Winter has definitely arrived, a Scottish winter, one day miserable, rainy, windy and bitterly cold, the next a day of blue skies and sun (but still cold in the shade).
Yesterday was a beautiful winter day of sun and clear skies and a day to garden. So, before we start our series of Advent reflections next week, we will look back over the garden year. It was a day to tidy and think about where we started in the spring, and plan ahead to next spring.
The first signs of last Spring came early, in December 2024 – these snowdrops were at the foot of a tree hiding almost out of sight. It is so easy to look at the big picture and miss the signs of hope and joy at our feet.
As Spring arrived in March and April and grew into summer there was much work to cope with to keep our garden blossoming and productive, making spaces for rest and reflection for all. It was a struggle to keep plants growing in the face of the days and days of little or no rain. But day by day, the garden survived and grew furiously when it did rain. Just when it was most needed, the rain came, just enough to keep it all going.
Then into Autumn. The trees suddenly becoming the stars of the show as they prepared for winter. Through the summer they were the backdrop to all the other flowers, just green but now all their other colours showed through until the leaves dropped off and now we wait again for the new buds to open in the spring.
Every part of the garden has its own special beauty, the big plants, the small ones, the flamboyant ones and the plain ones and all are needed for the garden to be fertile and complete.
