Sometimes, we need a good dose of colour, and this Spring, I’ve been collecting it.

It feels like no coincidence that at this time of year, after months of cold, grey weather, nature produces all these little bursts of brightness. We’re not through the cold and dark yet, not really, but early Spring offers us small, colourful encouragements. And, in their own way, they are often as delicious as the green, dreamy fullness of summer.

It’s impossible not to find symbolism in the seasons, I find. This can often feel twee, but it’s in the wildness of it all that I find the most comfort and hope.

Daffodils don’t come when I’m expecting them or wanting them to. I know when to look out for them, of course, and there’s a trust that they’re underground doing their thing, growing those tough green shoots. Then, there’s a trust that soon, any day now, the yellow flowers will open. But there’s no knowing which day. It’s always something of a surprise, a gift of sorts.

At this time of year, there are lovely warm, sunshiney days, and blue skies, with clouds racing across them. And then there is a frost again, or wild winds when I rush out to secure the garden furniture, or torrential rain.

And I enjoy the paradoxical predictability and unpredictability of the season. It feels like life, which gives and takes away and surprises us in all kinds of wild ways. Ways that are small and lovely, and ways that are huge and terrifying.

And that’s why I’m obsessively collecting colour right now. I need it. I need to see that there is brightness amid the grey, growth amid the bare branches, hope in the dark, life alongside death.

And I find, daily, that there are. All those things.