Ye olde weather sayings

I always find those old weather sayings either a bit bossy (never cast a clout before May is out) or incomprehensible (if you are in pain, it will rain) and just plain idiotic (a cow with its tail to the west makes the weather best). Mind you given the fallibility of modern weather forecasting these olde sayings are as good as anything– weren’t we meant to look forward to a ‘barbecue’ summer last year followed by a mild winter? We might as well consult a crystal ball when it comes to long-term weather forecasts. However, the old saying for me, which seems to hold true every year is ‘March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb’. Cast your mind back to the beginning of the month and we were still in the grip of winter – icy winds, sleet and snow and then, almost exactly in the middle of the month, around the time of the equinox the weather eased and the sun shone warmly. The winds were balmy and no longer did I have to venture out in the garb of a yak herder on the Arctic wastes.

I wouldn’t call my self a fair weather gardener, but there are limits. I don’t venture out in the freezing cold and tackle a wet, claggy soil. I confess I have been hiding away these past months – rather like those hibernating mammals - I’ve holed up in a cosy, dimly lit nest  and lived off a store of last year’s produce.

But how nice it is to get out there and feel the heft of a spade again! You can almost feel the plants sighing luxuriously and unfurling in the sunlight. Of course this time is  all about renewal, and on the allotment it is not just about plants, but about renewing gardening friendships also. There are people here who I haven’t seen throughout the winter months – people who I’d see and chat to every day in the summer. So how nice it is to establish all the old links  - how comforting it is to grumble about the usual things – pigeons, slugs, the weather – it’s like settling back into a comfortable old armchair. Of course many of these allotmenteers had got on top of all the jobs I had neglected in the recent months. One of these is pruning  …

Now somehow this is a task that passes me by… until I’m poked in the eye by a wanton twig. It then dawns upon me that aforesaid twig should have been pruned a while ago. I confess I’m a little nervous about pruning – I consult the books and scrutinise the diagrams and then it all goes out of my head the minute I have the pruning shears in my hand. Having over-pruned our blackcurrant bushes one winter resulting in a mass of foliage and no fruit I now try to be cautious. I stand with secateurs at the ready scrutinising each shoot and then rather like Edward Scissorhands I start slowly with a few cuts and then gradually build up to a frenzy of snipping. The end result is that the fruit bushes look as though they have had a very bad haircut; the apple tree has shorn back and sides and then, because I can’t reach very high, a Mohican on top boasting long skyward strands. Ah well, I feel another nonsensical olde worlde saying coming up: “Give a lot, expect a lot and if you don’t get it prune.” Mmmm very helpful.