Bulbs can be very annoying. They come up with wonderful colour to break through the grey of February and March but after April, the flowers fade and the long ungainly leaves droop.

Received wisdom is to let the leaves die back, forming an unsightly tangle in May. This provides the bulb with nutrients for the following year, or so they say. We then try to camouflage the tangle with summer flowering plants, and end up digging up the bulbs. Committed gardeners may dig up the bulbs, store and replant, but this seems such a faff and it means the bulbs themselves don’t expand in the ground to produce rich clumps of flowers. But this last year, as we replanted ‘Madeleine’s’ tree pit on the left of the station several times, I dug up a whole lot of tête à tête daffodils and put them in a brown paper bag in the garage.

It’s time now to find them, and like a squirrel, bury them again in the ground. We’ll clear the crazy squash that has exuberantly grown over the tree pits, lay down some of our compost (no doubt containing more random tomato and squash seeds for next summer – ha ha!) and try and find space to stick in those daffodils, and some fresh ones. Come those final miserable days of February, we’ll be delighting in their joyful yellows.