The mornings have been growing yolky. M insisted on deep yellow curtains in the bedroom, and so we get Chelsea mornings even in Brixton, on grey days. For months, when he gets up to make tea, I’ve squawked instructions to open them - even though it is dark. I want to see the light roll in, the changing colours of the stubby little dawns one sees from a lower ground-floor bedroom. 

But in recent days we have been opening the yellow curtains to a flat, pale light. Yesterday, when we came back from the Big Shop, I told M to look at the sky. Nearly half-five and still dusky. The days are stretching; how we’ve all needed it.

In the morning, the water on the common was frozen and the sky bounced off it, and you could feel spring on its way. It’s been colder in London that we’ve been used to. The conjuring of snow left limp leaves behind. Most will survive, but I lie in that half-light hinterland thinking of the ones that won’t. Much gardening, lately, happens in my head, under the covers, before the day begins. 

We don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. On about Thursday, we looked at one another and reminded ourselves of this. But M has nevertheless agreed to help me dig the frozen ground (easier frozen, clay, than cold and sticky with the thaw) for steel angles; to help me pull a tape measure along the bowed fence, and do the measuring maths that he can manage in his head and I can never be bothered with. Before I crack open the curtains, I play the choreography of the job in my head: of drilling the holes, of opening the turnbuckles, of stringing the wire and winding it around itself. 

This valentine’s day, I would like to plant a rose against these hard metal things. At the moment, it is a jointed stick in a bag. It seems impossible that it will grow swiftly and well enough to warrant its own support system, but what a brave and bold hope that is. Pink roses by the summer, rather than red ones in February.  

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