On the porch with coffee on Sunday morning after a morning spring rain. The valley here is quiet in fresh-washed air. Through the valley mist and cloud the mountains out on the valley edge float, ephemeral and recondite, like faint and distant memories.

Fronds hang from the cedar boughs like ancient ferns, each tipped with a single rain drop. Beaded droplets rest on the prehistoric, dark green leaves of a giant hosta growing among rocks and moss.

Again the rain comes, gentle, and with it a hummingbird to have a look at the promising clematis curling round the porch, not ready yet, and the gleaming, brilliant wave petunias in the hanging planter. He hovers at a memory of last year’s basket of fuchsias, which will be there later, then moves onto the porch for a moment to have a look at me. We regard each other and then off he goes, around the corner and into the woods, another memory.

My memories are old as the mountains today. Clouds drift across time, mist obscures the moments; yet there they are.