I read this article about how the Japanese have 72 micro seasons – based round things like when the swallows arrive or the bamboo shoots or the peonies bloom. It’s a brilliant way of noticing what it’s going on and I thought I would really like to do that.

I don’t want to do 72 ko (that’s what they’re called) because that’s one every 5 days and I can’t get my head round that but I do like the idea of one a week. I’m going to base it round what’s happening on Saturday as that’s when I can most regularly spend time in the garden but it will be linked to the calendar week so I can see where I am next year.

What week is this?

I’ve missed loads of weeks already. When the crab apple blossoms! When the lily of the valley come through! When the black bees come to the pulmonaria, when the frogs start gathering in the pond. Last week was OBVIOUSLY when the swifts come back which is one of my favourite weeks of the year and they have been screeching overhead ever since.

I went out into the garden and I tried to work out what week it was. A few roses are out but not many, the foxglove’s are swelling but they’re not open, the honeywort is still green just going purple. It’s the week all the big things (not the brave early Spring flowers who’ve been and nearly gone) but the big stars get ready. It’s the week of everything getting ready to happen…

Of potential and bud and about to be a big performance but not quite…(apart from angelica – though I think there’s lots more to come).

This is the first full weekend of sunshine this year (it feels like) and it feels like everything is just waiting to go. In the evening, Luke and I were sitting in the hammock and the iris that was in bud in the morning, unfurled in front out our eyes. Which kind of makes it “the week the irises unfurl” (which is an actual Ko in Japan) but I’m sticking with the week everything’s about to happen because that’s what it is.