MY hands are stinging. My wrists red, wealed and lumpy. Nettles appear to have taken over the borders in the garden and in an uncharacteristic fit of enthusiasm for gardening, I have been weeding.

I started after lunch and was suddenly surprised to see a friend at the garden gate taking a picture of me on her iPad. “John told me to,” she said. “He said it was such a rare sight it was worth recording.”

Cheek of it. Anyway it gave me an excuse to stop and make a cup of tea for them, but I did return later and actually filled a wheelie bin with the vengeful plants.

Unlike the nettles, grass has not been growing. There is plenty for the cows and the sheep, but recent downpours have been welcome to ensure a good bite for all our mums feeding lambs and calves. And hopefully too we have seen the last of the frosts and a return of warmer weather.

My pet lamb is doing a sterling job keeping grass down on the lawn in our back garden. But we cannot plan for a snooze on the sun loungers after lunch, as the lamb gives you no peace in the back garden. He constantly butts and pursues you for a bottle of milk.

When I think back to the timid little lamb we took from his mum when she was not feeding him, and the solid bruiser we now have to feed, the change has been dramatic and his growth exponential.

Fortunately, we have still only the one pet lamb. Frequently, especially as we had a good crop of triplets this year, we are feeding a small flock of pets. This year so far, just the one.

As he sleeps at night in a kennel next to Pip, I am convinced the lamb thinks he is a dog. Plus it has no fear, much to her frustration, of Fizz, our sheepdog, and indeed is sublimely indifferent to any of the dogs. They can’t weigh it up at all.

In past years this familiarity has led to problems. Especially when we return pet lambs to the flock after they have been weaned. They are always the lamb that comes trotting straight over to you in the field when you are there to round up or move the flock.

What I am not so keen on is his appetite for the young leaves on the beech hedge. And when the weather does warm up I shall want to resume my lunchtime siesta, without being molested by a woolly thug. So as soon as the bag of milk powder is finished the lamb will be weaned and back with the flock.