THE year is moving onwards, even if the weather isn’t. This week, wherever I’ve gone I’ve been followed by two pungent springtime smells.

The first I initially thought was the acrid stench of my car brakes burning out. It was there in the background in Weardale on Tuesday when I addressed the Probus club, and it moved with me, getting stronger, as I drove to Witton Park. And it was still there in the evening, stronger than ever, when I got home to the outskirts of Darlington.

I checked my car wheels – they were cool. Then I remembered that at this time of year, farmers spread a muck on their fields that produces an odour that clings to the clothes.

Not that nature is perfectly perfumed. Out on my bike at the weekend, I turned a corner on my way to Richmond and got my first lungful of wild garlic.

Although most northern European languages use a word for it like our own “ramsons”, its Latin name is “allium ursinum”, apparently because brown bears – “ursus” – go wild for its taste and dig at the ground for its bulbs.

Therefore, the Germans call it “barlauch”, or bear’s leak. The town of Eberbach, in Baden, has trademarked its claim to be the “barlauchhauptstadt”, or worldwide wild garlic capital, and every year it holds the month-long wild garlic festival called “barlauchtage”. During the festival, you go out walking in the wild garlic wetlands, collecting the leaves and learning how to cook it – its delicious with spring lamb, makes a mean pesto and cheesemakers wrap their truckles in it.

You can even get a special two-night Ramsons Weekend B&B deal for two persons at the Hotel Turmschenke where, for 129 euros-a-head per night, you go ramsons rambling by day and feast on a five-course wild garlic menu at night.

If our countryside is noticeably pungent at the moment, I dread to think what the inside of a German hotel room smells like the morning after both of its occupants have dined on starters, mains and desserts made from wild ramsons.

I WAS delighted to learn that Chicago in the US is named after wild garlic which apparently grows there in abundance. In the language of the native Algonquins, the plant is known as “shikaakwa” which became “Chicago” when a French tongue wrapped around it.

Delighted because I've also been puzzling this week with the word “tipis”. North Yorkshire County Council is going into business renting out its “tipis” for weddings and events, when I thought it should be renting out its “tepees”.

However, the dictionary tells me that the council is right. “Tipis” is closer to the pronunciation of the members of the Sioux native tribes who made their homes in a tent, made from skins, mats and canvas stretched around a wooden frame.

This led to the obvious question: what's the difference between a tipi and a wigwam. To all tents and purposes, they are the same. The Sioux people lived in tipis in their territory in southern Canada and on the eastern coast of the US around New York, whereas the Algonquin people, who lived to the west of the Sioux, spoke a different language and lived in wigwams.

Both tipis and wigwams are cone-shaped with a little hole at the top which I remember from my school days was to let the smoke out – but I reckon was really to provide ventilation after too many shikaakwas had been consumed.