The fascinating, strange and sometimes hilarious insect world awakens in spring outside our doors

• Cast your vote for the UK invertebrate of the year

I never expected a later-life love affair. But a few years ago, I was commissioned to write a book on garden insects and the earth moved. All of a sudden, I realised that my garden wasn’t just full of six-legged aliens, but characters, all with stories to tell, some of which were often bizarre and others hilarious. A few metres from my backdoor a glittering new world of intrigue opened up.

Now that it is spring, this world is awakening and the stories are piling up and moving on fast. As I have become familiar with more insects, the joy of the encroaching season becomes richer still, and more entrancing. Already we have hummingbird tribute acts flying around the spring flowers, bee flies with their hovering flight and long beaks, as fluffy as a child’s toy. Soon their larvae will hatch and grow into child-killers, brutalising the nests of solitary bees.

A Year of Garden Bees and Bugs by Dominic Couzens and Gail Ashton is published by Batsford

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Llandrindod Wells, Powys: At the earliest hint of spring, you can see its gold-spangled profusion across every field and verge here. But not everyone sees its virtues

William Wordsworth’s best‑known poem may be addressed to daffodils, but his favourite flower in the year’s bright early succession was the lesser celandine. It’s a preference I share. On the whole, gardeners and botanists do not. Those I’ve canvassed for their opinion regard its cold-months, late-February-to-early-May profusion along verges and across lawns with something approaching disdain. I view it as our native miniature tournesol , or sunflower, following the brief sallies of sunlight, clamming up and drooping under the grey skies of a Welsh spring.

Here along the sodden vernal lanes of Radnorshire, its mounded growths of heart-shaped leaves and its vivid golden flowers on frail stems are ubiquitous, bringing a stellar texture to roadside banks and meadows. They impart and enrich the winter-grey grasses with sun‑tones before primroses and daffodils are fully in flower, then age before our eyes to a blanched drabness that still retains the charm of heart-shaped petals to complement its fleshy leaves.

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Spring (read: allergy) season can make it difficult to say if a runny nose is the result of pollen or a virus – so I asked experts

Ah, spring. A time of thawing and rebirth, of blooms bursting forth from frost. Days become longer, warmer and – oh no, what’s this? A tickle in your throat. Pressure building in your sinuses. A runny nose. A sneeze. Another sneeze. Was there ever a time before sneezing?

But is it allergies or a cold? Beautiful as springtime may be, the emerging greenery can also expel waves of allergens. So how can you tell if your runny nose is the result of unruly pollen or a virus? Are you infectious or is your immune system overreacting to an outside stimulus?

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This is the perfect time to make lasting changes – whether embracing exercise, learning a new language, planting seeds or painting your house

Take it from a hopeless dopamine addict, spring is inarguably the best season to get into outdoor exercise. The trick to building the habit – as with any habit, really – is to start small, and reduce friction. Decide what you’re wearing and charge your phone before you go to bed. For your first few sorties, don’t worry about distance, speed or doing a whole workout: just get yourself used to getting up and out of the door. Counterintuitively, it can help to not dress like an athlete: if you go out covered in Lycra, it can feel mortifying to slow to a walk, but if you’re less formally dressed you can stop for a coffee. Keep it playful, and enjoy what your body can do: if that’s some step-ups on a bench or pull-ups on a tree branch, great, but even if it’s just going a little bit faster when a good song kicks in, the endorphin rush is what you’ll remember the next time it’s wet and windy. Oh, and don’t underestimate the value of a well-curated playlist. Many’s the morning I haven’t wanted to go anywhere, only for this Rihanna/Game Of Thrones remix to put a spring back in my step. Joel Snape, fitness writer

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Messing with the clocks simply draws attention to the arbitrary nature of our scheduled lives

The clocks changed today, which means the Time of Great Confusion is upon us. “What’s the rhyme?” puzzle my smartest friends. “Fall forwards… or back? Spring back? That doesn’t rhyme.” They picture themselves stumbling, falling forwards, or springing back like fresh sponge. They picture the South African rugby team, the Springboks. No one knows. It’s worse than the rhyme about how many days are in each month, which is longer than the Great Wall of China and implodes in a subclause about leap years. That threw me last month and now this.

It’s hard enough trying to keep track of Easter. That occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. In case you’re lost that also means today. Happy Easter. At least the chocolate eggs make it worthwhile – and it’s hard to be mad at an equinox. Especially this one, which marked the start of spring. Even more than an equinox, I love a solstice. I’ll come back to that. Or do I mean forward?

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Mild weather brings out slimy creatures. Protect plants, but remember snails and slugs are vital for a healthy ecosystem

Mild weather means we enjoy our gardens more, but slugs and snails – the dreaded gastropods, tend to enjoy our gardens more, too. Just like us, warmer weather and luscious plant growth are very inviting to these slimy creatures, bringing them out to feast on our much-loved young plants. While it’s tempting to reach for slug and snail pellets, there are good reasons to go for an organic approach.

The slimy crew actually play an important role in a healthy and biodiverse ecosystem. They are a succulent morsel for many creatures, from toads to hedgehogs and even glowworm larvae, which are specially adapted to eating these creatures. On biting their victim, glowworm larvae deliver a fatal dose of poison, which paralyses the poor creature and begins to turn it into a soup that the larvae can easily slurp down. Not my idea of a yummy supper, but each to their own.

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spring

From blossom trails to bluebell woods, and foraging to farm stays, we’ve picked some of the finest seasonal getaways

This is cider country, and the Brockhampton Estate, near the Worcestershire border, is the largest orchard under the National Trust’s care, with over 145 acres of damson, pear, quince, cherry and apple trees, which blossom in great frothy clouds from late March through April.

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South-west Wales is a naturalist’s playground, and early spring is the perfect time to explore its coastal paths, wild flowers and treasured birdlife

Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, published more than a century ago, is a classic in the nature lover’s library, a lyrical account of the poet’s journey from London to Somerset seeking signs of the coming season. Setting out from a rainy Wandsworth in March 1913, shaking loose a long winter, Thomas yearned for apple blossom and cuckoo flowers, “the perfume of sunny earth”, and the nightingale’s song. “Would the bees be heard instead of the wind?” he questioned anxiously.

This was a relatable pursuit – come March we are all leaning towards the sun – yet rarely might we think of spring as a “place”. For Thomas, it was the rural south-west; for me, the returning spring is best embodied by Pembrokeshire.

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