We are having a particularly good spring for blossom which in March is mainly species in the Prunus genus. I don't know what variety of Plum this is but I know exactly what the plums will taste like. 

 A plum tree grew in our garden as a child, laden every summer with delicious fruit. As the years went by it slowly succumbed to age until only a hollow stump remained. Eventually that too fell over. But the root stock lived on and a decade or two later a spindly sapling appeared which prospered.

 One summer's day I noticed it bore a few plums and I plucked one. To my astonishment the taste and texture took me back in time and for that moment I was a child again. 

Feeling vernal: today is the Spring Equinox.

 

On a train to London, I want to be walking in those fields, hills and woods.

 

 Right plant, wrong place. I spotted the rosettes of five Ornopordum acanthum self-seeded behind one of the buildings at the music school. Not a prominent spot for this tall, architectural biennial which is worthy of a place in any herbaceous border. Sometimes called the Scotch Thistle or the Cotton Thistle it can grow up to three metres with vivid purple thistle-like flower heads.

 So I carefully dug them up, teasing the tap root out of the soil and replanted them in a mixed border among ornamental grasses. I notice the Beth Chatto nursery is selling O. acanthum at £10.90 a pot so that would be fifty quid's worth! 

 Here is some of the good stuff. Lovely loamy, crumbly, well-rotted compost. About two years old, a mixture of garden 'waste' and kitchen scraps. 

 

 An annual ritual. I hard prune the enormous Fig tree (planted by my father several decades ago). Then I put the branches through the shredder which produces several barrow loads of wood chip. I wheel them down to the allotment and mulch the Rhubarb patch. Locally sourced, zero air miles!

 

 I left the dry stems to overwinter in the meadow at the music school. With new growth well underway at ground level I cut them down with the brushcutter this morning. It would be traditional to use a scythe, then again this is an area sowed with wildflower seed rather than an ancient natural meadow.