Sunshine bathes the garden and the ground is slowly, slowly warming. In the edible patch the heart of broad beans has germinated at last (the flanking 2 `J’s not so successfully – yet) and the broccoli seedlings are growing.

On tall tree branches near the dam (no coincidence surely) male wood ducks are calling to entice the females, while at night tawny frogmouths have become, it seems, tame overnight. On our road, one allowed me to within a bare metre before glaring, muttering darkly to itself and slowly, in unwieldy mode, flapping off in disgust; we were hardly going to run it over without first trying to shoo it off the road.

Apart from the quiet – a few occasional chainsaws notwithstanding – (dare I say Serenity?) we moved here for the nature: forest and wild life. It’s intensely pleasurable when native birds and animals are thrust at you (other than garden-munching wallabies, which are, however, welcome in the bushland) overriding music, feeding hens or daydreaming, forced into the rather busy human consciousness.

Meanwhile the garden has a giant shot of gold with daffodils flowering in almost every sunny spot available and tiny ones appearing in old pots; one is from seed sown in August 2002, a gem flowering a decade on, but forgotten most of the year. I’m fortunate that some bulbs are so giving and forgiving.