I think, in a way, it is part of the remit of the World Service to set the scene for people around the world, and to a certain extent try to describe what life is like here in the UK. So I described houses we lived in (the same 'new' house that we still live in fifteen years later - still with bits that need rebuilding and repairing) and the same garden that I see outside my window nowadays.

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim - In the Name of God the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

I recently moved to a new house in Glasgow, and the upheaval at times seemed like a nightmare that would never end. When I say "a new house" I mean new for us. The house itself was so old it was falling down and the demolition, repairs and rebuilding were the main reasons for the nightmare. Through the wet cold Glasgow winter, we had leaks in the roof, broken windows, and holes in the floors and walls. But at the back, we had our own garden.

I used to live in a typical Glasgow tenement, with its large individual flats branching out from the four floors of the central stairwell. A great way to live in the city, but not much of a garden to speak of, so I used to enjoy the lawns and flowers of the nearby Botanic Gardens, sheltering from showers in the grandiose glasshouses filled with plants to remind me of far away deserts and tropics.

Now I have a garden right outside my back door. It is certainly not tropical, but when I arrived it was probably as close as Glasgow gets to having jungle. So we hacked and burned the foliage, picked up rubbish and cleared the ground, and in the winter drizzle the mud of the garden took on an appearance almost as desolate as the house. But winter passes.

Spring comes late in Glasgow, but it always comes at last. Suddenly green leaves began to burst through what had seemed like lifeless earth, the ground rapidly became covered with a carpet of bluebells, and the nightmare slowly began to abate. Each day it seemed that something else that had seemed dead would burst into life. The rain falling from the heavens and giving life to the dead land is one of the Signs of God mentioned frequently in the Qur'an. Even so, we are reborn.

From a few seeds we now have vegetables growing, which hopefully will feed us as well as the caterpillars and birds. Right now it is very clear that we are fed by the same One Who feeds all the creatures in creation. That doesn't mean that we don't have to work for it, of course. The birds have to fly, or dig in the earth to catch insects, or find my seeds, and I quickly found that work in the garden can be backbreaking.

But the fruits of that labour are so much more satisfying than charity, and satisfying to much more than the stomach. In fact very little of the garden is devoted to vegetables, much more work goes into the flowers, most with no use except for their beauty. But their beauty is a constant reminder to me: "God is Beautiful and loves Beauty" said the Prophet.

[From the Qur'an, the chapter named The Cattle vv. 95-99]

It is God who splits the grain and the date-stone, brings forth the living from the dead; He brings forth the dead too from the living. So that then is God; then how are you deluded?

He splits the sky into dawn, and has made the night for a repose, and the sun and moon for a reckoning. That is the ordaining of the All-mighty, the All-knowing.

It is He who has appointed for you the stars, that by them you may be guided in the shadows of land and sea. We have distinguished the signs for a people who know.

It is He who produced you from one living soul, appointed your time-span and resting place. We have distinguished the signs for a people who understand.

It is He who sent down out of heaven water, and thereby We have brought forth
the shoot of every plant, and then We have brought forth the green leaf of it, bringing forth from it close-compounded grain, and out of the palm-tree, from the spathe of it, dates thick-clustered, ready to the hand, and gardens of vines, olives, pomegranates, like each to each, and each unlike to each. Look upon their fruits when they fructify and ripen! Surely, in all this are signs for a people who do believe.