We’re in the Ardennes this weekend. Nature, always a little later here, has burst out of its starting blocks and the fields and hedgerows are frothing with flowers and blossoms of various sorts. Curiously, the fields are awash with dandelions. In a notebook somewhere I once wrote about nettle fields and dandelion fields and thistle fields (you can be fined in Brussels if you have thistles in your garden). For sometimes, certainly when in sufficient quantities, weeds can be just as beautiful as cultivated flowers – think of untreated wheat fields full of poppies (indeed, think of Monnet). Certainly the brilliant yellows of the dandelions contrasted beautifully with the dark greens of the Ardennes fields and forests. I wonder, though, why there are quite so many dandelions this year. Something to do with meteorological conditions, I suppose.