Watching

It’s what you do when it rains

We both are very still, the garden and I. Watching. Waiting. It feels like a who will blink first kind of moment. It was a very sleepy slide into 2025. I watch the garden everyday mostly through a window, as the weather encouraged me to stay inside. The garden is still, like I am. Neither of us are doing much as we both wait for warmer days. Washing gets put out in weather that doesn’t suggest it will dry. In a way it is what is perhaps needed, a slow start to things, an enforced sit and wait. Books are read. Cleaning is done. It really is a time of nothingness. These are the dead days and I am ok with that.

When I finally make it into the garden to do some work, I weed. I clear away foxgloves that are no longer flowering but are now seed filled spires. As I tidy the garden, it reveals to me how things are progressing. The stillness and wait of the past few weeks have given me time to make plans for the Autumn, a weird idea I know. I think it was Vita Sackville-West, who said somewhere at sometime, that “summer”, is the time to make your garden plans. When the garden is in full bloom, she encourages you to take notes of what you see, so come the season of change which is Autumn, you know what you want to do. As I look around the garden I note that the garden alongside the path to front door from the gate needs some love. I envisioned a sea of lavender surrounding the roses but instead I have a hodge podge of some lavenders, some thyme (which loves this space), some self seeders such as columbine, fox gloves and lupins. It sounds like an attractive mix but it seems too thin and patchy. I make a note to clean it out properly, feed up the soil and plant with more planning than it currently has. Perhaps some lawn will vanish as the bed expands to add more roses? It is a thought.

When I mention that cleaning is done, I mean cleaning is done. Each grey day I tick off a room in the house and spend a good couple of hours doing what should be a spring clean, it is just a little late. It feels good to have the house organised and we also manage to tick off some tasks that have been languishing for too long around the house. Windows sills are painted. If the days are going to be dull we can fill them with dull activities, we rationalise. I create for myself a new writing nook, a wfh home space or a corner to create. It looks out on the garden and I set myself the task of a photo a day to record it’s changes and progress over the year. It feels good to have something of my own to create in and new notebooks and pens are duly purchased to add to this space to create. I hope momentum will follow.

The lilies that have sat for the last two weeks have finally started to open. I am sure they are normally a before Christmas event. The dahlias are lush and starting to bud up. Poppies flower one day and are gone the next. Echinaceas are slow. They long for heat as do I. For what should be high summer the garden is very green. Bees work on regardless. There is enough to keep them busy despite the weather. My mind turns towards the new year and what it brings. I think of what I should do with it. Do I pick a word to celebrate what I want to achieve? Do I make a list of things I want to do? What achievements do I have? These thoughts enter and flow on. Instead I watch a blackbird on the peach tree from my desk. Maybe that is all I will do this year. Observe.