Things I want to remember:

Fifty black cockatoos making their way across the sky above our house. Flying above the suburbs, they sound and look like the product of some weird magic. And now, a gang comes past everyday about 5pm.

Six white cockatoos stripping the last of walnuts off the neighbour's tree, out the back.

Silver eyes, tiny birds I've longed for in my garden, eating pink flowers from the prunus in the front garden.

A bumblebee as long and as fat as the top of my thumb, moving across the broad bean flowers.

All the vulnerability of love and joy in Lucy's face as I agree to play princesses with her.

Nell drinking water from an urn on a grave, in the parish under the care of Josephine Pyecroft.

Nell interjecting 'Yep, yep, yep' in Baa baa black sheep. That flat drawl: I thought she was going to spit and then wish for rain; she's something out of Hanrahan

Lime green euphorbia, blue forget-me-nots and iris, deep pink magnolia flowering together in the front garden as planned.

So many flowers in the garden I run out of vases and give them away.