From the dust I rose on high Thunder cloud in a two-lane sky

Season follows season, as is their tiresome but time-honoured custom, and soon with the coming of Spring the garden bar at the Old Entomologist will be fit for human habitation again. At the moment it is only Old Jem who spends any time out there.

Which is a roundabout way of working up to warning you that another Riddled gardening column is about to occur. For your convenience, Old Jem's explanation of his garden-maintenance activities are translated into a rough approximation of English, rather than leave it in his own quaint but impenetrable rustic idiom, as a succession of meandering mouth-related sound-effects is liable to offend.

1. How many demons fell out of the sky in the course of winter and embedded themselves in the mud? Now it is time to get out the double-trenching spade and work up a sweat digging them in to a two-spit depth, or one capacious vomit, whichever comes first.

Despite an unpromising appearance, they make good fertiliser and enrich the humorous.

2. Have you checked the bindings around the mouths of the dragon stumps? Admit it, you forgot, everyone forgets... until the fabric perishes and their jaws are free and ugly rumours about missing children begin to percolate around the neighborhood again. That's why it's a good idea to wrap them with fresh bindings at the same time each year while the nasty brutes are quiet. I don't know why we grow them at all, it's not as if they produce any fermentable fruits; it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

3. There is still a heightened risk of lightning strike associated with the Magic Font. No-one knows why. Perhaps it is the wrong kind of magic.