New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve, and I can't believe that the year is almost over. It always creeps up on me and feels like a bit of a surprise. I find the spell between Christmas and the New Year fun, but disorientating - I never seem to know what day of the week we're on! It's been a lovely few days here, with lazy time spent at home, as well as going for walks, to the cinema, shopping etc. Earlier in the week we drove to a country pub for our annual family Christmas meal. We've doing this for many years with three generations getting together to exchange presents, laugh and catch up. The last year has had some wonderful moments, but some sad ones too for our family, and we really valued being together. The pub is very old with an old barn attached, and this is where we always book our table near the open fire.

Desserts are served in pretty tea cups,

and all around the walls and beams are antique agricultural implements. It's very cosy there, a great pub in winter, and apparently it even has its own ghost!

Yesterday we went ice-skating in Bath, or rather, P and the young 'uns did, and I spectated. On the few occasions I have skated I have spent most of the session holding on to the handrail, only to fall over soon after I let go. Instead I stood at the side with a coffee and took photos. The session started in the light just after the sun had set.

Gradually the light faded and the floodlights came on, illuminating the  heavily scored ice in different colours and casting shadows in purple, pink and blue. 

By the end of the session it was dark. The rink is in a large park and the surrounding trees were lit up. I loved seeing the moon behind the tree's branches against the dark sky. The scene looked ethereal and rather magical.

As we left the park, the lion statues on the gate were thrown into sharp relief in the moonlight, reminding me of  E Nesbit's story The Enchanted Castle in which marble statues come to life at night and move about the garden. 

Tonight the five of us are going out for a meal which is very unusual as we usually spend New Year's Eve in. We will celebrate the arrival of the New Year, and say goodbye to the old one. I shall leave you with an extract from one of my favourite poems, 'The Darkling Thrush' by Thomas Hardy:

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky,

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

It's dated 31st December 1900, marking the beginning of the new century. I love his description of a wintry afternoon as the light fades and the frost sets in, and the contrast with the people who are warm indoors by their fires. A beautiful poem, I think.

However you spend it I hope you enjoy New Year's Eve, and I wish you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! See you in 2015!

x x x

Midsummer

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, or Summer Solstice, when the hours of daylight are at their longest and those of darkness at their shortest. Around this time comes Midsummer's Eve (followed by Midsummer's Day). Different cultures celebrate it on different days, some on the day before the Solstice, and others a couple of days later on the 23rd June. In northern European countries, such as Sweden, it is celebrated on the third Friday in June with bonfires, singing and feasting.

Midsummer's Eve was traditionally a magical time when the human world and the fairy world meet. Our ancestors built fires to celebrate the longest day and to bless their livestock and the forthcoming harvest. It was also held to be the best time for people to divine their future love, by making potions and performing rites using herbs and flowers which are at their peak at this time of year.

Many writers have been inspired by Midsummer's Eve. In 'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith seventeen-year-old Cassandra celebrates her 'rites' by gathering flowers and lighting a bonfire:

'wild flowers - I can't remember if that is traditional or if Rose and I made it up: mallow, campion and bluebells for the garland to hang round our necks, foxgloves to carry, and we always wore wild roses in our hair ... There wasn't a breath of wind as I climbed the mound. The sun was down - usually I begin the rites by watching it sink ...the sky beyond Belmotte Tower was a watery yellow with one streak of green across it - vivid green, most magically beautiful ...I watched until the yellow faded, too - then turned towards the moon still low over the wheat field. The blue all around her had deepened so much that she no longer looked pale, but like masses of luminous snow'

In Shakespeare's comedy, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', a group of lovers and actors are lost in the forest on Midsummer's night. The fairies who live in the forest control and mislead the humans until the morning when order is restored. It has a magical, ethereal quality and the language evokes the beauty of summer flowers:

'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in'

Years ago just before we got married my husband and I went to the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London to watch a production of this play. It was a magical experience, and the audience sat entranced as night fell and lanterns and fairy lights lit the stage.

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy also captured that magic in his poem 

'On A Midsummer Eve':

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

My own Midsummer traditions are modest (no dancing or lighting bonfires for me!). I always have in the house flowers from the garden and a scented candle . I love Yankee Candles and my favourite is this one, Midsummer's Night, which has a heady and summery perfume.

