The smell of marigold roots

Around noon, I got busy in the garden, pruning things and sweeping up the tiny front bit. It was surprisingly warm work. And later, in the afternoon, I squeezed in the car with Anton and Anna and the bairns and we all went off to a garden centre. Gardening, as mentioned exclusively here yesterday, is the new rock and roll.

Anton getting magnetised instantly by bbq paraphernalia. Meanwhile I went a bit crazy buying several bedding plants a climbing rose, a Christmas cactus, a watering can and so on. Anton and Anna meanwhile were buying only a single colour of flowering plants for their garden. The colour purple was chosen by Klaudia in the morning.

I got home around six, walking plants up the Twitten from Anton's car and singing Klaudia's Shoe Babies song to her through the hatch of the car.

Then I was amazed by marigolds as I popped them out of the potting trays. I didn't know that they have such a herbal, distinct, but hard-to-describe smell, especially from their roots: something like the dry astringency of geraniums but more tangy and fresh. I spent a happy hour putting things in the soil before it started to get dark. And, at the risk of seeming obvious, it was very grounding.

Also had a bit of a breakthrough with my collection this morning. Finally I have a simple device to unify the poems and can finally move on with it. Suddenly the week doesn't feel wasted creatively either.

The day peppered with long chats with the increasingly chilled out Sprinkles, after what was a nightmare week for her. She had to work today, which is Good Friday.

Then, blamelessly, to bed.

Below this just in from my Florida correspondent.