Martin Hesp on Saturday

Late frosts hindering an impatient Spring

PITY the buds, bugs, birds and butterflies. That’s what I was thinking as I climbed the steep hill opposite our house just now. The sun was setting and the temperature difference between light and shadow was scary to behold.

For a minute or two I found myself climbing the contours waist-deep in a chill murk, while the back of my neck could still feel the warmth of the sinking sun… Then, it was all shadow and the temperature dropped like a stone. Which prompted me to turn on my heels and gallop home to light the wood-burner.

Talking of which, I do hope no urban-based think-tank or politician would ever be foolish enough to put an outright ban on wood-burners. I can understand why they are talking about outlawing them in cities – a mass accumulation of smoke particulates is not exactly good for anyone’s health. But out here in the countryside a ban would be madness. For a start, given the sparsely populated nature of the place, there never are any accumulations of wood-smoke. Added to that, the ultra-dry wood we buy has all been felled within a mile or two of our cottage – which cannot be as bad for the planet as importing a finite power resource such as oil from thousands of miles away. That’s the fuel our old central heating system runs on, if we could afford to turn it on – which at present day prices we can’t.

Anyway, back to those poor little buds, bugs, birds and butterflies. For a couple of days there’s been plenty of sunshine, albeit accompanied by a cold wind. Anywhere sheltered, though, has felt springlike – and buds on trees, bugs on boughs and birds and butterflies in the air have all been stirring, if not revelling, in the balminess of it all.

Walking my baby grandson in his pram today I saw a dozen bumblebees visiting various flowering plants on the south or west facing walls of Dunster, and they were joined by a couple of kamikaze Red Admiral butterflies.

It was all rather lovely and I heard more than one person comment, “There’s a real whiff of Spring in the air.”

But they won’t be saying it come nightfall. Nor will they be saying it next week, if the weather predictions are anything to go by. We might not get the full-on Beast From the East as some tabloids are predicting, but it’ll be a while before the thermal underwear is packed away.

Which makes you feel sorry for anything that doesn’t have thermal underwear – like apple buds, to take one example.

On more than one occasion when I reported on such things for this newspaper, I asked Westcountry cider-makers or apple-growers why they were predicting unusually low yields in a particular year – and the answer was always something to do with late frosts playing havoc with the buds or blossom.

Unpredictable weather might, at times, seem like a novelty. It did to me earlier as I pushed the pram, watching busy bumblebees and optimistic butterflies. A few hours later in the penetrating chill of the encroaching night, one could only feel hugely sorry for those poor little blighters.

I bet if you were to visit every village or town in Southern England this weekend, you’d be able to observe the frost-damaged remains of magnolia or camellia blooms. I’ve seen loads. Glorious little magnolia trees giving their all to produce a display of a lifetime – only to have their blooms besmirched like so many white handkerchiefs that have been dragged through brown mud.

Sad, but not anywhere near as alarming as empty supermarket shelves. We talked about these in last week’s column and I questioned the wisdom of Brexit, seeing that no other European country appeared to have the same shortages as the UK. But that wasn’t to deny that a crazy climate had some say in the matter.

The freak snow storms in Morocco and southern Spain did wreck a lot of crops. But problems caused by a changing climate amount to more than a hill of beans. Or soybeans, if you’re counting the drought stricken beans of Brazil, Argentina or Paraguay. We may feel disappointed over the lack of salad stuff in winter, but it can be regarded as an unnecessary luxury. Look at the year-round basics we rely on to bulk out our meals… Pasta, for example. Why has the price been rocketing? One reason is because drought caused a massive 50% decrease in the supply of Canadian durum wheat.

Meanwhile freak rains were decimating crops in places like China, Australia, Pakistan and India. On the flip-side, places like France, Greece, Portugal and California were suffering vast wildfires.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 80% of the problems with crops in areas like Africa’s Sahel were caused by climate variability.

There’s a thing called ‘chaos theory’ which suggests a butterfly’s wingbeat can end up causing a tornado. Well, I saw a butterfly beating its wings in the unseasonal Dunster sunshine earlier, and it caused me to end up worrying about global starvation.

But then, you tend to look into the future while pushing a baby around in a pram. It is, after all, the world we’re leaving for him and his generation to inherit.

We may feel disappointed over the lack of salad stuff in winter, but it can be regarded as an unnecessary luxury