Hello! How has your gardening week been? Mine has been mostly full of light and warmth, bar a few spectacularly thunderous downpours (mercifully short-lived). I’ve been gardening in a t-shirt with the sun on my arms, delighting in everything from the billowing cow parsley in the hedgerows to the brilliant green flush spreading across the countryside and the ecstatic chorus of birdsong in the hedgerows. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: this is quite my favourite time of the year.

That said: it is starting to feel as if I am beating back the encroaching undergrowth like some kind of latterday Livingstone. The more vigorous wildings round here always get a bit too big for their boots about now.