Winter Musings

 

The incessant rain paused today, just long enough to do a couple of jobs. A sprinkling of blood, fish and bone around the rhubarb before a liberal mulch of compost. Removing the old slimy leaves of the rainbow chard.

Then, as the rain started again, it was back into the greenhouse, potting on the sage cuttings I took at the back end of last summer, and cutting back the Cannas, as the rain pitter pattered on the glass roof.

January came in as January does, the full gamut if weather; wet, windy, mild - snow, freezing overnight, turning crisp, crunchy snow into packed ice, leading to slippery pavements and treacherous driving conditions.

The garden, as ever, remained stoic, wintering. The calendar may say we are at the start, but really we are in the middle of winter - the darkest, coldest period of our year. It may be a time of resolutions and new starts, but also it teaches us that rest is not emptiness, but preparation.

Preparation for the coming year can be found in many forms. The ground may be too hard or too wet to work, but we still garden in our hearts and minds, whatever the weather.

Our best laid plans are often more successful because we have time to plan, deliberate, put down our dreams in pencil on sheets of paper.

The worst of winter will soon be behind us, and subtle changes are already happening: the first Camellia flower, snowdrops in bloom, emerging daffodil.

As the days lengthen, our hearts gladden, till one day soon we will breathe in the first sense of spring.

Then the dark, dank days of winter will vanish into the distance once more.