Brew-up, out of the oven and future dressing.

1. I stir the tea in the canister to get the right mix of black tea leaves and flower petals and orange peel and lift a spoonful into the infuser.

2. There is a general marvelling at the batter pudding Nick pulls out of the oven. He is grumbling quietly that the new oven runs at a cooler temperature than the old one because he has become a person with some expertise at cooking.

3. I start to pack. It feels rather like dressing a doll; imagining myself away and thinking what I might like to do and what I might wear to do it.

Jaybird, physio and collab.

1. I hear a cry like a child's -- but from the top of a tree. A jay with a beak full of grass wisps and blue flashes on her wings looks back at me. 

2. The physio asks gently about absolutely everything from dreams to diet to doorframes to trouser cuffs. Sitting on the bench, size 9 trainers dangling, he unfurls a little.

3. The lamb stew was made by me -- but Nick made the dumplings floating on the top.

Pink, brownies and Pleiades.

1. A single pink primrose flower among the pale yellows lighting up the under hedge.

2. We eat brownie in tiny pieces soaked with juice from defrosted raspberries.

3. With my binoculars, between the washing line and trellis, I stumble on the tiny pan-shape of the Pleiades.

Path, stars and wisteria.

1. The Common has dried out a lot since I was last out. There is a dusty path beaten smooth across the spot that is still rutted and ridged from when it was winter mud.

2. It's pretty late, but I'm going to sit outside and match the goings on in the sky to my star map. We've wheeled round since I last looked and there's an entirely different view. I'm only really out here because I'm responding to a prompt from Amy Bowers' Poetry Jam.

3. Even in the dark, I can tell the wisteria is about to bloom on its bare stems.

Magnolia, no coat and weeding.

1. The drifts of pink and white petals drying in the gutters and flattened on to the pavement suggest that the magnolia on the corner of Belgrove in bloom.

2. It is warm enough that I forget my coat and have to go back and buzz myself in again.

3. Putting my fingers among soft leaves and soil and guessing which are weeds and which came from the packet of wildflower seeds.

Acer, proof and orange/blue.

1. The little rags of budding acer leaves, each one pencilled round in red.

2. We go through a maths revision worksheet about areas of shapes. I still marvel at how the area of a trapezium could be a+b divided by two and then multiplied by the height. I think I missed the lesson where we covered the proof, because I remember being allowed to 'discover' pi with a piece of string at the start of circle theory; and cutting up paper to show how the square of the hypotenuse can be made to fit into the squares of the other two sides. 

3. The warm sunset colours on the horizon fade up to night, and in between you'd be hard pressed to say whether you were looking at orange sky or blue sky.

Jackdaws, hot cross buns and listening to music.

1. Jackdaws are nesting in a capped chimney that I can see from my desk. They hang on the brickwork and fold their blue-grey bodies into an opening the size of a playing card.

2. The tiny variations in the basic range hot cross buns from different supermarkets. 

3. Turn and turn about, waiting for bedtime, we listen to each other's songs, and end up with Lightning Seeds Pure on a loop.