I always look out to the garden (such as it is) when I’m having my breakfast (such as it is), even in the paling grey mornings of an Irish November* (such as they are). Just joking. The garden is fine, and the breakfast finer. And mornings bring miracles and the hope of renewal. And outside the window there is a patio area and a concrete retaining wall painted white by my own hand. And growing from the apparently barren pebbles on the shaded ground below a proud unlikely nasturtium flourishes each year. It appears in early Summer, full of curiosity and hope (as perennials do) and crawls its tiptoe creep along the stones and the patio slabs. One, two, three, four stems grow and thicken and seek the purchase they need to go upwards, onward, towards the bounty of light. Like fingers feeling under the bed sheets for the promise