Wednesday 21st March, 2018.

Maps of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular - 21st March 2018

Come the purple sprouts of spring,

Beasts be gone!

The 18th March saw an allotment gardener of Nowhere in particular harvesting in the midst of a snowstorm. Perhaps 'storm' is somewhat over egging the snow fall; it was a gentle drifting precipitation; the soft flecks and flakes settled lightly and were picked up and made pretty by the otherwise bare, bleak anatomy of the winter garden. It was very cold though. The harvest was made in the polytunnel and outdoors; the latter included the first cut of purple sprouting broccoli this year - albeit for just a small handful of those wonderful purple florets - one of thee harbingers of spring. While the 1st March marked the beginning of meteorological spring, that did not mean the end of visits from the beasts from the east. To mock the bestial weather as a slushy puppy is perhaps to tempt biting cold fate. So a storm it was; for a gardener to celebrate his/her hardiness in having been out in the bitter cold of winter searching and foraging for the first frost nipped signs of spring. Robust florets of purple sprouting broccoli, hardy effusions of pale yellow primroses and blossoming flurries of almond pink rewarded the determined gardener.
According to the annals of the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular, our purple sprouting broccoli harvest began on the 26th February in 2017 - a full 20 days earlier than this year. So please, with the advent of astronomical spring on the 20th March, winter beasts be gone!