Every year an elegant display of tulips grows just outside my studio window. I watch them from the earliest spring when the first tender shoots push out towards the light right through to the warm summer evenings when one by one the brilliant red petals begin to fall.

They create a poignant little sideshow as they bob in the wind and I find I appreciate whatever stage they are at, knowing that even in winter when there is no sign of them above ground, that each stage of life, for them as for us, is equally important, equally significant.