Emerging vegetables spring to life and herald welcome end to big chill

TO my great satisfaction, after just a week in the ground, I have rows of turnips, lettuces, spring onions, carrots and beetroot peeping up in the raised beds in the vegetable plot.

Growing conditions were obviously much better then they seemed.

It'll take a little longer for the broad beans to see the light of day, parsnips are notoriously slow and, according to an old wives' tale, parsley seed goes three times to the devil before germinating.