8 hours Ago By Alice Vincent
D epending on when you’re reading this, the year may just have turned: the winter solstice in the UK takes place at 9.19am on Saturday 21 December. We are shifting out of the darkness.
There’s actually something of a pause before daylight starts gradually stretching out again – as Katherine May points out in her perennial bestseller Wintering, sunrise and sunset remain the same for a few days. “The original meaning is revealed in the Latin etymology of the word solstice: sol stit . The sun has stopped,” May wrote.
Traditionally, I’ve clung on to the winter solstice with equal, if not more fervour than Christmas. January may be bleak and riddled with bossy instructions to self-improve but at least the days are getting longer. More daylight means more time in the garden and more light for the plants.
The early harbingers of spring – snowdrops, witch hazel blossom, the heady whiff of sweet box – all begin to appear. But as well as that great drug of gardening – anticipation – I hope to use this year’s winter solstice as something of a moment to reflect on my gardening year. December gardening jobs are, like flowers, somewhat thin on the ground.
The age-old lists suggest you tidy the shed or clean your tools. It’s a time when you can ignore the outdoors in real terms and peruse that pile of seed catalogues instead. You could rake up leaves or you could leave them to rot down back into the earth for gloriously lazy compost.
You could prune your roses, but you’ve got at least a couple of months yet to get on with that. While I will probably do a bit of gardening with at least one of just under eight hours of daylight days, I have a slightly more subjective list. I’m not sure I’ve ever gardened less than this year: between work, travelling and childcare it’s been difficult to do much more than grab a bit of time while the toddler mucks around with gravel.
And so I intend to catch up with it, the way I might with old friends. I will wrap up warm and make a pot of tea, put a cushion and maybe a blanket out on my favourite seat and take it all in. I’ll assess what worked and what didn’t.
I’ll make a mental note to be better at staking next year. More than this, I want to steep in it, this lovely space that I am so lucky to have. I will notice how the light falls and where, what has grown well despite no intervention from me.
Where the cobwebs have been strung up like Christmas decorations and which plants are in conversation with one another. The year is turning; this one seems to have gone so fast. And here is an opportunity to take a moment to find a grounding.
.
