Letters to garden makers

I write this on the day of the first frost of the year - a white veil, a frosted curtain laid over grass and shrubs. Shostakovich is on Radio 3 and Iran and Iraq are split and moved. The earth groaning in anticipation of change. The earth does not shift here - well not for many years. I remember my wardrobe waking me one morning by performing a percussion against the bedroom wall back in the early 1980's. I rethink purpose - what is the motivation for living and breathing on such a day? I pray and filter out my conspicuous faults through my visible breath in the crisp air - and the awareness of another realm - found for example in a patch of golden light or in the exquisite beauty of a yellow hawthorn leaf on the background of dark leaf litter - I shed my old skin and am renewed again in this garden of delights. Paul.

Dear Monty, I have decided that it is probably about the right time to sign off from writing letters to you. As the light fades and the leaves leave the trees and the brief period of dormancy begins. Saying goodbye to you is easier when it is in tandem with the season. I end my letters to you not in a melancholy way but as a celebration of light - the light both natural and existential. I have come on a journey these past few years and writing to you about the garden has helped me enormously. I identified with your struggles and your connection to the soil - the sheer effort involved in making a garden can be vitally restorative on many levels - both physically and certainly mentally as you and many others have proved. I remember my first letter to you being very tongue in cheek - mocking your pretentiousness in calling a section of your garden 'the jewel garden' not realising at the time the connection both you and Sarah had to the fashion industry and the craft o