Marking the winter solstice...
This week vanished in a whirl…of activity, visitors, conversations, heart-to-hearts…all apt perhaps, given the significance of a period that marks “a season of reflection, transition and duality…the interwoven energies of death and rebirth…the New Year of the natural world: the introspective season in the southern hemisphere; a time for planning, evaluating and preparing for the year to come” (quoted from Alchemilla’s 2024/25 Almanac). Although the shift may be incremental…from the one day to the next, it feels quite palpable. While the air may be crisp and cold and cause one to shiver to the bone, and coloured leaves continue their freefall or blow away on gale-force winds; somehow too, there’s a hint of spring in the air. Something is stirring below and although the pruning has only just begun, there are signs of germination, where up ‘til the weekend, the cycle was clearly on hold.
But now? The sense of anticipation has returned…we’re on the up…
On Sunday afternoon, Larry and I threw ourselves into huge compost activity. Between tractor loads of the mountain of this year’s prunings so far, I was alternately feeding in biscuits of cowpat and handfuls of blood and bone, which both required a good watering with each addition; when a half-turn left to pick up the hose revealed this vision of split sun-rays across the Field, that caught not only my eye but my breath with its beauty and also…instigated a mild sense of panic, as I recognised immediately that the effect was caused by an influx of smoke risen on a breeze that had clearly just changed direction!
But let’s backtrack! (Don’t worry…there was no imminent threat or likely calamity - that I knew for sure as it was our fire, and it was on the island in the middle of the dam! And yes, we had permission!).
Oh but the whole was the culmination of a rather sad tale…
I would have dozens and dozens of my own images of the weeping willow Salix babylonica that we planted as a tiny wee sapling, nothing but a bare stick, when goodness…how many years ago I can’t even say - but surely close to thirty, we increased the size of the dam and thereby our water-holding capacity, and for fun, made an island that we imagined may one day, be engulfed in the long, feathery streamers of that tree. As you can see…we succeeded! And it did seemingly, resemble the image above, forever.
But to find one of my pics I’d need to go trawling back years and so I’m including one from the book that Daniel Shipp captured some ten years ago, simply because it’s here at my fingertips. Little did we know then, that we would soon be on the brink of a drought like no other we had experienced. How lucky we were, that the years leading up to (and including) photographing the book, had yielded good rainfall. They were kind years. But once the photography was complete (and all the enormous process of writing and editing too), I recall a week of immense rain and days-long downpours. During one in particular when Larry and I walked ‘the orbital’ (the track Larry made and named, that runs around the edge of the paddocks), we literally had to hold onto the fence for dear life, passing one hand over another with an intense grip, the rush of water so great at a particular dip in the landform we could have lost our foothold.
And then, the rain stopped. There was no more. It was as if someone turned off the tap. At first it didn’t matter so much…afterall the dams were full to overflowing, and dry spells usually break. But this one didn’t. The months and years continued dry. Sure there were showers here and there, maybe a few summer thunderstorms - enough to tease. The drought continued through much of my ‘book touring’ and at one point, as I road-tripped through northern NSW (Guyra), south-east Queensland (Stanthorpe) and back via Moree and Coolah Creek, returning over the Blue Mountains route to Glenmore, it was quite horrifying to note we were just as dry and desperate as any of those big farming districts I’d traversed. Given we’re closer to the coast and quite honestly, within cooee of Sydney, most peeps would find that unexpected, but we too, had no grass. We were as much a dustbowl as anywhere in the land.
The dams dried up. Completely. Their bottoms were cracked and dry as any image you might conjure of the outback in tough times. Luckily (well…with foresight) we sank a bore, perhaps around the same time as we did the work on the dams (I explained the great water works in the book). It was a big thing…bores do not come cheap, but we’d already experienced dry times and we knew it was an insurance policy we needed to have up our sleeve. And so it was we were saved by the bore, as Larry would pump up just enough to keep a trickle available - primarily for the kitchen garden. Everything else just had to survive as best it could. We lost some good trees. The Juniper hedge in the Barn Garden is still recovering. Then came the fires, then Covid…and soon, blessed rain. And it rained and it rained and it rained…
But it was all too late for the willow. At first there were signs of a struggle and we hoped and hoped like mad that maybe, just maybe, it might recover. We had arborists do some work to see if we could resurrect it, and hoped again as a tenuous shoot might reappear…but then even those stopped. For awhile a flock of Corellas came to roost in the evenings, but even they came no longer. The tree was simply dead…a sad and sorry eyesore.
And so…a couple of weeks ago when we had some other necessary tree-work being done, a pair of young men rowed over to the dam and sadly, took to those branches with their screaming chainsaws. It was a sad moment…I didn’t watch, but still I could hear.
Of course rowing the resulting logs back in the dinghy would have been…well, time-consuming if not impossible. A bonfire we thought. To commemorate the joy and beauty that splendid tree had once bestowed upon the landscape. On the winter solstice, suggested Clemmie. And so we did!
As winter’s golden light flooded the valley, setting the entire landscape a-shimmer…
And after Larry had gone on mission after rowing-mission during the course of the day, with boat-loads of windfall (after first strimming all the grass on the island as low as he could)…
He lit the match…
As swallows soared and darted in the apricot tinted sky and frogs sang their chorus, the flames licked high and we could feel their warmth reaching the dam-bank from where we watched safely on…whilst gasping at the reflections in the still waters of all the landscape doubled in clarity.
