Winter Solstice

I can’t claim to be a grown-up, and live in terror of the day when they find out I’m faking it. But after half a lifetime of jumping up and down with anticipation of birthdays, Christmas, the Easter bunny and tax rebates, I think I’ve decided that my favorite day of the year is the 21st of December. There are trees in houses that ward off winter, bright packages in supplication and lights of good cheer against the dark and the cold begging entrance at the windows. In the joy to be found in front of the fire and at a table soon to be groaning with bountiful festivity, it is this night that turns my gaze forward.

On this day of early darkness and late light, I’ll pause amid the cooking preparations and step outside into the cold and survey a garden in the depths of sleep. In the west, a pale sunset and I imagine these lands on this night thousands of years gone by, when my ancestors huddled in the cold and dark and fear in a savage, unforgiving world lit only by fire. I wonder when it was that they understood that the very next day would bring longer light. I wonder when it was that they knew that this was the end of the darkness.

Because it’s on the 21st December that I know the days start getting longer again and for a gardener, it’s really the beginning of the calendar year. Twelfth Night, three weeks from then, is when the Christmas decorations come down. Three weeks from that, the daffodils start pushing their first cheeky heads from the ground, as if in defiance of the worst Father Winter still has to offer. And offer the worst he does, as winter is a jealous and cruel soul, keeping his grip on us as long as he can.

But there comes a day when the crocus blooms, those great triumphant heralds of spring, in defiance of the still short days and the late snows that are winter’s feeble toehold. Spring will not be held back; she will fling her multi-colored boa across her shoulders and smack Winter in the face and banish him for another year.

It’s in this time that I love to walk the neighbourhood and peer like a nosy biddy into others’ gardens. My neighbour to the right has a far better crop of crocus at this time of year, but then he only has a wee terrier to worry his garden, I have boys who play football. Another neighbor didn’t prune his butterfly bushes last autumn, and I notice the leylandii hedge at the top of the road has been uprooted and replanted with yew. Yew is almost as fast growing and is a very thirsty hedge. Some say it’s where we get Yule logs from. My garden has early iris as do many others, and the daffs hike their spikes in a race against the tulips, long after St. David’s Day. The pussywillows are budding as is the willow at the bottom of the garden and spring, the harlot, will not be refused. Even the roses, pruned with a vengeance in November, are poking pink buds out in defiance of a gardener’s discipline. All this a scant eight weeks away, which helps to make the dwindling days of autumn bearable.

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