Every year’s the same, we get through month’s of cold, snow, wind and rain, then get a sunny reasonably mild day in early March and the World goes mad!

It seems this is the call for everyone to look out the window, see that golden round thing up in sky, on the clothes and say “Right, let’s go to the Garden Centre”!

The Multi-Purpose Compost, the Fertilizers and young pot plants are all gathered, stacked and awaiting this day – it’s the Garden Centre Manager’s dream come true – plus it’s a Sunday!
The Car Park which only a few days earlier was like a deserted scene of a Doctor Who series is suddenly a mecca of cars with large shopping trollies stacked so high that they roll away whilst you’re getting the car door open and nicely scratch or dent the fourth car down!
In fact, driving into a Car Park on one of these days is a risk unto itself; kids are darting out from nowhere, the front of a Shopping Cart pokes out with no warning because the person steering it can’t see you or simply doesn’t have a clue how to steer something controlled by the back wheels and not the front.

Of course, what happens is they all drive home, don the old gardening clothes and start planting only to find that most have withered away because the one day of mild sunshine has reverted back to 2 degrees and a 40mph wind.

The other thing you’ll hear the forgotten sound of is the Lawnmower trudging up and down making quite neat embedded wheel marks in the still sodden soil.

The thing is you can quite understand it. We’ve just had the worse, coldest and wettest Winter certainly since I’ve been around and to have a day of ‘pretend mid-Spring’ is refreshing to say the least.
The negative is that the Garden Centre Managers will all be smiling whilst people are loading up their cars because they know there’s a strong likelihood those Customers will be returning in another couple of weeks to replace the Plants which are no longer surviving the norm.

Saying all that, I’m behind with my gardening, but this weekend will at last see a chance to sow a few Carrot Seeds and possibly put the Onion Sets in.

Yes, I did rush down to buy my Multi Purpose Compost as well, but these are neatly stacked up outside the Greenhouse awaiting another nice mild sunny Sunday day in about two weeks.

Spring’s nearly here, but we can’t speed it up, everything will turn out OK – eventually!