Out in the garden, are you ready for spring's runaway train to arrive?

I find this a funny time of year - spring feels so close and yet so far away.

Here for example is the Chichester cathedral gardens this week, one of my regular little haunts where I go for a quick battery recharge and head-clear when I have meetings nearby.

As you can see, the Bishop’s flowerbeds are looking pretty roughed-up by winter’s ravages - bare and grey.

Few of the plants have yet put on much growth, and with temperatures still barely getting into double figures, there are very few insects to enliven them. My garden is much the same.

This is when I find close inspection pays dividends. It is only when you get close up that you see the coiled spring of life in all the buds and the leaves of bulbs poking through.

In my garden, there are little rosettes of fresh green where the Welsh Poppies are coming through, and the Elder buds are burgeoning ready to burst.

And you just get the feeling that a couple of days of sunshine will set it all off. Under all that stillness, one sense something akin to a railway engine building up a head of steam; pretty soon the brakes will be off and spring will be a runaway train. Are you ready for the ride?!