Winter Garden

1. Tiny bud 'knots'
2. Earth-toned palette
3. Crow Castle (can you spot the golden robed Crow?)
4. Pluto's Calling Card:
'Hello, Persephone?'
5. Plum Trees, mid-sway
6. Evergreen Halo?
7. The other side of the moat (Azaleas-in-waiting).
8. Robai, or, Wintersweet, fragrant harbingers of spring, came over from China in the 17th century. Robai means candle plum, or waxwork plum.
               *
All that's missing from this series are the voluptuous camellias!

"What was an inner light becomes a consuming fire that spreads outward." Karl Marx

 There is, in the natural world, an order in place which we do well to go along with. Living here, this is very easy to do. As you will see in the pictures above, the burning of the palms last week marking the beginning of the end of a cycle in the liturgical calendar, was mirrored by our annual ceremony of the burning of the grasses. At this time of year, there is a palpable sense of stirring, of the fiery embers at the core of things beginning to quicken. Colour begins again to peep out in the garden; scents begin to arise and tickle the senses--no better expression than 'God of Surprises' for me than when this happens and all around looks so drab and deeply at rest.

I was not able to attend the ceremony (midday on a Friday and mobbed!), but later on the same day went to see what I had never before seen: the pure black of the latterly dry golden shag. One has to see it on the same day because the very next morning, gardeners are out with their big twiggy brooms raking the burnt bits and each swept stroke renders that brief black bronze.

These next 5 or 6 weeks are a dreary period in the garden, but like the season of Lent, we know it is ultimately in the interests of later flourishing. With less to look out at one is invited and encouraged to turn in and patiently wait . . . and why not, when possible, in joyful hope?