Something in the Air

The end of January and outside it is still dark as I grope my way down the stairs and put on the kettle for that first early morning cup of tea. Yet there is something in the air, a special magic when I open the kitchen door to let the dog out.  A hushed dark stillness, rain-washed overnight, hangs above the garden. I wait and watch in the warmth of the doorway as black softens into muzzy grey and the long limbs of the trees across the garden lift out of the darkness. From the upper branches of a hawthorn in the hedge comes the muted song of a robin. Then from the top of the elm over the road comes the piecing high note of a thrush, carefully repeating his song, again and again and again. Across the lane, in the bushes on top of the bank opposite, there is movement; birds flashing from one branch to another, silhouetted for a second against the hedge. Excited, long tailed tits.

As dawn opens her wings, a tingle, a shot of magic runs through the darkness and the dampness. Sharp, fresh, exciting; the year is turning. 

I am not the only one to have felt the shift in the seasons. There has been a great tit singing in the plum tree just outside the vegetable shed down at the farm, the familiar, strident ‘teacher, teacher’ call of early spring filling the damp air with its promise of things to come. I watched a pair of blue tits cavorting around each other a couple of days ago and I am sure the rooks in the wood above the small holding are getting restless as they lift and fall with the wind above the rookery. The low dark cloud around them carries the sound of their squabbling as they jostle for landing space amongst the moving limbs of the leafless ash.

On a neighbour’s double chimney pot sit two dark crows thinking about nest building, heads bent together prying into the dark interior of the stack.  

A week ago, there were tightly budded clusters of tiny snowdrops at the top of the lane, knuckled down against the bank of ivy at the side of the road, holding out against the rain and wind driving off the hills. Now they have opened; flawless white flowers standing out against the dark as I walk home in the evening head down against the cold. There are yellow crocuses on the lawn and a single celandine hiding beneath the bay tree.

In the corner of the bottom field, just beyond the boundary fence below the wood and the rookery, someone, somewhen, planted three hazel trees and coppiced them so they rise like outstretched fingers from the stools that were left when they were cut. The male catkins appeared before Christmas and now look long and showy, pale green against the bare branches of the ash that grows beside them. I look carefully and find tiny scarlet tipped female buds growing from the lower stems. They will open in a few days into minute vibrant crimson tufts; small, beautiful harbingers of Spring.

It is all too early but there is no going back.

At the beginning of the month in a surge of enthusiasm and optimism, on a wet, windy morning with storm Eleanor driving across the allotment, rocking the polytunnel and threatening to tear it from the ground, I collected together small pots, an assortment of cell plant trays, plant labels, and mixed a tub of part soil, homemade compost and well-rotted manure and set about sowing seeds. In pots I sowed Sweet Peas; four tiny black seeds, saved from last summer, in each and carefully popped them into a propagator to stop the mice from feasting on them. Over the plant trays I optimistically sprinkled Artic King lettuce seed, and more optimistically Coriander I had collected from the plant that took over a corner of the polytunnel two summers ago and finally totally optimistically I found a half empty packet of parsley seed and scattered that over a tray. Having carefully watered everything I stood back and waited. I put my money on the Sweet Peas but in fact it was the lettuce seedlings which appeared first about ten days ago. As I lifted the bubble wrap I cover everything with at night there they were; tiny miracles. Then the Coriander appeared against all my expectations.

Disappointment inched its way into the polytunnel as morning after morning I lifted the covers on the empty Sweet Pea pots. Had the mice miraculously found a way into the propagator, had the seed failed? Then two days ago they appeared, thin and spindly but definitely seedlings, four to a pot and if nothing else eats them and they don’t rot through my clumsy watering I have the beginnings of my flower garden for the summer.

Now I need to buy the rest of my seed.

It has started. Tomorrow January becomes February and the year is already unravelling, rolling out in front of us, carrying us onwards into the distance.