-
Almost
It’s almost, almost high spring. The warmth of May taking a dip to freezing for the last week, giving one last battle to stretch our hope of summer just that little longer. We will get there. Next Friday is 24C…. It’s coming…
The land is glorious, psychedelic green, my human eyes just melting in joy with the endless shades. The trees are alive with that spring bustle, birds and breeze and the hum of big fat bumbles. It’s ‘not quite dark’ at 10pm, the run up to solstice, constant expansion, riding the wave crest in a rush to summer. This is the beginning of my favourite time of year. My season. It’s a long time coming here in the UK, and fleeting when it stays, but that building energy, the drum underfoot of life, the sweep of vibrancy across the land – delicious. I want to relish every second of it.
The smells on the wind are of summer, of dark earth saturated by heavy spring rains, of the sweetness of full leaves and hotter days to come. Night falls softly, heavily, air thick and dark, stars bright and the scent of flowers waiting in the dusk. The wave is building, the tumble and rush of spring is at that tipping point. Let’s fall into it joyously. Bare feet, sun-warmed skin, days that never quite set. Time for exploration, adventures, movement, expansion. Soul season. Sumer is icumen in!
-
Stars and thoughts
My favourite time of the day is just after dusk. As the sky deepens to blue then ink then black, and one by one, the stars come out.
When the breeze dies down and the background roar of valley life finally quietens. People shut curtains and lights go out and the world settles down to peace. Finally, I breathe out.
I stand outside the house and look up into infinity. Stars, planets, picking out their different colours the longer I look. The air is easier at night. Scents on the breeze tell me of coming warmth, of gathering clouds, of flowers ready to bloom. I relax my eyes and stare upwards, face wrapped in darkness, soul soothed by those tiny diamonds in the sky.
How long have we stood here and looked up? This village, this house, this fleeting life. I feel small but held by these stars. Who looked at this same patch of sky when that light first started its journey? How many lives blinked in and out as each star burns brightly into the darkness. Constancy. Vastness. Something else away from the surface busyness and bustle and fighting and anger in the world. Something calm, and ancient, and beyond us.
In recent years, the sky is streaked with satellites, more and more each year, more than I count on my fingers in the few short minutes I stand. That incessant reminder of human technology in a place that is so much more. Look up, and dissolve into time, but no longer entirely. Now there are constant reminders of that busyness, circling constantly above our heads. I don’t know how I feel about them. Unease, I think. A little novelty, a little resignation.
But beyond the endless man-made pinpoints of light, the planets still shine. Constellations glimmer and move slowly across the sky. The moon rises and sets, no human bases on it yet, although I’m sure it’s not long. I don’t know how I feel about that, either. Disturbed, but unsure why. A kind of grief, lightly, hinting. But for now moon stays calm, rising and setting, waxing and waning. And of course, it will continue.
All these thoughts, I send up to the sky. To the constant stars, to the passage of time. Time deeper than humanity. And so it continues.
-
British Summer Time
Having spent the morning raging against the powers that be for liberating an extra hour from me, I am slightly mollified by the fact that it is actually almost lunch time, a pleasant surprise and a slight bonus of the interference with the way time works that sends me into week-long jetlag every single year. Honestly, I hate when the clocks change, especially when an hour is missing and somehow I’m already behind even more than usual. But the lure of an early lunch is potentially making up for it. Slightly.
Of course, this first day of BST is full of torrential rain, gales, and that UK slate-grey sky. I’m inside, with a hat, and a blanket, and a coffee, and the heater angled so that the blanket makes a little warm bubble in which I’m luxuriating. There is relaxing Sunday music on the speaker that I can’t really hear over the hammering raindrops on the roof. A true early spring Sunday.
Bonuses of the season are starting to abound, though. My collection of acorns found in various pockets throughout the winter and planted into a herd of cottage cheese pots have started to grow. A tiny forest of oak trees, filled with potential. Bee seeds found in the bottom of the seed box and optimistically sprinkled into some mud have actually sprouted. Forced hyacinths, of which only one came out at Yule, have decided that spring is definitely a better option and are resplendent on the garden table, flinging heady scent into the air and glowing with colour. Tiny blossoms frill and flit on the cherry tree. Bees bumble and hum in the willow. And with the shifting of the entirety of time itself, it may even stretch to being slightly light on the horizon come 9pm. All good things.
