They hadn't flowered for more than 20 years: since 1987, to be precise, the year of the big wind. Before that, they hadn't been seen since the war. Come and gaze, said my neighbour, Richard Symes, so I took a stroll round his farm to see if it was as remarkable as he said.

It was better. A couple of years ago, he coppiced a chunk of the wood he tends rather lovingly: coppice is an ancient management technique in which you fell a tree but leave the stump to regenerate. The wood he cut heated the farmhouse for two winters, and the space he left exploded. Spontaneous combustion, nothing less. Where once there was a shaded parade of oak and ash, there is now a gathering - a constellation - of foxgloves.

It's a rum thing: in another part of the forest, another coppicing episode had taken place without any foxgloves springing up. But this was just a place that foxgloves love, and so they stood there in uncountable, breathtaking thousands, on spikes rising seven foot and more.

The transitory nature of their beauty adds to their wonder. For a moment, I regretted that Vincent van Gogh had not spent more time in England, and that he had visited London and Ramsgate, rather than Suffolk. Here was a palate of dangerous sentimental pastels, an endless range of mauves and pinks mixed with whites and off-whites and purples, going on and on and on, deeper and deeper into the forest. If Van Gogh has got his hands on that lot he would have out-sunflowered the sunflowers.

There is something thrilling in the thought that these things can lie dormant for so long, biding their time, waiting until conditions are right. At a time when the fragility of life is brought to our attention with ever more pressing urgency, it is wonderfully cheering to have a reminder of life's strength, life's resilience, life's ingenuity.

Richard farms unapologetically for profit, yet he loves to operate alongside the wilder world. His hedges rise tall and shaggy; his field margins are wide and hairy. I did an ornithological survey of his farm once, and the place was jumping with turtle doves: sure sign of a less hostile farming regimen. At dawn the place was knee-deep in hares.

The wood is pretty ancient, but it was clear felled during the last war. It has since regenerated, though it took a fearful hammering in the hurricane. The point is that, if it possibly can, life will regenerate. Life will keep going, if given half a chance. It's the giving of half a chance that's the problem.

But the constellations and galaxies of foxgloves filled me with good cheer: a small and splendid miracle. Lord knows when they will be seen again in that wood: it's good to know that they are there, biding their time, awaiting their moment.

Deep thoughts

My friends at Sea Watch Foundation remind me that National Whale and Dolphin Watch starts this weekend and lasts until June 29. Hard to believe that underneath all that heaving grey stuff there are monsters. Thanks to Sea Watch I have had

encounters with dolphins of three species, and also with basking sharks. The emergence of these enormous creatures in home waters is one of the most profoundly surprising things that you can hope to see in your life.

Check out www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk and visit a manned observation point. Gaze out to sea and try to get lucky.

Cop that harrier

There is an arcade game in which you hit people on the head with hammer, but they keep popping up again. It is a pleasant game for the inner psychotic. The people aren't actually real, alas, but up they pop, leering at you, and then, when walloped, disappear, only for two more to come. And after that lethal double-tap, two more, or three, will come up, with rising intensity.

I was reminded of this game at the RSPB's Minsmere nature reserve, but instead of grinning little men, it was marsh harriers. I was gazing out at the splendid expanse of reedbed, and a marsh harrier got up. Then it went down, and two more got up. It went on like that for a couple of hours: every time one of them went down, two more of them got up.

This is amazing enough. But it is even more amazing when you consider that there was only one nest in all England in the Sixties, and it was, of course, at Minsmere. Now at Minsmere alone, there are 19 nests, a new record, two up on last year.

Could it be that somewhere, somehow, we are doing something right?

Times Recommends

• No drama? With Hillary? Forget it
• Children Haringey did take into care
• Thank heaven I was never invited to this party