Precocious Plants and Friendly Fey.

It’s been a day of firsts today. In the herbaceous border, several of the plants that don’t usually bloom until May have got their first flowers. In the vegetable patch, the onions, potatoes and broad beans are all starting to show much faster than usual. And the best of all: my fabulous friends the house martins are back from Africa. Several of them treated me to a typical display of aerial mastery before moving off over the hill. I’ve no doubt they’ll be back.

Problem: all this comes just as the weather forecasters predict a change to much colder conditions from Monday onwards.

On the subject of the garden, here’s something odd:

At the end of last summer I lost my pen knife. It was an indispensable tool in the garden and I was none too pleased. I searched every pocket of every garment I ever wore in the garden, I searched the garden itself, I searched the shed, and I searched the greenhouse. In the end I concluded I must have accidentally dropped it in the green waste bin and that it was gone forever. All winter I’ve been meaning to get a new one, but I kept forgetting.

Today I needed it. I was mowing the lawn and decided to take a crop off the burgeoning comfrey plants to add to the grass cuttings in the compost bin. I went and got a knife from the kitchen, took my crop, and then went back to continue mowing the lawn. There, lying in the middle of the lawn quite unmissable, was my bright red pen knife. I’ve been walking all over the lawn frequently for months, and it hasn’t been there. I last mowed the lawn a week or so ago, and it certainly wasn’t there then. It seemed that whoever had taken it had realised that I now needed it again and had done me the kindness of returning it. So I said thank you.