Is it Spring yet?

Somebody thinks it is, or else has been stealing a march on  St Valentine's Day, judging by the dollops of jellified caviare in this stagnant ditch:  frogspawn's thick slobber, like clotted water, to borrow the words of Seamus Heaney  in his wonderful poem Death of a Naturalist (do listen to him recite it!)

As far as I am concerned the weather has been anything but springlike, just a succession of grim cheerless days that cast a pall over the spirits. But nevertheless, daffodils are budding, moles are tunnelling, badgers are rootling and new life is burgeoning as inexorably as it always does.