Michelle Hand, my fiancée.

          On a cold grey day several years ago, I was sat in a café with my vicar, the Reverend Graham Shaw. A relatively young man himself, Graham was a little further along the road and far wiser than me - in the perfect position to offer a little life advice over some tea and bacon. The topic of conversation had reached love, whether I was truly happy with what I had at the time, and where my aspirations for love lay. I wondered if perhaps I hadn't taken a serious view until then, for in my mind's eye I couldn't help but recall the scene introducing the Lady Arwen Undómiel into 'The Lord of the Rings'. In she came, on horseback through a woodland's misty light and a choir's voices rising, her hair flowing and her eyes shining. I'd seen it as a boy, and a decade later it was still all I could picture. Graham knew the scene too. I laughed at my immaturity, my foolishness, and expected him to do the same - an man so knowledgeable and capable, with his intelligent voice and intelligent glasses. He didn't laugh. He smiled, but he didn't laugh. "Actually, Josh - I don't think there's anything foolish about wanting something like that." I remember him saying that now as vividly as the scene itself.

          Last March, walking toward me in the very church of the same reverend came Michelle Hand. Over a year she has revealed herself to be the loveliest person I have ever met or ever shall meet, in beauty and in kindness. She endlessly listens and thinks, cares and prays. Whether it is this, or perhaps her long billowing hair and her soft Northern Irish voice, I have been completely enchanted. Tree or flower, I believe that were there a plant in my garden which had her virtues everyone would come from every corner of the world to admire it. Indeed it has been a pleasure to tell her about everything which I had learned in the last three years about gardening, and look forward to sharing all my future horticultural adventures with the finest companion. In return, perhaps this blog shall stray in future from flora into fauna as her passion lies in horses.

The proposal came on Friday the 17th June, the night before Michelle flew for an internship at Virginia Tech - a little of "now or never" about the occasion. Of course, plants were never far away from proceedings. The ring came from wonderful Scottish ringmaker Sarah Brown, unique with "seaforest" details of leaves and berries in the goldwork around the diamonds. As for the setting, it had to be the garden. Doing my best to distract Michelle whilst the evening set in and darkness fell, my mother and sisters silently ran out and lit a trail of lamps and lanterns through the garden leading down to my old pond at the bottom, which they filled with floating candles and surrounded with more lights. Once everything was alight, Mum gave the signal - calling to innocently ask whether Michelle would like me to show her a new iris in flower down by the pond. Michelle said yes, she would - and ten minutes later, she said yes again to a very different question indeed.

She truly is the loveliest blessing in my life, and I thank God that the adventure I initially started writing about shall now be a journey for two, and all the richer for it.