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The wind dropped, the sun came out, and the milder air that blew in with the storm looks like it’s intending to stick around. At any rate, the ground has thawed out and the plants are no longer frozen solid. I even went out without a hat.
I have missed doing stuff in the garden. And now I feel I need to caveat this, having written a book that’s ostensibly all about the being and less about the doing, and in a way it is all about that, and that is how I garden, but in a way that’s more about a better way to get to know your garden, showing up and being present and making friends with the space, so that by the time you’re ready to do stuff it doesn’t feel like doing at all, but more like the very best kind of conversation, or dance, or just hanging out together. Maybe that’s it.
There have been plenty of enriching moments these past few weeks, of wombling about and gazing at the garden through the steam rising from my tea, and dreaming this year’s borders into being, but there comes a time when your body’s itching to get stuck in and you find yourself desperate to inflict some largely unnecessary necessary creative interventions upon the place. A little – not so much tidying, more a cutting away of the old to make way for the new, though even that’s verging on a justification too far. The hellebores would flower away quite happily where I not to cut off their old foliage, though the snowdrops I’ve nestled in and around them might not appreciate being covered up by such sturdy leaves, and a horticulturist (whisper it, or risk Monty’s ire) would highlight the benefits of clearing away anything that could harbour the unsightly leaf spot that can afflict these plant.
But mainly, I’m cutting off the old leaves so I can see what’s going on, even though getting the best view requires one to lie on the ground and stick your nose into the mulch. Which, being just that kind of person, is exactly what I do – part of the delight of January in the garden being in bearing witness to the first signs of life pushing through the soil and stretching themselves towards the light, in the face of at least another month of winter. You can regard this in a detached fashion from above, but where’s the fun in that, when you can get up close and personal with the action for the small price of getting moderately muddy?
And this is how the gardening year begins here. In a patch of ground just beyond the garden gate, the very first plant a sarcococca, greeting the season with that intoxicating perfume; the next, hellebores and snowdrops, shrugging off wind and rain and the hardest of frosts courtesy of the antifreeze coursing through their veins. Already I can see the signs of lesser celandine that will run a solid double yellow line along the garden path, parking themselves there for weeks until, just as you think they might take over, they disappear completely for another year. No sign yet of the paeonies as I cut back their stems, though tulips and daffs are pushing eagerly through.
But today is all about the hellebores. And the joy – rather than the necessity – of doing.
I can see clearly now the leaves have gone - genius!
Gardening as ‘hanging out together’ 🤗