After a month where there has been little or no proper cleaning activity in the house (an odd whiz round the sitting room with Henry and a half-hearted wipe-down of the kitchen work surfaces are the only real attempts at cleaning that have gone on here), we’ve gone into full-on cleaning frenzy mode. Both of us.

So, while I was out sticking stamps on my 250 letters then posting them all, DM was giving the lounge a Henry. When I got home, he moved on to spend the rest of the day moving dusty piles of “stuff” around his office to try to make it a bit more tidy and workmanlike. It’s no wonder his asthma is terrible at the moment with the colossal amount of dust in there.

I, meanwhile, turned my attention to a thorough clean of the kitchen (about time too) and carried on where he’d left off in the sitting room. So, I cleared the piles of recipe books off the coffee table from where I sit and “research” recipes and food photos in the evenings, then I noticed the vase of tulips on the mantle shelf looking decidedly past their best so they got moved too.

It was as I was picking them up and moving them out into the back lobby, awaiting the move to their final resting place, the compost heap, that I noticed that despite their decay, they remain stunningly beautiful. I love the richness of the colour, the texture and the protective cup shape around the flower’s sexual organs. Therefore there was “no contest” as to what would become my photo of today.

Nothing more or less than an example of beautiful decay…..or to put it another way, things that are past their best can still be exquisitely beautiful.

I do amaze myself at just how much of a creature of habit I am, despite my thinking of myself as a real "wild flower free spirit". There, now the cat is truly out of the bag, I AM a mad old goat, and yes, I do often dance barefoot in the garden. It's almost exactly a year since this...., showing that I am, at least, consistent in my love of dead things.