Spring Chores

Comment and opinion from the Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Gardening tips for spring consider the beach option; suck a hosepipe
Notebook by Alan Coren



TODAY IS OFFICIALLY the first day of spring, and I see from my attic window that the last of my crocuses has come out. Like all its predecessors, it has come out as a flowerless bulb, in the teeth of a squirrel. It is flowerless because today is unofficially the 198th day of winter: if Wordsworth were wandering today, he would be even lonelier than a cloud, because the only thing fluttering and dancing in the breeze would be his scarf.
Nevertheless, today is still the traditional opening of the gardening year, and even in subzero temperatures, there is work to be done. Why not service the lawnmower? The smartest thing to do is call in an expert, but make sure you phone before April 3, 1993, because they get pretty booked up at this time of year. The alternative is to service it yourself, though this year the cold may make that tricky: not only will the titchy nuts and springs and cogs you must undo and remove drop from your frozen fingers and disappear, those fingers may also, without your even feeling it, undo and drop the titchy nuts and springs and cogs you must not remove. Luckily, there is an old gardeners remedy for this problem, called a credit card. "more