"Many years ago a friend bought me a jardinière and ever since then it has graced our windowsill, and as each flower I collect from the garden fades I drop in the spilled dried petals. This vessel is now brimful with the gatherings of spring, summer, autumn, winter, my children, friends past and present, the landscape I have always lived in and love.

I hope that when you turn these pages you feel the changing seasons, northern air on your skin and find pleasure in the moments that have meant so much to me."

"I am a big fan of Kerry Darbishire's delicate nature poems and knew this collection would be a treat. As soon as you open it you can smell the Lake District, so skilfully is it evoked by these beautifully crafted poems tracing the four seasons and with them the phases of a life. Here is a poet who can ambush you when you least expect it with a startling insight, a new and original phrase which is somehow just right, 'knife-edged, precious'. It is indeed (and this will stay with me) 'a thing to leave your soil'. A really special collection."

"An absolute treat. Within a backdrop of the four seasons, Darbishire weaves personal history and close observation of nature into a luminous web - the everyday and the extraordinary shimmer with light. Her sense of place, of belonging, is key - the 'here and now' being interspersed by poems that capture the essence of other times, of peoples that have come before. Magical."

"A beauty of a book. Kerry Darbishire has created such rich, crafted poems completely dedicated to life and the world around them."