We went to see ‘Ryan Gosling in space’ this week, and I went in entirely blind, not knowing that the film was also a book and having seen zero trailers. Safe to say we had a great time and now can’t stop saying “amaze amaze amaze” and thumbs-downing everything. We got those seats that recline, had a coffee, and felt very boujie. Would recommend.
Last week was one of those weeks where the outlook calendar is full of different coloured blocks and weaving in between them all is like playing Tetris. But I still managed to get outside and do a pokemon go route each day, which I’ve been trying to do for about 3 months straight at this point. Consistency isn’t my strong point. However, it is now done, and the bonus being one more level up, so am feeling a bit happy about that. Almost 10 years in to this game and I think am just playing out of spite at this point, but got to take the wins! Also the relentless university grind continues, but I managed to add a few thousand words to another few thousand words, have many meetings, and interspersed all that with breakfasts and noodles with friends and a look round a refurbished building, so all in all a good week.
This week’s calendar is deliciously and suspiciously empty. I am intending to fill it with spring things in between the relentless word count grinding. For now though, it is hour-early lunch time and some cold leftover noodles await. Happy spring!
-
The rush
Oh my goodness the sun. Actual warmth. Birdsong and flowers and sky stretching relentless blue. Casting off the winter coat with trepidation. And then the absolute joy of realising that feeling, that it is warm enough to continue ambling on with that coat slung over your arm, even sleeves rolled up with pale forearms drinking in the rays. The dizzy lightheadedness as blood fizzes and pops with something weird, something unexplainable, but then you put your finger on it, it’s happiness, and the pure simple joy of being alive in the spring. Breathing deep lungfuls of air that tastes like possibility. Smelling hints of those longer days, light into the night, deliciously close now. The deep buzz of a bumblebee and you realise how you missed the insect cacophony through the winter, that one joyous moment satisfying a yearning you didn’t even realise. Colour bursts from dormant bulbs and your eyes relax and settle into the season, instead of straining for a hint of anything other than grey. You feel light. The best months are coming.
-
Reawakening
Birdsong sweetly finds its way into my dreams, on a breeze through the window left ajar through the night. Half closed eyes and that hint of spring in my nostrils. Flowers opening. Bees sleepily visiting, waking from long winter hibernations, a lone buzz on a cool sunny morning. Stepping outside, feet bare on freezing flags, but squinting against the sun and feeling hope on the wind.
This spring is pulling me forward, one step in front of the other, quickening from the doldrums of last year. I broke connection with the land and space around me over those months. Retreat, stillness, languishing in some unknown torpor. I stayed in and didn’t walk the land. Rhythms of water and moorland beat unheard. I slowed, silenced, stayed away. I drew into myself, and didn’t know why. But now this spring unfurls me, and I feel like stretching to the sky.
It was observation, watching, waiting for the future to pull me forward. Time weaver, tired from straddling the past and present, the raging ocean, the dark whirlpool of memory. But after the storm there is calm. In the moment we may not know why. But last year I finally trusted the process. My world shrank and helpless, I let it. In that surrender there is healing.
I blink in the bright light, and true, 12 months mostly indoors will do that. I feel a pull to the land once more, walking my old paths, following the old ways back to something that is me but newer. With the rising sun comes a relentless possibility, and small smile to the sky, that first ray of light after a long winter. I feel the awakening in my cells, in my soul. I breathe in and fill my lungs with that fresh, timid air of the first days of the changing season.
The darkness was needed, the months away from the land, the breaking of a connection so it can grow anew. Isolation, time away, space to process and trust and surrender to the turn of the earth. But there was no nourishment, no soul-searching, no rest. I ran myself down, working too hard, losing myself in scrolling, spending agonising hours inside my mind in spirals and twists and turns. It taught me what I didn’t want. And in turn, all the truth remains. The storm retreats. Everything is shiny and new, ready and waiting.
I raise my arms and welcome in the spring.
-
Birdsong and bulbs
Wow February, you’ve treated us here today in the UK. The early mist gave way to bright blue skies and the first warm sunshine of the year. The birds have been in full voice, blue tits popping in and out the next box, and I flung open the shed door to attempt to burn off some of the layer of winter mildew that has inevitably settled on every surface.
