Keeping regular

''Oak before the Ash, we're in for a splash, Ash before the Oak, we're in for a soak'' is what they say, well, something like that, but you get the gist. If they're right then it should be a good summer, as the Oak has surely won this year. We'll have to see though. There would have been a period when these countrys' folklore sayings, for the most part, held true. Although, with the effects of climate change increasingly felt, for how much longer these rhymes reflect reality must be speculation. I remember when I was a kid (puts on rose tinted glasses, mmm tinty) there did appear a regularity, which may have sometimes had its irregularities, but on the whole ran as we'd always been led to believe it had. You know, defined seasons, flying ants and stag beetles, spring flowers and the devils' berry, for everything a time and a place. Increasingly though, that place has been developed or destroyed and now that time could be, broadly, any time.  Still, we'll see.