Ever since I was tiny, I’ve loved climbing the magnolia tree in our front garden. Today is no different. The magnolia isn’t in full bloom yet, even though it flowers early. It’s waiting, the first tips of creamy-white flowers just showing through velvety, army-green buds. The branches shiver in the wind, the frigid air whispering a warning of frost. I worry. Frost means the blooms will die before they are even fully out. Will this be the last moment I get among the flowers this year? Some flowers are already dying, their soft silk petals turning brown and brittle. The chattering of birds echoes the squawking of my classmates whom I’ve just left behind. Above me a smooth gradient of watercolour washes the sky with blue. The branches are rough with lichen, the multiple trunks shooting out of a mattress of purple anemones and moss. Peeping out among the anemones are two-tone primroses, snake-head fritillaries with diced patterns and papery crocuses, pristine and cloud-white like miniature magnolia blossoms. They shelter ladybirds, bumblebees and all the other insects that live in the miniature rainforests we call flowerbeds. The sun’s golden glow dances over the trees nearby, gilting the edge of the crab apple blossom. I climb higher up the sturdy boughs. I sit on the top branches, looking at how the sky is no longer blues and whites, but an acrylic glitterbomb of fire. Kerensa, 12