Taking the air

This is bouncing up and down weather. Time to beam back at the sun. An unexpected treat to be revelled in. Treat these days as a boost. Recharge your energy.  Embrace and enjoy. Use the power you absorb to move forward and deal with the tricky stuff. The next stretch is always scary. Dreary? Dire? Delightful? Who knows? Don’t fret too much about why and where the warmth comes from. Fretting never did change a thing. Change is made when you have the energy so to do. Now is the moment to bask and smile.

Whichever way you look at it, Valentine’s Day has a murky past. At least two beheadings of Roman priests who bore the name. Martyrdoms. Medieval bishops called Valentine burned to a crisp. Add to these ancient miseries, blisteringly tortuous tales of unrequited this and mistaken-identity that. It’s a wonder that February 14th became a source of celebration at all. Back when screens existed solely to prevent the driver’s glasses blowing off when she or he was at the wheel of a car, news was something you could touch. In our house, there was much anticipation of hilarity on February 14th when time came to turn to the Valentine’s notices in the classified section of The Times. ‘Squidgy tells Squashy that his heart remains hers’, ‘Little bunny keep your eyes open for a tiger on the 6.15 at Paddington’. I don’t do them justice, but you get the idea. The notices went on for pages and the pages weren’t titchy tabloid. There is more anonymity on paper, it’s a gentler m...

Green shoots, new dawns, fresh starts. Like all clichés, they stem from the truth. Humans have an in-built need to believe that dark times will become brighter.  We need to know that we can begin afresh. At first glance, the garden looks mostly brown.   Damp and squidgy underfoot. Too much grey mist. Once you see a green shoot, I find that you can't stop seeing them.  In the garden, green shoots are literal indicators that brighter things are on their way.  The winter is a strengthening time in the garden. Roots are put down in the dark days when less energy is needed to support the plants above ground. By rocking the plants, wind strengthens the roots.  Plants do much of their most important stuff quietly and completely out of sight. Let's learn from that. It's still time to hunker down, rest what needs to be rested, quietly build what needs to be built. This year, some of those that I love have started building new lives and new b...