I put the lemon tree outside to sit in the sun and opened every single window as wide as it would go to let the fresh air clear out the cottage. Best of all, the sun has worked its way just high enough to shine on my favourite sitting spot. Spring is really coming along! I love to think of these days as full of birdsong and bulbs, as little green shoots begin to pop up and feathered friends begin to seek out nest locations. The magpies are beginning to tentatively return to their nest from last year – roosting on the branch just below, hopping in and straight out, playing around and around. I hope they’ll stay there again this year.
I know there will be frost to come, and the forecast shows rain for the days ahead. But this one day gives me a much-needed lift, a glimpse of longer, warmer and brighter days ahead. I’ve pottered around the garden a little this morning, cutting back last year’s teasel heads, scattering the remaining seeds on the cobbles for the birds.
The bright days lift my mood massively. I find myself dragged down by the endless grey of UK winter – at first a novelty, but after a few months it becomes a weight. I think everyone feels it, somehow – the explosion of joy that a sunny day brings in winter is quite fun to be a part of. People out and about walking, gathering, having a chat, exchanging pleasantries as they pass on the pavement or towpath. The buzz of distant DIY power tools echoing down the valley as soon as the sun comes out, even if it’s still in the low single figures. One or two bright days in the middle of the seemingly endless grey is such a treat here!
So today, I try and get as much washing done as possible to hang in the sunlight. I wipe windows and feel an urge to move the furniture around (my favourite thing to do) and generally come out of hibernation a little. Do you feel this in spring, too? We’re still part of this big, ever shifting wheel. We feel the seasons change, even now, even if we forget those parts of us long hidden.
With tea in hand, I head out to enjoy the last few rays of sunshine, and hope for more tomorrow.
-
Snowdrops and the return of Spring
Amidst the wild winds of Storm Malik this weekend, I glanced out of the window to see the first little snowdrops of the season dancing their heads in the gales. Small delicate white petals nodding this way and that as the wind whipped over the low stone wall beside them.
Amidst the storm, a reminder that soon the days will lengthen, the sun will warm us, the endless UK grey will give way to bluer skies and louder birdsong. I do not mind so much the days before winter solstice. The darkening and quieting of all, as we settle down to winter. It is the drawn out waiting of January, February and into March – that all pervading greyness, the damp cold, the washed out colours and brown twiggy borders. The trees that seem to take forever to bud, the waiting, waiting for those promised spring days that are always just around the corner. My mood settles with the grey. That something just out of reach.
I am impatient, as always. I want summer, with the heat and 11pm light and heady scents of honeysuckle in the dusk. I thrive with that rush of energy. My soul stretches out to fill those long, bright days. Here, still in winter, I feel small, drab, as if those days will never come. But they will, I know, and even now signs of change are popping up, however small.
The snowdrops are accompanied by the sun peeking back over the top of the valley in mid-January, shining into the windows to the back of the house, even just for a few minutes each day. I rush upstairs and throw the windows open, close my eyes and bask my face in the weak rays, the pale golden light.
Bulbs planted in Autumn begin to poke tentative leaves above ground – tulips, daffodils, crocuses – bringing the promise of colour and flower and those insects that love to feed on their pollen.
I miss the busy buzz of bees in the background, that soundtrack of spring and summer. Soon the tree bees will return (hopefully) to the attic, buzzing around the stone roof, whizzing around the garden, mating in piles of legs, wings and fuzz.
It is time, too, to begin to move myself. It is all too easy to sink into stasis when everything around you is deep in winter slumber. Although yes, stasis is needed. Winter of the soul. Balance in all, the ever-turning spiral. Now, along with the slowly awakening land, it is time for me to awaken, too. To fall back in love with the area I live in. To take those little sparks of energy, when they appear, and direct them into a life, into enjoyment, laying bases for things to come. Like the turn of the earth, to wax and wane with the seasons.
Now the snowdrops are here, spring will turn ever quicker, a reminder that even when all seems silent on the surface, inside little bulbs life is continuing to thrive. Even in the frozen dead of winter, deep down under the soil, plants and animals still feel the change of the days and ready themselves. I hope I can do the same.
With that, I re-fill my mug with tea and pull on an old jumper. I head outside, in search of more signs of spring.
