Floral sleeve with irises and daffodils

The irises came up purple this year, the dark ones your grandfather planted along the fence, and I spent Saturday on my knees splitting the clumps the way he showed me, knife through the rhizome, one fan of leaves for each new piece. The daffodils were late because of the cold, but they all opened on Tuesday as if they had agreed it among themselves. Mrs Pratt next door says that is a sign of rain. She says most things are.

I dug the lily of the valley out from under the hawthorn because it was creeping into the rhubarb, and I found the old bleeding heart roots still sulking in the shade where nobody has bothered them since your father left. I potted them up and left them on the back step. They will need a better place come autumn, and I am not sure I have the nerve to move them.

I've packed a biscuit tin with a few irises, a handful of daffodil bulbs wrapped in the Yorkshire Post, and some forget-me-not seed in an envelope marked in my capitals so you cannot say you didn't know what it was. Plant them somewhere with a bit of sun. Your flat has a window, I am told, and a window is a garden if you stand in it long enough.

The last thing is a silly one. When I lifted the blue ones from the border there were still seeds shaking loose from the old stems. I pressed some into the lid of the tin, the way you used to press your thumb into the sand at Filey. They won't come up until spring. I am writing that down so you remember it is coming.

Love, Mum