Someone’s been busy
New Year’s Day and all is quiet about the garden.
I saw a quote the other day via Twitter (a friend re-tweeted a quote from Nigel Slater which had been tweeted by a fan which was then also re-tweeted by Nigel Slater himself – so I suppose he approved):
“I hear people describing the days following Christmas Day as ‘flat’. I am of another mind. They are peaceful days, gentle days that are as much a part of Christmas as those leading up to Christmas Eve.”
Amen to that. In amongst the celebrations and intermittent scurryfungeing we must not forget to take time out to reflect and appreciate the good things in our lives. The lull after Christmas gives us a moment to reflect. And we can also cheer ourselves with the fact that we are past the shortest day of the year – the Winter solstice was on 21st December – so from now on, as Rob MacFarlane said (retweeted by our Nigel again)
“light begins its slow climb back and night yields its reach. Midwinter, yule, the year’s pivot, Earth’s rebirth, a dawn of hope.”
And in the garden the rebirth and dawn of hope is well under way. The Hellebores were true to their alternate moniker (Christmas Rose) flourishing outside the patio doors. Even many of the “annuals” are looking far more hardy than I imagined, having survived from the summer and forming buds already.
And throughout the borders bulbs are spearing upwards through the cool damp soil. The identity of many of these bulbs is a mystery to me as, like a squirrel with nuts, I haphazardly buried many of them in the autumn, fondly believing that I would remember what I put where. Now I am engaged in a slowly evolving version of the Memory Game in which I will preogessively discover if my guesses are correct about the location of daffodils, aliums, tulips, ranunculus, muscari and whatever else I might have planted.
Perhaps my New Year’s Resolution should be to plan more carefully.
I’ll make a note.
Midlife Gardener 
scurryfungeing – storming it with this front runner for word of the year 01/01/2019
Thanks @sasathaz – I can’t honestly take credit for this, but happy to be sponsoring an early favourite. We have been scurryfungers hereabouts for some time thanks to our good friend Pippa. Make of that what you will…