The glow viewed from the behind the warmth of the kitchen window continued through the night…and by morning, the logs were all but gone (pop your sound on to listen to the night-sounds!).
And then….as we happily turned the compost next afternoon…
Whoops! The grass on the island was so very thick, Larry was worried this might happen! Although it couldn’t really go anywhere, there was a bit of smoke for just a short while…
And we momentarily had our very own Pirates of the Caribbean-cum-Poldark-ian film set! Before the breeze changed direction and the whole episode faded away as quickly as it began…
And we went back to the compost!
But truly? The dams, the island and the rowboat have been such a part of our lives. When the girls were little, we had Col (who you’ve heard me mention at times - he was instrumental in the wider landscape here - from dam and paddock-finessing to soil improvement, fencing and creek-work - we nicknamed him ‘Capability Col’ a long time ago) in his capacity as hobbyist ship-builder, make us a couple of pond yachts, which we named The Owl and The Pussycat. On occasion, we’d down tools and race those little yachts - pairing up with the controls on the shore - either Bonnie and me racing Larry and Clemmie (or the other way round), or Larry and me racing the girls….around the island. We hadn’t made the wide trench that connects the two dams deep enough to accommodate the keels of the yachts, even with the dams at full capacity, so our races were always restricted to the big dam or else we’d run aground - if only we’d realised at the time!
For each of the girls’ 10th (or early double-digit anyway!) birthdays, we made a scavenger hunt complete with clues that had young friends running amok all over the paddocks and garden in search of answers - both times necessitating a row across to the island to discover some message in a bottle! And during the dreaded lockdown year, the girls made a lovely picnic for our wedding anniversary in the quincunx, to which Larry rowed me rather haphazardly, via a circuitous route around the island, and through the passage so we could alight on the right shore! Bonnie used to row so regularly, she’s included doing so in the garden illustration of Glenmore (while Clemmie is depicted riding her horse).
The rowboat of course, is named The Pea Green Boat and has always reminded me of the one in which Larry rowed me away from our wedding, on the River Avon in Wiltshire. At the time I was mildly miffed it wasn’t a sleek teak number, all elegant, varnished timber; or a punt, the like of which you would find in some romantic painting…a girl trailing her fingers through the waters with a parasol held to protect her fair skin from the sun. But no…I was an Aussie girl with a healthy suntan who got rowed downstream in a fiberglass dinghy! It actually was wildly romantic…we were piped (the piper playing Waltzing Matilda in Scottish strains) from Lake House (then owned by a longtime naval friend of Larry’s pa) across the garden to the river, whose banks were speckled with daffodils; and as everyone whooped and cheered as Larry got to work on the oars, a half-dozen or so horses on the opposite bank took flight and galloped along with us. All the scene needed was a big “WB The End” to flash up…as we rounded the bend in the river and…out of sight, alighted from our little mode of transportation to hop into Larry’s car that was hidden in the bushes! A night in the city of Bath and then…Italy beckon’d!
And here we are…still playing rowboats! Whereas I had no idea back then, that we’d spend so many Sunday afternoons turning compost…
And now it’s time for the annual winter hack-back…
I wish you all a happy and hearty week ahead.
With warmest wishes,
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Tomatoes, coloured chard and spinach; lettuce, rocket, red elk mustard, cima di rapa, kohl rabi, parsnip, Jerusalem artichoke, fennel, celery, celeriac, pumpkin, carrot, beetroot. Lemons, oranges (Navel), mandarins. Rhubarb. Lovage, mint, chives, rosemary, thyme. Calendula, nasturtium and borage petals, fennel fronds.
Going / gone: onions, garlic, tomatoes, lovage
Seed saving: tomato
Sowing: maybe another round of Australian yellow leaf lettuce
Planting: the onions went in on the shortest day…just in the nick of time!
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: a rose here and there…a fennel or tansy stem and furry stems of lavender dentata (French lavender), another few jonquil stems for the kitchen windowsill; but a big bunch of chocolate pelargonium leaves - the ones that are huge and blotched with smudgy reddish-brown markings, combined with stems of dainty white flowers from apple-scented pels - a rather lovely combination for our midweek guest and now residing on my dressing table!
Perfumes and aromas: the perfume of ripe oranges is adrift in the kitchen garden…
Pruning and other: I got stuck into The Arc on Saturday morning, cutting back all but the ground-dwelling new leaves of Macleaya cordata, doing a big tidy of the Melianthus major who didn’t much enjoy the wind in the previous days and fiddling with the Leonotis leonurus or Lion’s Tail which will not quite do what I want it to! I got the onions planted before we lit the bonfire but spent ages collecting windfall for Larry to row to the dam, to ensure we’d get the logs to catch alight. Thalia has begun some of the winter pruning in the Borders…and given the rosemary hedges in the Hayshed a much needed going over.
I’ve alway wanted a wee island in a dam, but none of ours are big enough…and the regulations (if I had the fiscal means) applying to expansion are draconian these days. Fortunately the view from my seaside allotment embraces a couple of islands, though I suspect I won’t be rowing out to them anytime soon ! That video of the boat emerging from the smoke is lovely, as is the image of the two of you having (literally) embarked on married life.