger scent than the classic Daphne.

Tulips provide a splash of spring colour in dazzling shades. Different flower forms add to this variety, with lily-, fringed-, parrot- and peony-flowered forms. They are ideal for filling borders, growing in rock gardens and for bedding schemes. A few smaller specialist tulips are best grown in a cool greenhouse.

Tulips grow well in soil rich in organic matter. They like a cool moist conditions in spring, with a dry warm summer conditions for their summer ‘rest’ (dormancy). Most grow in an open position full sun, although some tolerate part-shade.

In mid- to late spring, cup-shaped flowers rise on single stems above wide strap-like green or green-grey leaves. Flowers stalks emerge from cream-white bulbs covered by a papery brown skin.

Tulips like good drainage, so don’t do well on very heavy clay soils where bulbs may rot if the ground becomes waterlogged.

The species tulip, Tulipa sprengeri, was first introduced to cultivation in Turkey in the nineteenth century. Sadly, it is now extinct in the wild but still thrives in gardens, naturalising in part-shade on moisture-retentive soils.
(RHS)

Chaenomeles is a genus of four species of deciduous spiny shrubs, usually 1–3 m tall, in the family Rosaceae. They are native to Eastern Asia. These plants are related to the quince (Cydonia oblonga) and the Chinese quince (Pseudocydonia sinensis), differing in the serrated leaves that lack fuzz, and in the flowers, borne in clusters, having deciduous sepals and styles that are connate at the base.

The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, and have a serrated margin. The flowers are 3–4.5 cm diameter, with five petals, and are usually bright orange-red, but can be white or pink; flowering is in late winter or early spring. The fruit is a pome with five carpels; it ripens in late autumn.

Bee-friendly, brightly coloured cup-shaped flowers during spring. Crocus bulbs are quick to establish and soon naturalise when planted in grass or beds and borders, producing larger and larger natural ‘drifts’ of colour every spring.

Beguiling, low-growing plants, reticulata iris produce their colourful and lightly scented blooms in late winter and early spring. Outside, they will add early interest at the front of a sunny border, gravel garden or alpine bed, but they also make excellent additions to pots and can even be brought inside for a short time when in flower.
(RHS)

Whether you need to fill containers, plant up a streamside, wildflower area or border, primulas dazzle with dolly mixture shades from spring through to late summer. – Ours start flowering in the coldest depths pf winter – They are all hardy perennials, with a few needing specialist growing conditions, but most are robust and many are scented.
(RHS)

R.I.P. Dec 1926 – Feb 2026

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The mighty oak, standing guard over our garden, and has been for over a hundred years, is showering acorns as if they were tears.

Typically they begin to fall from the trees here in the UK in October, particularly during strong winds and /or after the first frosts. Depending upon the weather conditions, in some years many acorns will fall while they are still largely green. This, 2025, is one of those years. With very little rain and drought conditions announced in many counties, together with intense record breaking heat, the trees and plants are beginning to adapt to their changing environments.

They provide for a photo opportunity though.

I am excited to announce that I have provided a link to a new newsletter in which I will provide updates on my book releases, writing, and promotional activity together with updates on the restoration of our garden. I have put this together as I realise that not everyone will visit my instagram account, flickr account, and even Goodreads account, or even regularly visit my website and I felt it important to bring together key news on what I am doing.

I intend to start small and build it over time. Starting with a monthly update on 1st of each month and see what the take up is like.

I’d love to have you subscribe to this newsletter and you can find the subscription page here.

As this progresses I’ll be looking for interaction on my writing themes and ideas as well as my garden, a kind of “This is what I plan doing, what do you think?”

An example of this came from a friend who suggested that a future book could contain photographs that my son has taken around the garden and further afield which would add context to the story and also encourage him to get involved.

I’d love to meet you through my newsletter and I plan to issue the first edition on 1st September to see how it goes.

Thank you.

It has been quite a journey and a long time getting to this point.

I am delighted to announce that my first book, a memoir, will be released on 8th May 2025 and is available for pre-ordering from the publisher, Olympia Publishers, Amazon, Waterstones and others.

