We’ve now had our first frost of the year and it’s all starting to look a bit wintry really. I’m getting up and going out in the dark, quite often I’m coming home in the dark too so this morning, when I got up to support David as he went off to “work” this morning, when I didn’t have to go out until late morning felt very virtuous.

In fact, I’ve been doing plant biology this afternoon and feeling as happy as a pig in muck. The format of my lab work has been a sheet of about 40 questions with codes next to them. We had to find the relevant plant then answer the question, sometimes this would require a microscope, sometimes sketching and sometimes a written answer.

My fellow students (I’m guessing here) haven’t by and large had either the time or the inclination to build up any interest in plants or things botanical and it showed. I, on the other hand, loved every moment. I realised I’d got myself a reputation quickly when one of the PHD students who was helping to manage the lab session sidled up to me and said “you must be the plant geek”.

There followed lots of conversations about how to fix nitrogen in soil, the sex lives of plants and stacks of other stuff that was more like going down the pub and discovering someone you’ve only just met has a lifelong love of I dunno, for the sake of argument, Elvis Costello. Do you know what I mean? Suddenly, instead of it being a strange bit of small talk between strangers, it’s common ground, a shared love.

I even got to draw some moss not dissimilar to this moss that I photographed in my old garden in Sandhurst, shortly after getting my first camera. We have the same stuff here and it has been frosted this week but sadly I’ve been struggling to get through my days and therefore not taken a pic for a few days. So, it’ll do for illustrative purposes.

Although botany isn’t my aim from this, I came away from my labours feeling that it wouldn’t half be a wonderful way to spend the rest of my days. Being a botanist that is.