The fateful sound of Daffodil shoots crunching underfoot...

Oops.

I've spoken before about the Boot and Shoot Ballet, which normally occurs at about late January into February - that time when the bulbs are coming up, and we gardeners have to wobble around on one foot, waving the other in the air, while trying to find a clear space in the bed or border, in which to put it down safely.

This year, it's occurring somewhat earlier than usual! Here we are in December - ok, it's now late December, I'll grant you that - and already, the Daffodil bulbs are above the surface, and this is causing a bit of a problem for the gardener (that's me) who is trying to catch up with the usual winter cutting back and tidying of the garden, which was put on hold, due to the excessive and unseasonal frosts of the past fortnight.

Yes, I know that I just said it's late December, but December - although technically "winter" - is usually quite mild. The true cold snaps are generally reserved for January: do you remember that poem we all had to learn at school? 

"January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain, thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, sharp and shrill, stirs the dancing daffodil," and so on.

Clearly written in the days when the seasons continued, unabated, and things happened when they were "supposed" to, unlike the last decade or so, where the weather seems to be completely independent of the seasons, and just does its own thing, regardless of what we are expecting it to do.

Where was I? Oh yes, unseasonal cold snap in mid December, causing delays to normal pre-winter maintenance of the flower beds, following on from a very unseasonably mild start to the month, and now a return to soft mild air and a couple of days of rain.... and up come the Daffodil shoots.

And down came the gardener's boot (that would be me). Accidentally, of course, I would never deliberately trample on Daffodil shoots!

Mind you, there was that time when I deliberately, savagely and repeatedly cut off the Daffodil shoots, but that was a special case... they were growing in a clump, in the middle of an otherwise plain front lawn, and when I say "middle" they weren't even decently in the middle, they were off to one side: apparently the grandchildren had, many years earlier, bought a pot of Daffs for granny (my Client) and had planted them themselves, so the poor lady felt obliged to let them come up every year, even thought they "spoiled" her nice front lawn. So, this particular year, she and I connived together, and I just cut their tops off, as soon as they appeared, and cut them off again and again, every week. After two years of this treatment, they gave up, and were never seen again. The visiting grandchildren, now all grown up with kids of their own, didn't even notice that they had gone. Peace returned to the lawn. All was well.

But apart from that, I generally take great care NOT to trample on the bulbs.

Alas, this time I didn't spot them under the covering of leaves - another good reason, dear reader, for raking up fallen leaves as soon as you reasonably can -  and this clump of emerging shoots was accidentally trampled. while I was giving the climbing roses their final prune of the year.

There's not a lot "one" can do, when this happens, other than to hope that they will recover. At least Daffs have the decency to send up a bunch of leaves first, so these are not the flowering stems, just the first sets of leaves, so the flowers should be fine.

Fingers crossed!

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