One of my most precious gardening books ( and believe me, there are many), is the ‘Sanders Encyclopaedia of Gardening’ which belonged to my grandmother, Molly.

The yellowing pages are slotted with newspaper clippings about such things as ‘How to prune’ and “Take Cuttings Today’ as well as an advertisement for water snails… ‘Despatched by post, carefully packed in damp weed and oiled paper. 3/6d a dozen. Postage 1/6d.’

At the back of the book are some pencilled notes. Molly’s handwriting is quite hard to read, but once deciphered are fascinating - especially as topically there is much oo-ing and aah-ing about out of season blossoms.

6th February 1933 - Aconites and snowdrops well out.
8th - Crocus in the garden.
12th - Several stylosa out.

I wondered at first what she meant by Stylosa. It is of course Iris unguicalans syn. stylosa - a good example as to how plant names are still being changed.

Ten years later in 1943… February 10th - no stylosa. But in 1944 - January 30th - stylosa very good this year.
Even over 60 years ago there were fluctuations, but not really much different from today.

I’m still thinking about the 3/6d water snails and wonder how they would get on in my small pond at the moment as it is bubbling with frogs and filling up fast with frog spawn.

Maybe a future relative of mine will look at my garden notes and see that they appeared only 2 days later than last year!