We are still living with a hose-pipe ban here in Lewes in southern England so I’m regularly to be found out in my garden with my ancient watering can. Standing there as the water sprinkles onto plants new old and about to germinate, could be seen as an irritating waste of time when a sprinkler hose system could have ben doing all the work for me but, no, I have been savouring these moments of Zen gardening. It is an appropriate way to start the day with some plant-focused observations and meditations even if I sometimes get lost in my own thoughts and end up watering my toes. I ‘m doubly sad then that rain is forecast for later today but I’ll do a little watering just in case.

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Writing yesterday about T.S. Eliot’s great poem The Waste Land and how it was, at least partly inspired by the English drought of 1921, I look out on my small Lewes garden and hope that it won’t too turn into an arid waste land. April, as the great man said, can be the cruelest month and, English weather can be very unpredictable in other parts of the country the weather has certainly taken on a cruel turn with snow, sleet and dramatic drops in temperature.

Here in England’s deep South, I’m more worried about the lack of water for my cherry blossom which is just unfurling its seductive petals….

and my fritillaries too, those elegant but fragile little plants that have also just started to bloom.

My hose pipe has been doing its bit over the last few days – watering in the new layer of fertilizing compost and plant food but after last night, sadly, it is curled up, sound asleep in its corner until England’s water authorities get their act together. Goodbye hose pipe, hello old friend the watering can.

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