Last November my wife, Elizabeth, planted a great many tulip and daffodil bulbs in the cold autumn soil so that in the spring, even more flowers than usual would bloom around our village house, located an hour’s drive from Kyiv. Our neighbours have sown garlic and onions for the winter, planted flowers and scattered fertiliser over the ploughed land, so that with the arrival of the first spring warmth, their vegetable plots and gardens will please the eye, the heart and the mind, thoughtful of another year’s harvest.
But between now and the spring there is winter and there is war.
And where the war is felt more keenly than the winter, a thaw will be caused not by the sun’s rays…