It is a daunting prospect to grow old in a time and place that does not value old people, but the generation known as Boomers should not be so easily dismissed. They were part of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the Second Wave of Feminism. They marched against the Vietnam War and were the first generation to be liberated by the contraceptive pill from the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Their teenage years were fuelled by protest songs and peace-and-love idealism, and plenty of them are still engaged in various forms of activism.

Carol Lefevre's Bloomer documents the year in which she turned seventy, an age designated 'young old' in the stages of later life. Framed by the turning of the seasons in her small suburban garden, memoir threads through meditations on various aspects of ageing – from its hidden grief and potential for loneliness to the ways we experience time and memory and our relationship with the past and with our own mortality.

This is a gorgeous, optimistic and eloquent book for everyone who is alive and getting older yet can still find a younger version of themselves somewhere inside. It is for anyone with an interest in the challenges and rewards of ageing, and most of all it is for those who want to subvert the negative imagery around Boomers and emerge instead as Bloomers, people not at the end of things but still on their way and fully intent on embracing a late-life flourishing.