Coming up for air

Well, hello again. I stepped away from this blog unintentionally almost eight weeks ago and have found it blissfully easy to choose life over blogging in the interim.  It would be an easy habit to slip into.

Truth is, I find it easy to blog about the daily delights of the garden but when something of enormous significance is happening, my brain doesn't want to connect with my fingers. And that something is that my dad got ill just before Christmas Eve and died at the end of January.  He had to be hospitalised when his chest infection escalated into pneumonia and pleurisy but, in the last two weeks of his life, was reunited with my mum, the love of his life over six decades of blissful marriage.  As she has dementia, she hasn't fully understood that he's gone but I think that's a blessing, given the grief she would otherwise be experiencing.

Dad, Singapore, 1961

I've written in the past of my parents' dementia. My dad had a form of Alzheimer's which seemed to affect his co-ordination more than memory.  Although increasingly frail and unsteady, he remained welcoming and interested right up to mid December when he seemed to make up his mind that it was time to go. He was 84. He'd been moved into a care home in November as he could no longer look after himself; there, he was without my mum as she'd been taken into hospital. They'd been together for so long, propping each other up.  He'd accepted the move with his customary good grace but without her, what was the point? 

Dementia is a cruel disease, slowly stripping away the brain's essential functions.  My Dad recovered from lymphatic cancer at the turn of the millenium only to very slowly circle the edges of dementia, spiralling inwards until, in the last year, the illness steadily pulled him down into the vortex.  He was a loving father and husband to the end, always the polite gentleman.

The family has had a long time to watch the gradual living loss of our parents and, as such, the grieving process began months back.  I'm saddened by my dad's demise but not mourning; I still have my mum to think about.  My lovely dad had a wonderful life, full of love and laughter, travels and interests, family and friends and he found time for them all.  What more could anyone ask of our time on this earth?

Mum and Dad in happier times.

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If you've read to the end of this post, thank you.  It not only explains my prolonged absence from blogging but has helped emotionally to be able to write about my dad's passing. His funeral is this Friday. Death comes to us all but life goes on and I'll be back soon with news of my winter gardening exploits and a new project that I'm involved in. They say gardening is the best therapy and I'd have to agree.

The Reversal of the Sun

Last night, the skies cleared and, even here in well-lit urban London, there was a glorious bright moon and lots of glimmering stars to be seen.  It was an awesome portent of the solstice to come in the early hours of this morning.

Solstice translates as 'sun standing still' but it's a misnomer because the solstice defines the moment that the earth shifts so that the North Pole starts to tilt back towards the sun and our days lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere. For our Antipodean friends, the opposite is true - sorry, guys, your days are now getting shorter.  For any gardeners not bogged down in the more commercially oriented event of Christmas, there might be a frisson of excitement at the thought of our days slowly getting longer and lighter over the next few months. But I'm warned by my diary page for today ominously declaring: 'Winter Solstice. Winter begins.' Suddenly I have visions of Narnia's winter descending across the land. But without kindly Mr Tumnus.

The solstice was officially at 4.48 this morning although there would have been very little to see as sunrise wasn't (allegedly) until 8.05 a.m.  Although at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, it's the sunset that is more important in winter. Stonehenge, with standing stones reckoned to be over 5,000 years old, is a site sacred to neo-pagans who turn up to celebrate the solstice twice a year. Scientists believe that the site was originally a burial place for over 500 years before the stones were erected.  Whatever the truth, there's a powerful atmosphere there for a fanciful child.  I vividly recall walking among, and touching, the stones as a young child; my dad liked to take us kids off to see sites of cultural or historical interest (Dover Castle, Land's End, Magna Carta, the Round Table, etc).  Maybe I was a geeky kid (no response needed, thanks) but those visits have stayed with me and the stones, especially, wow, they exerted a powerful magic over my imagination.  At the time they weren't roped off.  Anyone could park up on the road and just walk around; you can't do that these days. I don't think we gave a lot of thought to the possibility of the stones toppling, despite evidence that some of them already had.

What is remarkable is that the solstice has been marked in many different cultures for hundreds of years. The winter solstice has always been an important event in the northern world; it was a day that marked the start of winter and a time for slaughtering cattle. In that way winter feed was saved and meat added to food stores over the coldest winter months. Our ancestors traditionally lit fires, told stories and generally hunkered down in the dark days of winter, cheered up by beer and wine brewed during the year that was then ready for drinking - a tradition carried on today by those (myself included) who prepare sloe gin or other festive treats from foraged, or home-grown, fruits.

I'm hoping that the solstice isn't going to be a harbinger of imminently plummeting temperatures.  Inevitably, they can't be far off but, for now, I'm revelling in milder conditions to get jobs done in the garden, usually just managing a couple of hours before darkness falls at 4 pm. We had lukewarm sunshine and temps of 60F on Sunday; if it had been February, we'd have been welcoming in an early spring.  Today was greyer, wetter and a lot windier but, waiting for a pause between gusts of wind, I managed to photograph a few of the plants still flowering to show how mild it is.  I have snowdrops in flower next to summer's bright red geraniums and calendula next to primulas. The echinacea is, admittedly, the last one for this year.