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The first emerging seeds have popped up their tiny green heads in my propagator (a dead fridge, on its back, half full of sand embedded with a soil warming cable, and two glass Porsche side windows for a lid). The melons are just behind, you can see bulging spots in their compost though no sign of tomatoes or peppers as yet.

Many of my plants under cover look a bit weary, that is those that are not obviously dead; I no longer have any coffee plants, the look hopeless, the , a grafted one at that, has been cut right down. Many of my lost their centres - wet lodges in there and the cold then gets them, they're much safer bone dry. Still, the days are getting longer and brighter and soon I expect most survivors will flourish once again.

The have come through amazingly well, still cropping, that's nearly four months of fresh tasty vitamin packed fruits. Likewise a potted Cape gooseberry has been doing well; the cold barely touched it though now it's suffering grey mould - as is much else. The citrus are still awful despite my best efforts.

A couple of pots of are growing well with plenty of good looking leaves - should be a grand show soon. They are now stood in place of pots of hardy cyclamen which have finally finished, they were very good value with months of bloom. Outdoors is bleak, drab and rather muddy; however there are now some flowers to be found.

The are dangling profusely but the tiny carmine female flowers are not out yet - they need a warm sunny day to stick out their sea-anemone like tentacles. My cornelian cherry, cornus mas, has masses of fat buds waiting to burst. I've cut some stems to bring in for a vase on the kitchen table where they are now opening their yellow blooms. Along with these I've stood sprigs of a winter flowering honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, the tiny creamy flowers live up to their name, and twigs of Wintersweet, Chimomanthus fragrans, which also lives up to its name with waxy wan yellow petals on red-centred flowers that carry delicious spicy perfume.

I've looked for the but they're not there yet, the crocuses are just sticking up their nibs as are the snowdrops. And it's only with today's perambulation I notice I've not seen any autumn flowering snowdrops, right by my back door these were regularly increasing for a decade or more from a kind gift of a few bulbs. Normally appearing in autumn and flowering in November these are now notable from their very absence. A close investigation reveals a few stumpy leaves and no signs of flowers past or present. Um, I wonder what's done for them, and it must have been well before the cold snap distracted me. I shall disinter their remains later, move any hopefuls to a new spot and see if they can be revived.