And if the toad’s ugliness puts you off, bear in mind that like the hedgehog, they are superlative slug-gulpers.Frogs prefer moister resting places for winter. Some will hibernate at the bottom of a garden pond, others will creep under matted reeds or stones. It is important, therefore, to disturb the water as little as possible between now and the end of February, but keep the water as pure and sweet as possible by removing dying leaves and those that have blown in from the trees. If left, they will rot and could develop into a toxic tea which is damaging to water life.Of course, it is far easier to preach laissez-faire gardening at this time of year than to practise it, and you may find that the untidiness wears down your spirits too much.

If it does, consider working through the borders sympathetically, removing only the most offending plants and the ugliest heaps of accumulated herbage. Leaves should be raked from lawns, pathways and rock gardens anyway, since small, vulnerable plants can be damaged if they are overlaid by rotting foliage, but it is still of huge benefit if you can leave as much cover as possible, especially where the mess won’t show. If toads and hedgehogs are slumbering on your premises, and wrens and longtailed tits can tuck themselves up in your ivy for winter – isn’t that reward enough for tolerating the mess? !. EARLIER THIS YEAR, in a pathology laboratory in Amsterdam, three Dutch neuroscientists managed to do what no one had thought possible They brought brain cells from 30 dead people back to life.

In a ghoulish but fascinating experiment, the scientists took specimens of brain tissue during post-mortems up to eight hours after death. Into it they delicately injected tracer chemicals that can only move along the spidery fibres that connect one neuron to another if a cell is alive and firing its electrical messages. They then incubated the apparently inert cells in a warm bath suffused with a gas made up of 95 per cent oxygen and 5 per cent carbon dioxide – almost five times the oxygen content found in normal air.
After 18 hours, Jaipei Dai, Dick Swaab and Ruud Buijs removed the brain cells from the bath and tracked the path of the tracer chemicals. What they found was that the “dead” neurons had fired the tracers across the tissue, just as they would had they been in a warm, live brain.Writing up their study in the medical journal the Lancet, the scientists say these startling results could have huge implications for treating what’s long been thought of as irreparable brain damage, whether through stroke, cardiac arrest or accident. And well they might, says Professor Philip James, another exponent of the use of high- dose oxygen to treat cell death.An industrial physician at Dundee’s Ninewell’s Hospital, Professor James is also an international expert in the use of “hyperbaric” (pressurised) air.

Most often used to help patients accidentally exposed to low-oxygen environments, the increase in pressure means that oxygen is taken into the bloodstream in far greater quantities. Accepted wisdom says that if you have a stroke, the area of the brain which has been deprived of blood and therefore oxygen (usually by a clot), will die in four minutes. Yet, says Professor James, these Dutch scientists managed to persuade brain cells to fire again eight hours after their bodies were certified dead.”It’s remarkable. What they have shown is that brain cells don’t die completely for some considerable time, they’re just ’sleeping’.”The key, says Professor James, is the proper use of oxygen – the primary substance the brain is deprived of in a stroke.