The hellebore wakes in November. Our rooftop’s Rip Van Winkle. It mostly slumbered through summer then, suddenly one day, there’s a palm-like frond a fat hand-height tall. We check the pot and it is stirring like half-asleep baby mice. Crimson colours unfurling. Readying for Christmas we hope.
The grape hyacinth is a mass of leaf like Harpo Marx’s hair. Not long now, I tell myself, and there will be baby blue flowers. Happily, the narcissus is still dormant. Last year, in London and Denmark, the paperwhites burst through in early autumn, then folded fast without flowering.
