I had to write this before the snow became just a slushy memory… “Worst winter since…”  Worst? No, best I think - a winter of old when toboggans were an essential item hanging in the garage and going to school or work was a question of either putting on your wellies and walking or borrowing the neighbour’s pit pony.

A winter when all the bad bugs were killed off on an annual basis, children wore earmuffs and the poor ol’ gardener was relegated to the garden shed to clean tools, sharpen secateurs and with cold fingers sift through old seed packets that contained seeds that just ‘might’ be viable after 20 years or so.

There’s not much a gardener can do when a foot of snow blankets the country, so I am fortunate to have a drawing board to work on. Although I have made sure to take time out to enjoy this infrequent and quite beautiful phenomenon to build a snowman, feed the birds and (of course) shoot masses of photographs.

I did on one day bring in an armful of what looked like dead sticks and shoved them unromantically into a jug of water. Within a week, when outside was still in the grips of winter, my bunch of sticks, which were actually springs of Forsythia x intermedia ‘Spectabilis’, had magically burst into a blaze of bright yellow flowers. (Below) Try it!

I told you spring wasn’t far away - it’s not, it’s in my kitchen.