Feeling the chill...or sensing the green?

February can seem a bit slow.  Just more of the same wet blustery days under grey skies. The tail-end of winter can bite.  It can even snow, then the tabloids shout "48 HOURS OF SNOW HELL TO COME!" at us, and measure the horror in centimetres.  The weather forecast is full of colour coded warning triangles. It's a mini apocalypse in a tea cup.

We all know (don't we?) that the media love to exaggerate and worry us.  This  reaction to winter weather makes me feel sad and old.

What's not to like about being snowed in and having a day off? No cars on the road means you can slide and skid on them instead of the pavement, get the sledge out, burn your hands making snowballs and jump around in virgin snow.  Discover the true meaning of 'cold'.

In short - normal life gets hijacked and everything becomes magical for a while.  It all looks and sounds so different.   

white out

But on the bright side...

In February the good people of Amsterdam can skate on the semi-circular canals when traditionally the water ices over for weeks.  It's a thing to look forward to.

The Chinese new year starts in February, and most gardeners can almost smell spring green around the corner, what with winter aconites, snowdrops and witch hazels all flowering.

The days are slowly lengthening.

winter aconite & snowdrops

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Remembering Sylvia...

 

Sylvia Plath 1932 - 1963

The winter of 1963 was especially grim and February was freezing cold.  There wasn't much warmth in Sylvia Plath's flat on Fitzroy Road in London - where the poet WB Yeats had lived years before. Her two young children had both been ill and so was she.  Desperately so.

Fifty years ago today, on the 11th February, Plath killed herself at her home just weeks after her first and only novel 'The Bell Jar' was published.  She was thirty.

her book's first publication

Plath insisted on a pseudonym for her novel, having vowed never to publish it under her own name while her mother was still alive.

At the age of eight, when she was told that her father had died, Plath responded, "I will never speak to God again."

Sylvia Plath in West Yorkshire

Sylvia Plath is buried in the hilltop graveyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.  On her headstone is a line from a WB Yeats poem;

"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."

Plath tattoo

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"Top Bombing!" 
or
The Joy of Yarnstorming
 

Technically, you probably can't yarn bomb your own garden - I don't know - it doesn't really matter 'cos who cares?

This year, instead of wrapping my blueberry plants in bubblewrap to protect them from frosts I used old yarns instead and it does look like the knitting fairy has been, which I quite like.

the Bay & Sweet Box get knitted

I do a lot of knitting and accumulate wool of varying colours and types, it feels good to turn random left-overs into crazy coloured pompoms, bunting, and scarves for plant pots.

Before I knew it, I was doing a spot of embellishing with buttons and crocheted flowers, even throwing in a bit of blanket stitch for good measure (my nights are long).  Where will it end? 

I do have my eye on the wider environment.  All Hail the guerrilla yarnstormers who add something colourful, cosy and comic to our drab urban spaces! Those great graffiti knitters embellishing a bench, giving a bobble hat to an overlooked frozen statue, a cloak to a queen, hanging intricate webs of crocheted wool in an underpass or leaving a trail of tiny knitted sheep around the capital.

You Go Girls!  They've got a bag of yarn and they're gonna use it.

a bombed bench

my blue woolly bunting

tree cosy

my Woollywall

hope she's amused...

London 'phonebox by Deadly Knitshade & the Yarn Corps

a red wool yarnstorm

on my doorstep

good idea..!

  

 info on Deadly Knitshade and her yarnstorming adventures at:

www.knitthecity.com

www.whodunnknit.com

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Last word...

The best thing about February (apart from Pancake Day) is that it's a short month, and all things must end.

Soon it will be March.  Your mind will turn to chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and simnel cake.

All will be yellow and green with bunnies and bows.  You'll be stressing (maybe) about what to give up for Lent. Don't say I didn't warn you!



Greygirl x 





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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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