I went to visit my friend Vina’s garden because she is away in Dubai and everything is coming into bloom and I didn’t want her flowers to be lonely and unappreciated. She has an amazing array of things happening there – a camellia tree which is dazzling and heavy with beautiful, rose-like flowers, pansies just about to open, cinneraria all winking and improbable in full shade, roses of deepest yellow and red, and then this cactus here which stopped me in my tracks. What the heck is going on? Delicate, exquisite little blossoms perched bravely at the top of the most harrowing range of thorns – how does this happen? How does such beauty emerge from such fierce and formidable stems, stems guaranteed to be intensely painful (it almost hurts to look at them)? The flowers are fragile and sweet and inseparable from the suffering. You can’t get one without the other. Vina’s garden is full of wonders, full of mystery and delight, but nothing there moved me like these bright courageous blossoms, full of hope and glory.