Borderlines

This is the time when I remake my connection with the weeds in my garden which,
at this moment, are, with one exception, quite a charming lot.

It’s easy, I find, to reach a state of near euphoria, on a Saturday towards the end of March. That is, if the weathermen are optimistic about a nice day to come, there is the prospect of a rugby international to watch in the evening and I have the luxury of several hours to spend in the garden.

In the winter, I don’t neglect my garden completely. Far from it. I keep an eye on the snowdrops and hellebores, spread manure on the vegetable garden, prune the apples and pear trees, clean out the greenhouse and shed. But there is a distance, somehow, between the garden and me. It is not until the advent of a fine day in late winter or early spring that I really get up close and personal once more. Reacquainting myself with the sights, the sounds and the smells of the garden is one of the high points of the gardening year.

This is the time when I remake my connection with the weeds in my garden which, at this moment, are, with one exception, quite a charming lot. Charming because their hold on the soil is so nebulous, so fragile, that they can be pulled away easily. This is the time for speedwell, for bitter cress, for trails of goosegrass, for fragrant deadnettle, to be swept away into the bucket in an expansive gloved gesture.

I wrote ‘with one exception’ for early spring often means a doughty battle with annual meadow grass (Poa annua as the botanists call it), an annual with the fiercely tenacious roots of a perennial. Annual meadow grass brings me, quite literally, to my knees. This is work which requires a stainless steel hand fork, a bungey rubber kneeling mat and a humble attitude. At this time of year, I spend my time burrowing amongst rose bushes, digging out the meadow grass clump by clump, as carefully as possible so as not to disturb the shallow-lying rose roots. On an ordinary day in late spring or summer, this task would soon pall but, on the first day of the spring offensive, it has all the benefit of novelty, as well as affording the chance to smell the earth once more.

It may be a prosaic combination of bacteria, fungi and decaying vegetable matter, but the scent of soil in spring is both invigorating and cheering - particularly if it is connected, as it usually is, with the sound of a robin, high in the Bramley apple tree nearby, his stroppy territorial attitude resulting in a riot of tuneful song.

I always imagined that the old saying ‘a March dust is worth a king’s ransom’ referred to the fact that you are lucky indeed if you have a workable soil in March, suitable for sowing agricultural crops. But I like to think it also refers to a soil dry enough to weed without that dragging clamminess which is so depressing to the spirits, and a soil that won’t be damaged by treading on it.

In my part of the world, which is Northamptonshire, and in a garden where the soil is mainly heavy, March dusts don’t come along very often - except in the specially-made, free-draining raised beds in the vegetable patch, and in the lighter soil in the flower borders close to the old cottage privy (don’t ask!). So that is where I tend to concentrate my efforts until the days lengthen and the sunshine strengthens.

Once a good stretch of weeding is completed, and the old stems of grasses and perennials have been cut down, to reveal the fresh young green of new shoots, I can take myself off with a good conscience and start to sow vegetable seeds. How pleasant it is, after the winter lay-off, to make a ‘drill’ and bury the seed of broad beans, carrots, parsnips or peas. If the weather forecast is for cold and wet conditions, it may be necessary to cover the rows with horticultural fleece (pegged down firmly since it is very prone to fly away in the wind), but still I feel that the garden is on the move, and the earth is turning once more.

By Ursula Buchan.

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