Dear Alex,
I wish you had told me her sign. Without that detail, and yours, I can't really comment... other than to suggest that, if you could only find another girlfriend who wanted to see you during the waning moon, you could lead the perfect double life!

Dear Lynda,
There will, I suspect be many more such reports soon. 2004 is due to be a bumper year for 'alien encounters' or at least (if you want to be sceptical) for reports of such things.

P.S. A well-deserved link to Chicken Shed Theatre Company - Excellence without exclusion.

What do these phrases mean? No one seems to know and I am trying to find out. There is no doubt that some people are much better with plants than others. Some people say that they have a negative effect. One woman told me, "I only have to look at a plant and it withers!" Are green fingers just a matter of people liking plants, knowing how to look after them, and remembering to water them? Is the explanation purely practical? Or is there something more mysterious?

Some people believe they have a personal relationship with their plants and even talk to them. Prince Charles famously admitted he liked to talk to his plants. Of course, many people talk to pet animals like cats and dogs. But talking to plants seems more eccentric, and most people are shy about it. Similarly, people who hug trees usually prefer to do so when no one is looking. Nevertheless, most of us have some sort of relationship with plants, even if we never think about it. The UK houseplant and cut flower industry has an annual turnover of 1.5 billion pounds. We are a nation of gardeners, and hundreds of thousands of people have allotments.

In the 1960s, an American CIA official, Cleve Backster, discovered that when he wired up plants to a lie detector, he could measure electrical changes in them that seemed to be related to his thoughts, especially if he was planning to burn a leaf with a match. He even found that the plants seemed to react to his intention to come home when he was miles away. The plants seemed to be "reading his mind". When he realized this, he stopped doing experiments that involved harming the plants.

I have no idea how reliable Backster's observations are, but if they can be repeated independently, they would be revolutionary. They would show that our thoughts and intentions can affect plants in ways that are at present unexplained. Perhaps they would help shed light on the nature of green fingers.

I would like to hear from readers about experiences of green fingers. Email Rupert Sheldrake's researcher, [email protected] with subject heading: Rupert Sheldrake.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and the author of The Sense of Being Stared at: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (Hutchinson, �17.99)
His website is www.sheldrake.org

Venus, planet of both love and luck, suggests fun and laughter or money. So whatever it is, it's nice. Uranus, is the planet of the unexpected. When the two are together, they mean quite simply 'nice surprise', 'unexpected fortune', or 'love at first sight'.

Venus is bright and clear in the west between about 5pm and 7pm; Uranus is invisible without a good telescope. Somehow, I prefer not being able to see it. The invisible benefactor is all part of the mystery, isn't it?

To read other articles by Bernard Fitzwalter, click here.

Let us then, spare some pity for Prince Harry and Prince William. Their horoscopes reveal them to be nice enough chaps. William, like his mother, is a sensitive Cancerian born June 21, 1982 at 9.03pm. Harry, despite his reputation as a wild child with a poor academic ability, is actually a careful, clever Virgo born September 15, 1984 at 4.02am. The charts of both princes, this year, are due to be touched by the twin comets that pass through the sky in late May. When we remember how brightly the comet Hale Bopp blazed in the sky, just a few weeks before their mother's untimely death, it is hard not to wonder whether this rare heavenly phenomenon may have a very special connection to their lives. I'd like to think that they have already had their share of stress, this year. They have, after all, already been confronted with an unforgiveably tactless revelation about the contents of one of their mother's private letters. Fancy being an impressionable young man, trying to digest the knowledge that your mum thought your dad was trying to have her killed in a car crash... just shortly before she actually died in such a way. I fear though, that yet more psychological disturbances lie in store for our innocent young princes over the coming months. I may be a staunch republican but my heart goes out to them. And I hope I am wrong.