You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

At this time of year, when the garden is a barren wasteland, and the weather is hardly gardener-friendly, there's nothing nicer than pouring over an enticing seed catalogue, and dreaming of what's to come. The Sarah Raven catalogue came flitting through the door recently, and with it all the inflated hope that one day MY garden would be full to burtsing with every kind of gorgeous flower and succulent vegetable, just like hers is at Perch Hill (and now, of course, Sissinghurst. What, one amazing garden wasn't enough? Did she sell her soul to the gardening-God when she was young?). I like how there are a few carefully chosen photos of Sarah daintily collecting jewel coloured rhubarb, as she wanders through her enormous garden, swathed in rabbit fur. The whole excercise seems extremely easy, glamorous, and ultimately hugely virtuous:Yes we grown and eat all our own courgettes! Yes our Italian cook uses at least 39875lbs of home-grown heritage tomatoes to maker her famous passata - I didn't even know it was commercially available until I unwittingly wandered into a supermarket once when I only put one contact lens in by mistake!

If there were pictures of me in that catalogue, they would feature me knee-deep in compost fishing my mobile phone out of the compost heap (yes this actually happened), or using a few choice adjectives at high volume when I discovered that mice had eaten every single last one of my sweet-pea seeds, despite a fort-knox-crossed-with-the-kremlin style greenhouse security system, oh, and I would be swathed in...well...I don't think I own any clothes made out of swathable material... Maybe this year I'll catch the mice and turn them into a coat..... only joking, I'm rubbish at sewing. Despite the veneer of gardening ease which I know to be false, I have of course succumbed utterly to everything, and made gardening plans well beyond my capabilities and budget. It's a bit like watching a haute couture catwalk show when you can't even fit into your pyjamas, and your overdraft is roughly equivalent to America's national defecit.

What is ALWAYS fun is wandering around New Covent Garden Market. Talk about window shopping. Whenever I'm feeling a bit lacklustre in the auld creative department I just stroll around the 'sundries' suppliers with my mouth open, bumping into six-foot high faux Grecian urns made of lime coloured perspex, and meandering through oceans of every conceivable

bloom, plus some inconceivable ones (what is the deal with those xanths you get which have been dyed blue and purple? I remember doing that at primary school in science class, it didn't make me think, "Wouldn't this look nice in a bouquet?" it made me think, "what have I CREATED!!??"

You want£6000 worth of peonies? They have them...

You want 500 black glass candelabra? Your ship has come in...

Yes it's also a bit of a hide-me-from-reality fest, but when it's this cold and windy, and even thoughts of summer seem ludicrously far away, it's nice to know there's a sort of florist's sweet shop there to make your mouth water, and it doesn't involve any mud or hard work. Unless you count the 3am start to get there...