A green light at the end of a dark tunnel; quite small, quite new, but soon bursting out all over. Hawthorn is always first, a gentle glow in the hedgerows, and then, with a wonderful inevitability so hard to imagine in the depths of winter, everything else follows.

Oh, we have frogspawn, three big clumps. Make a pond and they will come! I think it was Monday that it arrived. There were two frogs, and two clumps at first, then a third appeared, almost as we watched. How one little frog produces so much stuff, I can’t imagine. Now we will watch it grow.

I made a list this week of things to write about. It started on Sunday with a talk about soil that we went to in Reading. It was fascinating, and I’ve bought some Goop. https://soilsmiths.co.uk/the-goop/ I’ve probably mentioned before that a teaspoon of soil contains up to six billion organisms. It seems that Goop contains all the good ones, and I bought a little pot, green gold I’m calling it.

The new seed arrived. I haven’t sown anything yet. I’m still hoping the slightly mouldy saved tomato seed will be all right, but I now have a back up supply. The two varieties I favour are Moskvich, which is large and very tasty, and Gardener’s Delight (Irish Version). I have saved seed for a couple of years now, so I do hope my saved ones will grow. The thing about saving your own seed is that you build a race of plants that likes you. Saving seed of the best tomatoes means you improve the strain, and also these will be the best tomatoes that grow in the particular conditions that you provide. So if you’re a bit of an erratic gardener, like me, they will understand this and provide plants that do well in these particular conditions.

Another little tomato seed story – there has been a twist of paper on my chest of drawers upstairs since we returned from Marseille last year. The twist of paper contains a few seed from a very tasty, and rather wrinkly, tomato that we bought in the market. More tomato seed to try!

Plants that self sow is one of the fun things about gardening. I grow a few things in pots each year and I tend to leave the pots where they are until I need them again. I noticed this week that a pot that stands next to a Jacob’s ladder plant is full of little Jacob’s ladder seedlings. A gift. If you’re local, look out for them on the table in front of my house in a month or so!

It’s been a busy week. Other highlights have been attempting to graft bramley apple shoots onto the apple tree in the garden – I’ll tell you more about this if it works – and seeing a pair of long-tailed tits possibly building a nest in a bramble patch by the canal, a delightful possibility. Did you know they build a dome of a nest with a small entrance and then they have to tuck their long tails over their heads to get in?