Testament to resilience: the last of the season’s Narcissus flowering in our neighbour’s paddock at Three Mile, just across the garden lane.

These old Narcissus x medioluteus, known as ‘Primrose-peerless’ or ‘Twin sisters’, were described by Elizabethan botanist John Gerard in 1597. It is a gentle coloniser, and since gold was found nearby in the 1850s and a small village evolved it has spread hundreds of metres. It comes in the wake of N. telamonious plenus, a wonderfully old and contorted yellow and green-petalled double daffodil. It is also known as ‘Van Sion’.

Views of the natural spread of N. x medioluteus across an estimated 160 years.