 Whether you mark the occasion or not, it's undeniably a very special time of year x

Rain

It looks as though we're in for a spell of lovely weather with blue skies and warm sun, but over the last week we've had a mixed bag of heavy rain and sunny skies, with a lot of strong winds as well. One minute the sky was gunmetal grey under a heavy blanket of cloud.

And the next minute the clouds were blown away and the sun came out.

It really was a case of 'sunshine and showers', The winds were very testing for the new leaves on the trees and many have been blown off completely, but everything is growing so fast now, it's always a surprise and a pleasure to go into the garden and look at the new growth. And I always remind myself that the rain is responsible in great part for this.

I love to walk in the garden after rain at this time of year to look around. One of our bird baths is becoming hidden by foliage.

And a bird-feeder turned into a mini bird-bath 

The pebbles around the shed looked wonderfully shiny and colourful after rain.

Unfortunately the rain brings out these little creatures with all of their friends and relations, and they do love to feast on my seedlings!

However, raindrops catch most beautifully on the leaves of certain plants, such as aquilegia 

and lady's mantle

Raindrops and sparkling dew gather so perfectly in its leaves that in medieval times the water droplets were used by alchemists when trying to change base metals into gold, hence its Latin name of alchemilla. It was also believed that the dew had magical youth-preserving properties, which led women to wash their faces in it.

I also love the look of rain on slate. Our roof is tiled in slate and after it has rained it looks wonderfully shiny and dark. When he wrote his 'Poem in October' Dylan Thomas described this effect as he looks down on the town of Laugharne below him

'Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

With its horns through mist and the castle

Brown as owls' 

When I look at wet roofs I'm always reminded of these lines. Somehow I don't seem to mind the rain so much at this time of year. Maybe it's because I can see how it makes everything grow, or because I know that summer isn't far away. It makes me enjoy the sunshine when it comes too! x

Shades of blue

At this time of year there seems to be so much beautiful blue around. As you may have guessed, purply-blue is a colour I love. Our front door and gate are painted this colour, as are the bathroom, our dresser and the back of the house! The garden is also full of blue. These grape hyacinths, or muscari, have frilly white edges to their 'bells', and I love the way the stem turns from green to blue as it reaches the flowers.

It's so good to be able to look closely at tiny forget-me-not flowers and see, not only their yellow centres, but streaks of pink in their petals.

Here is a rosemary flower in close-up. The flowers are surprisingly complicated. Because our garden is quite small, space is limited, so I bought a variety called 'Mrs Jessop's Upright' in the hope that it wouldn't sprawl across its neighbours. It's still attempting to, though!

This a gorgeous early-flowering clematis. It grows up the side of our shed (I forgot - that's blue too), and is a delight in April. The colour is truly heavenly.

Below is a little primrose that I bought last year. It's called 'Zebra Blue', and you can see why. Look at those amazing stripes!

Of course, I mustn't forget bluebells. These are the most common garden ones, Spanish bluebells. They aren't as delicate as their wild relatives, but the colour is still intense.

And here is something altogether more purple ... violets.They self- seed around my garden, and are so sweet, but often easy to miss. Wordsworth described them in his 'Lucy' poems:

.

'A violet by a mossy stone

Half-hidden from the eye!'

And now a bit more blue - that fabulous spring sky.

Lilac Time

I love this time of year! The evenings are lengthening, and suddenly gardens are full of colour.

My favourite flower and perfume of all is lilac. In my front garden we have a small lilac bush and this year it has bloomed early, because we had such a mild winter.

 I adore that heavenly smell and colour

and the heart-shaped leaves.

It's produced lots of blooms, so I've been able to indulge myself and bring some inside. The lilac season is a short one, and I try to make the most of it. I like to put it in a green vase because the colours go so well together.

Walt Whitman described the flower in his poem 'When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd':

'In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green'
Lilac has long been regarded with superstition, and many people still do not bring it into the house in case it invites disaster. This is especially true of the white variety, but also of hawthorn, or 'may' blossom. I, however, am not superstitious, and continue to revel in its perfume and colour, as well as being inspired to make things.

Here is a lilac cross-stitched bookmark which I made from a kit. I really enjoyed sewing it, and love the tactile nature of the stitches.

I also made a crochet patchwork blanket in the same colour combination, with the addition of cream. It's a very simple one which is sewed together, instead of crocheted, and quite small.

Those colours really make me think of this time of year!