Bold as brass, a dandelion bursts from the muddy, dog-peed path. Out from a dark winter place, rudely sunny, a kind of memorial sprouts from the top of its lion-tooth root which stretches down into the earth. A green knot peels and a gold cone opens its fingers. When looked at closely the dandelion is an astronomical image of the sun in all its boiling, flaring power which fires atomic storms across the pole to form the northern lights. One day of warm sunshine and its flower is an entire landscape, a day star around which other planets orbit.

In trees above, a song thrush oils his tunes – not quite ready yet, but his creaky phrases mean something wonderful to all who hear them. Even the pushing-shoving jackdaws leave the thrush alone, out on a limb, lost in exultant reverie. A couple of robins and a coven of long-tailed tits pass through the trees, and their calls and early songlines are clear as chrome but nowhere near the pitch and intensity of the thrush. Buzzards and ravens pass with only sideways comment.

All of a sudden it's warm enough and bright enough to believe in the dandelion. There is a fly that does, too. As if conjured from the squalor of the path and drawn in by the flower's gravity, the fly fastens to its brassy rays, searching for liquid gold. It is softly and almost transparently jewel-like, with art-nouveau window-paned wings, bristled with sensors and both delicate and powerful. From a distance the fly seems just a blemish on the flower, but for the dandelion it is the reason for its explosion of life. This is an ephemeral solar system. Once pollinated by the fly, the flower will turn into a clock, to blow away on solar winds.