May

THE FIRST DAYS OF MAY bring spring all in a rush.

‘Oak before ash, in for a splash,’ he says, waving his hand at the bare branches on the topped-out ash tree. ‘Ash before oak, we’re in for a soak.’

I take a more Mediterranean view of what’s in store. The vine in the glass passage has produced an unusually large crop of infant grapes. Grape blossoms form on new growth in little pollen-dusted bunches at the same time as the vine puts on leaf, so are hard to spot beneath the greenery. Exuberant vine flowering in May, in my experience, indicates panic fruiting, a plant’s reaction when survival is threatened, a state well known to those who grow food plants on marginal land in extreme conditions.