Can spring be far behind?

Just past mid-January, and the weather is still reminding us that it’s winter, reasonably enough.  But there are already signs that the natural world is looking ahead to spring.

The past few days have had a definite chill about them, and today (forecast to be ‘thick cloud’) a late-morning mizzle developed into fairly steady light snow that was too light and too wet to lie, but was definitely wintry.  The birdlife came in search of food; a blackbird spent much of the day attending to the remains of an apple left out on the path, and the family of long-tailed tits came and went repeatedly on the fatball container, right up to supper-time.  The dropped scraps from the fatballs also went down well with the blackbird.

Blackbird and his apple

Fatball feeders in the snow

It wasn’t weather to be outside gardening.  I had spent time yesterday going through my seed stash, organising it into ‘dates to be sown’, and found some cabbage seed that can be started off now, as well as a few sweet pea seeds.  (The autumn-sown sweet peas have not done well, with only two seedlings appearing, so it will be up to the January sowing to make any display this year.)  The older sweet pea seeds have now been put in water to soak and plump up, in the hope that they’ll germinate, while the cabbage is still waiting for me to brave the temperatures in the greenhouse and get sowing.  Otherwise, gardening was limited to watering the (indoor) orchid.

Two trays of ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ broad beans have already been sown in module trays and left to germinate in the greenhouse propagator.  The propagator no longer works, but the lid will keep hungry mice off the seeds until they’ve sprouted.  I’m still in two minds about what to do with them when we go on our February holiday; much will depend on how far on they have grown by then.  Options will be to plant them in the ground (and risk mouse depredations) or leave them in the cold frame to grow on.

Despite the birds’ cold-weather feeding frenzy, they are now starting to turn their minds to spring.  A sparrow was toying with a dropped feather the other day, as if it was thinking that it might be useful in days to come, and today two robins were showing signs of a slightly uneasy friendship, at least feeding within a few feet of each other and not displaying aggression.  The real sign of spring will be when they can pair up to jointly chase off other robins.

Less welcome garden visitors have been a pair of magpies; they’ve been about in the background in past years, appearing from time to time, but this winter they’ve been here most days.  They’re bold birds and major predators of smaller birds’ nests, and we chase them away whenever we can.  Reasonably enough, they seem very wary, and fly into the trees at the first sign of our presence, but there’s a limit to how much chasing we can do.