Miserable March

Just a little moan about the weather

I know that this time last year it was snowing, and that it is never really properly spring at this point, whatever I tell myself in January. But at this last mile of the winter marathon, I feel almost ready to throw in the trowel. It is so hard to get in the garden beneath a concrete sky. When you need to wear layer upon layer to keep warm, no matter what temperature the forecast is saying. When your skin is always dry, muscles always tight, and all the lights still need to stay on even though the sun is setting later than before.

I can see the bulbs emerging. I can even see a few brave flowers, poking their little heads out as if to report back to the others to stay in the warm. Prunus ‘Koji no mai’ has more little bursts every day. Iris reticulatas are unfurling reluctantly above their sodden, always-soaking soil. Forget me not clumps are expanding every day and the alliums are poking purple tipped leaves optimistically out of the soil. But I long to get outside and feel a warm breeze on my bare arms. I crave fresh, home grown tomatoes for lunch, hot barbecues, sitting outside in the sun with an ice cold drink instead of burrowing beneath the same blanket to see what TV show we’re least bored of tonight.

The summers of 2020 and 2022 were enough to teach us British gardeners to stop complaining about the cold. It didn’t rain for weeks - months even. The gardeners worried for their plants. Everyone complained about the stuffy nights. In the hospital ward after my daughter was born in 2020 I had a bed by the window and the rain poured long and hard all night. After months of heat, it was a glorious relief. Maybe before that year I was less connected with the seasons, spending most of my time behind laptops and beneath office ceilings. Maybe March was always this rubbish. Or maybe this sullen, stubborn sky is symptomatic of our changing climate. Maybe as the planet warms, the weather will get stuck for weeks or months, until we are desperate for a change.

I know the spring will come because it always does, eventually. But right now the thought of ever shedding layers, opening windows or recovering from the latest bug the kids have coughed all over the house feels a million miles away.