Yes, I know it is a cliché; we Brits are obsessed by the weather - but the weather does seem to be very bizarre lately. We have had no rain in months, and despite emerging from Winter into what has been a very welcome fortnight of warm and sunny weather, I am preparing for a hose pipe ban that begins on Thursday.

This is bound to have bad effects on both the allotment and my newly planted garden - the lawns have still to go down; how they will survive without me being able to use a hose pipe is anyone's guess. How will the water hungry vegetable grow? Why can a man legally wash his company car with a hose pipe, but I am prevented from watering the food I am growing to feed my family? It just doesn't make sense.

Just as I was thinking these foreboding thoughts, a dark cloud came over and it began to rain, icy rain, almost hailstones. It was sharp and pricked my exposed sun warmed skin! The iGit tells me they have 10 inches of snow today in Scotland - I should be grateful.

Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.

How can it be snowing when the Tulips are out, the Roses are forming nice fat buds, and the Delphiniums have nascent flower spike forming, enough colour showing to know whether the plant will be pale or dark blue.

The birds don't think it is going to snow, they are busy collecting moss and chicken feathers to line the nests they are making in the bird boxes I provided.

Yet there is a bitter nip in the air, it catches you as soon as you move from a sheltered spot to a more exposed one. Loci waiting to play a wicked trick on us and turn the world upside down? Global Warming they call it - we humans really do seem to have messed the planet up.  And with it, for lack of water, all the greenery and nature's beauty  and bounty dies.