I’m following a tree for Loose and Leafy @LucyCorrander #treefollowing Part 11

I’m not sure but I think my apple sapling is suffering from a national condition called premature election excess disease (ie he is ‘peed’ off).

Of course my little sapling knows nothing about the General Election, but he has a look about him that says he’s pretty fed up awaiting what is due and what his ancestors both expected and received; it happened for thousands of years, but suddenly, the seasons (not unlike the three political parties) have become less discernible and the extreme weather conditions (not unlike the financial crises) more likely.

I am talking about winter, in case you hadn’t twigged. It just hasn’t happened has it? OK we had a couple of bright shiny mornings when Jack Frost paid a visit but it was so brief, he hardly had a chance to cool the seat!

So I wonder if my hunch of a freezing cold winter with snow and ice was just a bit off the mark and if we are going to see several soggy mild weeks interspersed with a few chilly days here and there, eventually moving unceremoniously into spring that is marked only by the blossom sometime in March/April.

By now I hoped to have photos of the icing sugar dusted garden, with those exquisite sparking diamonds of frost and a chance for my sapling to rid itself of bugs and other pestilence that have been bothering it for a while.

But instead, alongside the two fresh green leaves that emerged last month, is a tiny delicate green shoot. It is so immature and embryonic, I cannot see it surviving anything remotely damaging, such as my longed-for winter snow coating.

But there it is, peeking out to see what is going on in the big bad world and try as I might to persuade it to stay inside and await the proper timing when new buds and leaves are meant to sally forth, I know it will fall on deaf ears.

And not unlike the leaders of the three political parties, if only it would stay put until the proper time, perhaps it would be stronger and be able to show its true colours rather than putting its energy into this ill-thought-out and unseasonable surge, as if it has something worth saying, which everyone will miss because it’s not what people expect this early on.

So I think I may well join my juvenile apple sapling as I too become ‘peed’ off with the election campaigns that have emerged far too early, and the political parties that now mirror our soggy indistinguishable seasons.

At least my sapling will have something worthwhile to offer – he gets my vote!