WORKING in my veg patch the other day - it had been frosty and dry for a couple of days so that I could at least see some earth above the ground water - I suddenly had a thought: "What would granddad think of global warming?"

You see, I was taught the elements of gardening by my father's father and one of his oft-repeated mantras was "Let Old Ma Nature do as much of the work as poss."

It took me some time to realise that although he loved his allotment, the sooner he got off it, the sooner he got to the Beggars' for a swift couple of pints - and still be home in time to tell grandma that he had just dropped in "for a gill".

However, the advice remained good. Only obsessives do more work than is necessary and if nature offers you a helping hand, grab it. Apart from anything else, nature's way is often better than anything you or I can do ourselves.

What had caused me to board this philosophical train of thought was the shape of the earth clods left over from the autumn's "rough digging." They were more the shape of human skulls than that of molehills and this is bad.

No, I hadn't finally lost my marbles. I was not seeing zombies pulling themselves from the grave. I was just thinking that, in granddad's day, by mid-January even the molehills would almost be mini-plateaus.

For those without green-fingered minds, I shall explain: granddad always did his autumn rough digging very roughly indeed. He merely turned over huge clods of earth with one twist of a big spade and left them there, weeds still intact.

However, it was the roots of the weeds that were now pointing skywards and that was half of the exercise: he knew that, when the frosts came, they would kill those weeds from the roots up (or should I say down?).

The other half was that the self-same frost would get into the clods and, when any internal ice melted, it would burst them into a million crumbs of wonderfully friable soil which, come spring, would only need raking over before re-planting.

Trouble is, we don't get frosts any more - or at least very few.

No doubt this will be published in the middle of the hardest freeze-up since mammoths roamed Beggarsdale (whenever I write about the weather, it always goes into total reversal by publication day) but so far this winter, we have had only three nights of hard frost.

That's not a guess but the findings of my outdoor maximum/minimum thermometer. And three cold nights is simply not enough to turn one cubic foot of earth, replete with weeds, to friable pyramids of gardeners' joy.

As recently as the 1970s, I can remember times when the temperature did not get above freezing point for a week or so on end - even during the day.

I once lost a year's crop of tender seedlings inside propagators sitting on top of a paraffin heater inside a greenhouse which had been lined with extra insulation. And that, God forbid, was in late March!

So now, the clods of earth of my veg patch have been sculptured into the shape of human skulls, all smooth and rounded, not by frost but by almost constant rain. The weeds are growing merrily (upside down, of course) and the slugs are having an orgy.

So RIP, granddad - and Jack Frost. I miss you both!

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.