The garden, when I'm not working in it, mesmerizes me. In the sense that I so much enjoy viewing it. From various angles, trying to capture it in a moment when it is unaware that it is subject of my viewing interest.

The various garden beds and borders are quite different from one another. Their focus is varied, and some plants are in greater abundance in one or the other The architecture of each is different. The focal points are different.

Each of the gardens must have perspective, height and depth. Something to anchor them. Which translates to a tree, a shrub, and then the inmates of the garden bed and border descend, as it were, in height, formation, presentation. Not meant to be viewed individually, but as an aggregate of colour, form and texture.

A fusion of vegetation individualism and characteristics that when viewed broadly as a collective take on a personality reflecting the garden as a community effort by all its constituents. And so, when I look out a window of the house, or the front door, or the back, my eye is always entertained, and sometimes surprised.

When we leave our property, I glance back at the garden and it in turn studies our departure. When we return our eyes clasp the garden, drinking in its variations as a series of colourful landscapes. A refreshing experience of which we can never tire.

The gardens pleasures and surprises us because it is visual poetry in slow motion. It changes continually; in the short view, day-to-day, in the longer view when important features reflecting a perennial presence fade once they have served their purpose to bloom in season, with others taking their place in the limelight, as it were.

And then aside from the ever-altering succession there is the weather and how it affects the denizens of the garden; the sun, the wind, the rain. All of nature s nurturing elements which are of critical importance to the life-cycle of the plants and trees that flourish there. There are always losses from season to season, and there are always pleasant reactions when a visitor to the garden presents itself, blooms and makes itself at home.

So I view the garden from endless perspectives. Those parts which 'hide' as it were shyly behind a gate, behind a piece of garden statuary, behind a tree or a shrub, or a garden shed. We have a rock garden and it runs along the length of the house in a narrow interstice between our house and our neighbour's. You have to know it's there otherwise its presence is hidden.

And there's a shade garden, along the opposite side of the house where hostas flourish, though they have a major presence everywhere, in all the garden beds. Viewed in part or in total the garden is my absolute visual delight.