The season of noticing the smallest of changes
Monday 31 January
-
The last day of January. Unseasonably sunny. The windows thrown open. Jumpers cast aside. A big blue sky and everything twinkles in the light.
Tuesday 1 February
-
Imbolc. Another milestone on this journey towards spring. As if on cue, the first daffodils pop open by the vicarage (they are always the earliest in the village) and a drift of snowdrops suddenly appears in the garden behind the mill.
Wednesday 2 February
-
I risk walking into branches and upsetting the neighbours by ignoring them, my focus on the ground in front of my feet is so intense. I am sure the nettles have started putting on growth, there are lords and ladies in full leaf. Primroses on the left and right of the lane down to the back field. The catkins are a sharper yellow and a centimetre longer every day. Nothing too dramatic, and I have to be attending to notice, but this is the sort of noticing that makes me realise how much I could miss if I didn’t.
Thursday 3 February
-
A biodynamic flower day. It is far too early for sowing anything other than sweet peas (I sow yet another tray just for good measure) but I go through my aquilegia collection and set them aside for chilling. I can barely wait to start sowing in earnest, but restraint will be rewarded. Now is the time for buying seeds. Sow them in March.
Friday 4 February
-
There are sheep in the back field and every so often they are fed a bale of hay. The scent of it drifts up the path. Comforting, and reminiscent of barns and long summers. It all feels rather a long way away as we walk underneath a leaden grey sky.
Saturday 5 February
-
An utterly delightful day out. Lunch at the Pythouse Kitchen Garden, reached via the endless Somerset Levels (I popped into Glastonbury Rec on the way and took far too many photographs of galvanised tanks). Swooping birds, almost but not quite a murmuration, cut across the road by Burrow Mump.
The longest and loveliest of lunches, and then home to find a gale was just arriving in my valley.
Sunday 6 February
-
Taking respite from the storm, I spend the day with a dye pot. A few dye pots more accurately. One piece of linen has been over-dyed three times now and has finally rested on an amazing, warm khaki brown. A table runner that I put in a jam jar with some pickling liquid from red cabbage and left for a month has turned into the most intriguing shade. Different in all lights, it is blue and purple and grey all at once. (I forgot to take a photo in the light. I will though.)