It is a story about our son, Marc and how he has managed with multiple and complex disabilities. I have written it from my perspective as his father, but my wife, Mags and Marc himself are instrumental in that journey.

My thanks go out to everyone who has followed me here, on Flickr, and on Instagram and for the encouragement and support in completing this, my first book.

I have continued writing and plan a further volume to this memoir, picking up where this story ends.

When I was growing up, I thought friendships were restricted to those with whom I went to school—people I saw and interacted with every day. As the years passed, these people began to disappear, and our lives took different paths. Contact was lost, and inevitably, I became forgotten, as we probably all did, as those relationships were not nurtured. This is life; it is not wrong but just how it is.

Over the years, when that same life throws at you lemons and various hurdles, even successes and achievements, you can suddenly feel the loss of those relationships you had once grown up with. Someone to pick up a phone and talk with and meet up with and share your newfound hopes or fears.  

And yet, as these doors close, others open up, and new relationships get forged.

I speak of myself in the main and how, through circumstances not always in my control, my childhood friendships have been lost. And yet, I am blessed to have met so many new contacts through the opening door that, by chance or by destiny, have come into my life and world and set me on a path I had never envisioned.

I was encouraged to share my family life journey and also write, something I had yet to think about in those early years. Buoyed by the suggestion that what I have to say in my words may support others following our journey, I put pen to paper to see what I could draft.

It was wholly unexpected, and following a period of writing responses and articles for a specialist magazine, a publisher approached me, wanting to publish my draft manuscript.

Many of those new contacts have become friends to whom I owe so much for their encouragement, support, and ongoing friendship.

The book is in the process of being edited, its cover design completed, and final proofreading. It is an honour to have such a story identified as suitable for publication and I thank all those who have steered me to this point.

The Crow …

“The shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part, inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors … (Carl Jung)

Day after day, the crow sat on the fence, just watching. Its eye seemingly penetrated my soul, freezing the lifeblood pumping through my heart. Unafraid as I approached it, the crow remained unmoving, just staring. Memories, none of them good, of mystical associations with doom flooded my thoughts. This crow was taking me on a journey into darkness – a journey down a long, dark, damp passage without light. Without hope.

Unwanted thoughts of regret course through my mind. I am grieving for something I do not have, and I do not have the right to grieve. Do I?

Over many long weeks and months, watching my son writhe in tormented pain, unable to help him other than to hold him, I was comforting him only by my presence and suffering a father’s regret of not being able to do anything tangible to release him from his burden. Each day, several times a day, he needs more and more support. My life seems to be nothing more than forever kneeling at my son’s side, trying desperately to bring him comfort. His seizures cause him to strike out. He strikes me, claws me, and knows nothing about what he is doing.

I take a short respite from his care and walk into the neglected garden. The crow sits as it always does, watching and chilling me as it stares as if waiting for a dying soul.

This is relentless. My journey down into this dark place has gripped me, sucking all optimism out of me. Was this what fatherhood should be like? Why was I not blessed with the son we had thought we would have? Would I regain any happiness in my life? The darkness increased, and all hope was now completely drained. Shut off from the world, I withdraw into my dark thoughts. I deal only with those essential needs of care for our son. I am not eating correctly, not seeing anything positive in life, and praying for a permanent end to this feeling.

However, crows can represent death, danger, misfortune and illness, but also rebirth, self-reflection, intelligence, and loyalty, and as such, can be both good and bad omens. My mind was in such a dark place I had assumed Hades had sent the crow to pick over my carcass after watching me suffer. I have realised this crow signalled a change in our son’s health. He will remain seriously unwell, which is inevitable, but the dark place he was in appears to have changed, too, and gradually, a smile returns to his face.

I feel guilty now that I was feeling so low. In all the years since we were blessed with the arrival of our boy, I have never felt this bad. We are told it is okay to feel this way. It does not feel OK, but it is wrong. Slowly, as our son’s health stabilises, we have a more optimistic outlook.