It's Oh So Quiet...

...it's oh so still

Or rather it was, when the frost took hold of everything and made it twinkly.  The bare trees at the bottom of the garden looked good against the cold white fog, like a stage set for something magical.

When I went outside I saw crystals on the edge of leaves, rainwater turned to ice and clouds of my own breath on the air.

ice in the jam pan

Then everything seemed to speed up and December hurled itself headlong towards Christmas like the year just couldn't wait to be over.

The Winter Solstice came and went.  What a great day that was to write the date, something very pleasing about the numbers

21/12/12

I covered the frozen ground with yet more composted bark to create a warm duvet for everything sleeping underground.

I thought about all the vermilion,magenta,scarlet and purple the tulips promised in the spring - hard to imagine now but I know it's there.

It was all happening indoors, busy as I was with my collection of sempervivums and tillandsia (air plants), planting pixie gardens.  It's early days and I am not entirely happy with them so far, there will be much tweaking I suspect.

vintage glass bowl,stones,cacti & semps

charity shop bowl & tillandsia

Whatever your take on Christmas, I do think a mid-winter festival is necessary and can see why all cultures have some form of celebration at this time, to bring light into the short,dark days.

Of all the rituals my favourite is bringing a tree into the house and dressing it.  As a child this made me imagine a forest full of cold and dark while the house was warm and bright, the scent of real pine was transporting and still is.

I have a massive bag of guilt but having a real tree during Christmas isn't in it.

Once it is taken outside after all the decorations have been put away the branches are cut and stored for firewood. I keep a bag of needles, leave it to rot down then use as valuable mulch around my blueberry plants. 

It is well loved and well used.

Snoopy, Charlie Brown & Christmas tree

 

Keep yourselves snug & warm, sleep and dream.

I will see you on the ice of 2013

Going underground

Oops! I haven't posted anything this month and it's almost over.

I have been busy doing all the jobs I had to finish before the garden  goes to sleep.  Take full advantage of the opportune moment to plant and re-plant, then condition the soil for the new growing season.

A huge bee was buzzing in my bonnet about more trees with autumn and winter foliage, fruits, and berries for the birds.  But this is the state of gardening, endless flux and revolution.

November can be seen as a miserable month with it's dishcloth skies, horizontal rain, cold winds and less daylight.  Without sunlight there is hardly any colour and the glory of autumn reds and golds become dirty browns.  There's barely  a leaf left by now, my Acer was stripped to the bone weeks ago.

It's true that in this time of year it is easy to sink. I take some comfort in the writings of Ark Redwood, Head Gardener at Chalice Well in Glastonbury and author of 'The Art of Mindful Gardening'.

"Despite it's apparent quietude, November is actually a truly trans formative month.  It is at this time of year, in the northern hemisphere, when energy shifts from shoots to roots, and the flow of nature delves downwards."

He writes about winter that,

 "This is a time to be still, and to reflect; instead of the mad rush around the garden within which we are whirled during the hectic days of spring and summer.  Winter offers us the opportunity to slow down, to walk with ease and unhurried intent."

 Books about gardening aside, this is traditionally - for me at least, a time to reach for the Gothic fiction and ghost stories and become fully immersed.  If this is not your thing I heartily recommend anything by Richard Mabey, (I am currently reading 'Nature Cure' very slowly).

The selected poems of John Clare and Edward Thomas will keep your engagement with nature and the seasons alive.

Glass Gardens

One way I have found to deal with the dark wet days is to become an indoor gardener too.  My shed is full of trays of autumn-sown seedlings, garlic and root cuttings, I don't own a greenhouse or conservatory, but I do have an awful lot of jam jars.

With a mix of gritty compost and some pea gravel all I needed were some small plants to make small gardens in the jars.

I found an excellent website selling Sempervivums (house leeks to me and you), not only that but more types than I even knew existed and all resembling something from a book on Chaos Theory.

I have developed a mix of respect, awe and curiosity for the many and varied complex designs, how a plant can be so small and perfectly formed - and the names!

My admiration was sealed by discovering the 'Legolas' and the 'Squib'.

Some Sempervivums look like the things I used to draw with my Spirograph.

I now have several tiny gardens to tend, with the benefits of staying warm and dry and having growing things in the house.

'Legolas'

So, when you are feeling that November is a dead month, remember;

"In the natural world, of course, there is no natural beginning and ending, no birth and death; there is only change and transformation."

waterfall at Chalice Well garden

view of Glastonbury Tor from Chalice Well

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News from the end of the month

So, October fades into the sunset and November hovers like a ghost in the wings.

Time is a concept I will never get my head around.  Not since I was a young thing have I understood how an hour can be gained in autumn and lost in spring.

I remember plodding sleepily to junior school wearing a thing known as a 'diddy jacket' ( basically a reflective tabard-type item) so I was visible in the morning darkness.  Going to school in what looked and felt like night seemed wholly wrong - surely we would have evolved big lamp-like eyes if this was a natural thing to do?

I knew at a tender age that I ought to be under warm blankets  instead of making that miserable journey. Me and my brother had just packed our tortoise away in a box of hay for hibernation and in Moominvalley the Moomins were tucked up in bed til spring.  Snufkin had broken camp and was walking towards the warmth elsewhere.

