Genre fiction, weeds and film night.

1. It's difficult to dislike waking in the small hours when I can read myself back to sleep by sliding into  the soothing, well-worn grooves of genre fiction. This week's favourite is Julia Huni's Triana Moore, Space Janitor.

2. I do love the soft fern leaves and pink flowers of herb robert; and the sparky blue flowers of alkanet; and the way wall toadflax softens edges -- even if the RHS says they are all pernicious weeds. I only pull them out when they seem to be congesting the garden, or once they start looking leggy, mildewed and seedy. 

3. We disappear into the misty deserted world of the Russian classic Stalker (1979). It was made seven years before the Chernobyl disaster, and I'm struck by its prescience -- although it's pretty easy to guess how people might behave when presented with a forbidden zone that contains invisible danger; and it's not too much of a leap to use those guesses to fire up a narrative.

Houseplants, waiting for lunch and edges of fairyland.

1. A windowsill full of glossy houseplants.

2. I've had to wait for my lunch while we unload a grocery delivery. The shepherd's pie tastes even better reheated.

3. Just before sleeping, I go wandering on the edges of fairyland with the second Emily Wilde book.

Bluebells, vantage point and volcanoes.

1. The scent of bluebells rolls down the hill to meet us. 

2. From where we're eating our lunch in the holly scrub on top of the crags, we can see passers-by -- including a loud thumper on the railway -- but they can't see us.

3. To realise that now would be an okay time to introduce our eldest to a Werner Herzog documentary. We lie on the sofa watching Into the Inferno on Netflix. 

Spaniel, mocha and long lens.

1. A chaotic chocolate-brown spaniel with ears undulating soaks its belly running through a puddle among the rocks then races across the rough grass to the cricket pitch before making a circle back to the rocks..

2. Getting a mocha on my way home was the right thing to do.

3. The boys are hanging out of the window to photograph a distant verdegris roof dome, and a gull nesting on a chimney stack.

Earlier, sooner and nose to nose.

1. Nick calls upstairs. He has come home much earlier than expected, and he brings me a book -- Richard Ayoade's The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.

2. The surgeon reckons they can schedule it within the month, which is a lot sooner than we expected.

3. From half past eight to nine o'clock on most evenings we lie almost nose to nose just taking some time. She says of her day, 'It was boring when I was living through it; I don't know why you want to hear about it now.'

Mould, violet lawn and comfortable second.

1. During my walk, I find an intriguing buff-coloured spongy mass on a pile of wood chippings. I guess it's a fungus -- maybe a slime mould -- and I can see older dried out ones, splatted like cow pats. I make a note and look forward to finding out what it is when I have time to tumble down a rabbit hole.

2. In an unkempt garden, a lawn thick with violets.

3. We're down to two players passing £500s back and forth over the board. With my property portfolio there's a chance I could hold my own until the good luck (or bad luck) I need to win turns up -- but it's very late, and I'm all right to concede into a comfortable second.

Wisteria, last time and apple blossom.

1. The wisteria on the back wall has done particularly well this year -- the mauve flowers hang heavy and so does the sweetcorn scent in the brick cell of our back yard. When I brag about it, I am repaid with pictures of apple trees and rhododendrons and all other things in bloom. 

2. This might be the last time she wants me to push her on the swing.

3. To pull down a branch bearing apple blossom to catch the shy pink and white scent.

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.