March has something that February lacks: hope!

This expresses itself in a number of small but irrepressible details. However cold and wet it gets, and stays, various life changing things are sure to have happened by the end of the month. Primroses will defy the harshest weather with their unambiguously spring splash of yellow. Likewise the daffodils. You may be waiting a couple of months yet for sleeveless tops and short skirts but in the garden at least, spring is showing a leg.

One thing that surprises me every March is how the hedgerow plants, despite competing furiously with each other on soil that’s a whole lot stonier and a lot less muck-rich than mine; steal a march on my lovely tended seeds. The wild chervil, nettles and alexanders are all half a yard out of the ground before my carrots and spinach has shown a couple of inches.

Of all the wild spring greens, nettles are perhaps the most reliable early March croppers and of course, the most easily identifiable. The tiniest young nettles have tender stalks, and can be snipped just above the ground and used whole. As the plants become more vigorous, just the crown of leaves at the top should be harvested.

There are other wild spring greens to look out for. This is the month to start gathering sea spinach, axexanders and hogweed shoots. Watercress can be had, too, at the edge of streams and trickling ditches. And try laying a few young leaves of wild garlic on top of a slab of Cheddar in a doorstep cheese sandwich.

The calendar event of the year for me is always the last Sunday of the month when the clocks go forward. An hour less in bed, some people moan. A negligible price to pay, I would suggest, for somewhere in the region of over 200 extra hours of evening light over the coming months. That’s nearly ten whole days’ worth of hours to spend gardening, fishing, barbecuing, picnicking and generally outdoorsing it. Weather permitting of course!