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.

 When I see frogspawn I know spring has arrived.

 

Spring has sprung.

 

 The sap is rising! Pruning various Fig trees lately, note the milky white sap at the core of the stem. They are best pruned in late winter when the sap bleeds less. Partly that is for the health of the tree, also for the health of the gardener. 

 I gave myself some nasty blotches of phytophotodermatitis last summer when I cut back a Fig. The milky sap on skin reacts with sunlight to the extent of causing a second degree burn a day or two after exposure. These ones seem to be pretty sappy already, perhaps due to the mild weather

 

 The genus Prunus gives us the first burst of blossom across the land. Wild Cherry, Bird Cherry and Blackthorn are native. So many were planted as hedging they dot the countryside in extant hedgerows and remnants of. In addition numerous species and cultivars have been introduced for cropping and purely ornamental purposes. Cherry blossom time in Britain doesn't compare with Japan, nonetheless there's a lot of it!