Sometimes you've just got to grow with the flow

'Put little labels in each pot in cannabis-seedling tray and write on them very carefully: "Baby Lupins"'

Spring is here again! Yes, it's that innocent time of the year when all the birds are singing and trying to turn each other into unmarried mothers, the little lambs in the fields are asking their mums if they really have to grow up to be lamb chops and on a river somewhere else, a long way away, 16 muddy, muscle-bound young men without any proper hobbies are training hard in the crazy belief that it really matters to get from Mortlake to Putney faster than the other side!

Spring is here again! Yes, it's that innocent time of the year when all the birds are singing and trying to turn each other into unmarried mothers, the little lambs in the fields are asking their mums if they really have to grow up to be lamb chops and on a river somewhere else, a long way away, 16 muddy, muscle-bound young men without any proper hobbies are training hard in the crazy belief that it really matters to get from Mortlake to Putney faster than the other side!

And what that means is that it's time to be out and about in your garden again, because now is the time of the year when things start really growing fast and everything that's out there needs your urgent attention!

So here is your check-list of Really Important Things To Do In The Garden Before March Is Out!

*Prick out cannabis seedlings.

*Check whether your lawnmower has been serviced during the winter.

*Remove old tennis balls from guttering on house.

*Put out sign on garden boundary: "This property is available as filming location at very reasonable rates".

*See if you can locate last year's pile of grass cuttings.

*Fail to find lawnmower anywhere.

*Put little labels in each pot in cannabis-seedling tray and write on them very carefully and very legibly: "Baby Lupins".

*Rake out gravel path and wonder, not for the first time, if it would work as a boules piste.

*Put frog spawn in pond.

*Watch newts consume frog spawn.

*Find mysterious black object under bushes in far corner, looking like a projectile from outer space.

*Look up in gardening handbooks to find out what the natural enemy of the newt is.

*Go into sports shops and ask to be shown a good set of boules.

*Suddenly remember that you took the lawnmower in to be serviced two months before Christmas.

*Feed cannabis seedlings.

*Answer ring at the front door and find that a film company is seriously interested in using your garden as a location shoot for a scene in a low-budget British thriller, in which a fleeing gunman is shot down by the police as he takes refuge among the bushes.

*Fail to remember which garden-machinery shop you took your lawnmower to to be serviced.

*Man in sports shop asks if you are interested in cheap boules or expensive boules, and you say: "Not expensive," and he shows you a set of plastic boules filled with sand, and you say: "Sorry, I meant expensive."

*Realise that the mysterious black object under bushes in the far corner is actually the pile of grass cuttings that you have been looking for, gone a bit rotten over-winter.

*Decide, with sinking heart, you really can't remember where you took the mower for servicing and that you'll have to buy a new one.

*Welcome the arrival of the film company to shoot scene in your garden, which, says production manager, "will take a couple of hours".

*Go to garden-machinery centre and are on point of buying new mower when man says: "Ah, sir, the mower you brought in last year for servicing is ready for collection!" And without batting an eyelid you take your old mower away.

*Suffer third day of film shooting in your garden

*Try out expensive boules on your gravel path, but boules will not roll because it is the wrong kind of gravel.

*Try throwing boules at newts.

*Start mowing lawn, but within 15 seconds of your starting a man comes rushing out of the undergrowth shrieking: "For God's sake, stop! You're ruining the continuity! This lawn must remain as rough and shaggy as it was when we arrived and started filming! Don't cut a single blade!"

*You agree, for new, improved terms.

Neighbours, hearing shooting from the filming, alert the police, who arrive in numbers to investigate.

*Police find all those cannabis plants growing on the premises and arrest the entire film company.

*Clear up after the departure of the film company.

*Mow lawn.

*Sit down for a bit of peace and quiet at last.