Against the drab died-back look of winter the last few roses (see here, a John Clare specimen) decorate the garden in defiant shots of frivolous summer pink. I cut some blooms for the table to join candles and a bowl of aromatic  clementines in a simple festive still life.

 In the season for boxes of delights, I find particular pleasure in unpacking after a year`s rest in the attic  irisdescent baubles and a peg doll fairy for the tree.  And, there is all the hope and spring potential in the tulip and allium bulbs.  Arriving in boxes by mail order, they are tucked amongst  newspaper bedding, in net sacks and brown paper bags with special holes to keep the bulbs cool and dry. It is worth noting that most bulbs should be planted at a depth that allows twice their own height of soil above them.  Shallower planting is ok but the bulbs are unlikely to perform well after their first year, and  there is the added danger of being easier to be scavenged by squirrels. I have just finished planting about 300 pink tulips (including Blue Heron and Recreado) purple giant fluffy alliums (Gladiator and Globemaster). Do hope  the  rain and sogginess  will dry up for spring or I fear the consequent snail plague will be not only a threat to the young foliage but an unwelcome preoccupation.

Hooray, the last bulb is in. Time for a warm up by the fire!

Like unclogging bristle brushes under the  tap, a 12  hour deluge flushes the last  leaves from the trees. They  join a golden tide coursing through the roads and gardens of Tulse Hill.  Bulb planting is  an unpopular option for the moment and I escape to  Emily Carr`s   rhythmical brush strokes of the Canadian forest at The Dulwich Picture Gallery.  I also visit   RIBA and  Edwin Smith`s black and white photographs of the beauty in ordinary subjects:  a bench overtaken by a nettles or the graphic ridges and furrows of a Norfolk field .

Autumn fashion: the corduroy trousers of childhood with elastic waistbands, and, later on earnest student males in sagging corduroy jackets turned me off the material for years. I now appreciate its comfortable sensible  qualities and find it amusing that my new cords for autumn are   `sexy boyfriend` ones.  If only.

Like dividing a bag of of pic n mix  sweets I sort the tulip and allium bulbs, from Unwins , Rose Cottage Plants and de Jager  into  16 piles for the 16 beds in the garden.

The psychoblurb where blue equals down, miserable.... blah blah blah is daft, really. When I get the blues,  it all feels rather ragged London pigeon grey. Rippling cobalt blue sea or a  first day of spring blue  sky can only help to lift my mood.   So pleased to see on the  Style Court   blog  that although the Pantone  colour of the year is Emerald green, there`s much to get excited about blue, too. How about the new blue and white ceramics exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Art,  the cobalt blue cover of the new Anthroplogie spring collecton  or  Cornflower  one of my new Colour Band borders - see above ?

 More highs:  his little pot of grape hyacinths is just as I found it at the local flower shop perfectly co-ordinated with blue plastic pot  for 1.50 and, so far, 10 days of indoor Spring beauty.

Funny, isn`t it  that this gorgeous sludgy blue in my sitting room is called Parma Gray?   At night it feels snug, along with the heat from the new Morso  woodburner.  (Yes, yes, yes, pluck me from the  Periodic Table of the  Middle Class Handbook ).  During the  day this colour is serene, all very period Dutch domestic interior, like being in a scene from the Girl with the Pearl Earring.  Nothing depressing about that.