Ruby Grimshaw awakens the tortoises

Here is my terrible adaptation of the old country rhyme. “Spring is sprung, my torties is ris, I wonder where the dandelions is.”

After the drawn out summer last year I was able to put Mr T, Ernie and Brian into hibernation quite late in November. So I had been enjoying the thought that this year I would be able to leave them until nearly April before waking them up. Yet I was a little uneasy about them. The winter had not been particularly hard so there was no real reason for concern, yet I still felt the need to get them out of hibernation the first week in March, long before the 20 week limit (as stipulated in my tortoise Bible). Sure enough when I opened up their hutch, Mr T was already well awake and trying to get out of his pit. Maybe I should examine this strange sixth sense I seem to have developed. Perhaps I could expand it – become the Tortoise Whisperer of Brighton and appear on local TV with a best seller called You And Your Tortoise.

“Maybe I should examine this strange sixth sense I seem to have developed”

Yet I have a mundane problem to sort out first. This year the three of them only took a day to start eating – it can often take up to a week- and they were all bonking around my kitchen by day two (yes they are all male, but this is Brighton). So in record time I was able to put them out in the wonderful March sunshine. They will eat cucumber, tomatoes and all the varieties of lettuce I can find for them, but what makes them really race across the grass is the sight of fresh green dandelion leaves. I am finding it extremely difficult to find many.

Has everyone in Brighton and Hove become meticulous gardeners and rooted them all out? Or, in these belt-tightening days, has a delicious recipe for dandelion soup been discovered?A lot of gardens seem to have been turned into sterile work-saving areas of pebbles and wood-shavings. Last week I was standing on the steps of a terraced house and stretching out into the miniscule front garden to reach a solitary dandelion growing amongst an island of daffodils, when a cross voice made me jump.

“It’s people like you who stop people from growing flowers.” The elderly man glared back at me as he continued to limp away up the pavement. I was so taken aback I did not tell him that I was ‘stealing’ weeds from my own front garden.