After weeks of unseasonably cold weather spring arrived at the allotment yesterday, rather catching people out in the process. By the time we got there Sam had been forced to remove the waterproof she had initially donned due to the unfamiliar experience of becoming ‘too warm’. Linda was there to greet us in only two fleeces, admitting under questioning that she had started from home with her usual three but had shed one in the face of the sun’s persistence.

Making the most of it we got down to work, Sam and Linda clearing up the strawberry bed while I weeded the raised beds containing a variety of soft fruit bushes. I then gave the bushes themselves a liberal application of wood ash left over from the burning during winter of various prunings and woody stems.

Speaking of fires; our labours on the allotment yesterday were accompanied by the gentle waft of wood-smoke. Apparently, to a certain mindset, it’s best to wait until the end of winter to burn things. After all, why do it in winter when its freezing and no one’s about when you can do it on a nice warm spring day when people have got their washing out and are out and about on the allotment?

At 4ish we stopped for a break. This week tea was accompanied by an extensive array of sweet treats, Linda having baked some peanut fudge brownies and Bernie having arrived with an Easter egg that had been remaindered by Morrisons. With the leftover ‘Jaffa Cakes’ bought two weeks previously (the nice dark chocolate ones with tangy orange that are made by the Germans and sold in places like Aldi, not the nasty, milk-chocolate over-priced McVities rubbish) we had a veritable feast on our hands. So we sat there, munching contentedly, squinting into the glare and worrying about sunburn, happy that spring appears finally to have arrived.