Dormouse

Heading south for the winter

 The good thing about it raining all day is that I've recently moved and divided several plants and a good watering will help keep them happy.

It is also an excellent time to collect as many leaves as I can stuff into a sack - much easier to do when they're wet.  I have made a 'bin' with canes and chicken wire to dump the leaves in so  will (hopefully) have a bigger stash of leafmould for next year.

Last week I discovered a new nursery on the edge of the Forest of Bowland that is brilliant for trees, shrubs, alpines and heathers.  I brought home a flowering cherry that is a native of the slopes of Mount Fuji, so I reckon it should do ok here.  It is a blaze of colour (even without the sun on it), all fiery reds and gold.

 

 

I managed to find a plant that has long been on the Greygirl wish list - a Chinese witch hazel.  I went for 'Pallida' for it's sulphur/citrus yellow flowers and freesia scent.  This will be a welcome sight in January, for sure.

 

Sadly, at the end of October I've cut the last of the flowers I can bring into the house.  The Cosmos has been brilliant, flowering non-stop, I had no idea it was possible to get so much from so few seeds - thrifty and fabulous!

the last Cosmos

my alpine corner

heathers in a jam pan

See you in November :)

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Cattus Gardenus

Cats and gardens, for some a tricky combination to be sure, judging by all the anti-cat sprays and such like available in garden centres.  Along with slugs, rats, mice etc they are put in the pest control aisle.

I'll be straight up about this from the start, if the question of cat or dog was put to me (like in those celebrity Q&A things in magazines), my answer is cat.  So now you know where I'm coming from.  

This does not mean I have kittens on plates round my house, own fluffy toys, or wear jumpers with cats on, nor do I treat them like the Egyptians and shave my eyebrows off when they die.  It's just that since growing up with cats I like them as companions and can't help it.

Misty Mab

My current cat companion is like a little familiar.  When I am out in the garden she wants to be there too, find the warmest place to sit and look all Zen.

I have been having a lot of garden days recently, getting out there early to do the autumn jobs of dividing, planting, moving, cutting back, weeding and mulching.  Making the most of any October sun, which I prefer to summer sun.

My cat discovered a new place to sit and observe these activities and, of course, to feel the sun.

the Mab & the chimenea

 

She does not dig up bulbs, eat the plants or sit on seedlings. Her most annoying habit is curling up in my violin case (she is white and leaves hair everywhere), but a few sharp bows to the  high E string soon put pay to that.

If you don't like the sight of cats in gardens, look away now...

camouflage cat!

squashed lettuce cat :(

curious cat

Mahler in Manchester

The Fifth Symphony at Bridgewater Hall

 This is personal and not written by someone educated in classical music etc who is an 'authority'.

I am no expert, but I am a Mahlerite.  That sounds like some sort of precious stone, (I'm not one of them either).

On Friday the 12th October I ventured from the garden to the metropolis.  I had forgotten how Manchester looks and feels at night.  The Bridgewater Hall was a bright glassy light attracting moths from the dark.  Lots of moths.

You know it's Mahler when you see the stage is full of instruments, music stands and chairs.  The double bass players are having to make do with office-type ones tonight.

All available space is taken up with violins, violas, cellos, double basses, a huge gold harp, an impressive and exciting array of weird percussion and a large brass section.

Your only hope is that they have left a narrow pathway for the conductor.

 

a drawing of Mahler conducting

There are some extreme mood swings in the Fifth, some have called it 'schizophrenic' but 'manic-depressive' might be more appropriate, since many of Mahler's friends and colleagues saw in his behaviour the shift in mood typical of the condition. 

Psychologists suggest that the over-elated manic phase is a deliberate attempt by the mind to escape from unbearable thoughts or situations.  Mahler had plenty of both.

 

In a letter to his wife Alma  while he was preparing for the Fifth Symphony's  premiere Mahler revealed his doubts about how it might be received.  He described the Scherzo as an 'accursed movement' and wondered what the audience would make of

"...these primeval noises, this rushing, roaring, raging sea, these dancing stars...".

The Scherzo bursts onto the scene after the second movement in a kind of frenetic, mad waltz.  After this comes a massive change of mood in the Adagietto.

Alma Mahler

Ah...the Adagietto

This is the piece of Mahler's music that most people have heard.  It features heavily in Visconti's film 'Death in Venice'.  It was played at JFK's funeral.  It was one of the most requested pieces of music to radio stations in America after 9/11.

There is something shockingly true about the Adagietto balanced between the strings and harp, violins and cellos.  Between the high strings of consolation and the deep resonance of loss. It

spirals down as well as soaring and your heart goes with it, up into the ether and down to the darkest depths.  As Tomas Transtromer wrote, "happiness and sadness weigh exactly the same".

We are not one thing or the other, given a happy or sad disposition at birth, more a complex layering of our own stories and memories that create a landscape unique to us.

Mahler insisted passionately that "the symphony should be like the world - it must embrace everything!".    

During the Adagietto you are taken to the interior of your self and transported outside it, into a vast exterior world.  Both these inner and outer spaces feel limitless.  

It is a strange thing to experience in a huge half-lit hall with hundreds of people, all of them quietly listening, some with eyes closed.

Your heart melts, but it also strains and breaks.

While writing this love letter, this 'song without words' to his wife Mahler is at the same time saying 'I am lost to the world'.

Mahler outside the opera house in Vienna

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