Candlemas Snowdrops

 'The Snowdrop, in purest white array, First rears her head on Candlemas day'

Folklore, an Old Rhyme

 

Snowdrops and Violets by Eva Francis (c) Rochdale Arts and Heritage Service; Supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation

Today is Candlemas, inextricably tied up with snowdrops in my head - one of my favourite flowers. There were often called Candlemas Lilies or Candlemas Bells in days gone by.

Many is the year that we've had snowdrops before Christmas even - often in colder times than this mild, wet winter has been. I can't say that my snowdrops 'reared their heads' today, but they are only just really starting to come out. I've always loved the way they flower even when snow is on the ground, they look too delicate for such cold. I suppose that's why the French call them Perce-Neige.

Snowdrops by Jennifer Johnson

But there is more to Candlemas than snowdrops, pretty as they are. It is a great marker in the year, significant because it says that Christmas is long gone and we have moved on, the year is already past its infancy. This day has been celebrated for thousands of years, and was also known as the Festival of Lights, the name coming from Roman times when Ceres (or Demeter in Greek) is supposed to have searched for her daughter Proserpine (Persephone) by the light of hundreds of candles. Proserpine had been abducted by Pluto, the god of the underworld, and needless to say, Ceres could not find her anywhere on earth. In rage, she brought life to a standstill: fruit, flowers and crops stopped growing, and a desert appeared wherever Ceres set her foot in the vain search for her daughter. Eventually, divine intervention was called for, and to cut a long story short, Proserpine - after eating 6 pomegranate seeds - was allowed to return to earth for six months of every year, her return symbolising the cycle of death, rebirth and regeneration.

Snowdrops by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Celts knew this same festival as Imbolc, a name that derives from the word for milk, as this was the time that lambs were born and milk returned to the menu. As with the Romans and Greeks, this was also the festival of the Maiden Goddess, who in Ireland was Brighid, the Goddess of fire, poetry and healing. This was a time to bless agricultural implements and livestock and turn towards hopes of fertility in the year to come. For this same reason, in the north of England, Candlemas used to be called The Wives Feast Day because it was regarded as a fertility festival.


The Emperor Justinian wrapped all these traditions up neatly (as was the wont in the Christian church) and from the ancient festival created the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that candles were thereafter lighted to her - hence the name Candlemas(s); and at some stage the Celtic Goddess Brighid became St Bridget, and the old tradition of making corn dollies turned into Bridget's Crosses, which are still made today - Irish school children being shown how to bend and weave the rushes every year.

St Bridget's Cross woven from rushes

And the little white flowers that are so tied up with Candlemas? It is thought that monks brought the first snowdrop bulbs to western Europe from Turkey, and grew them in monastery gardens, placing the delicate flowers on the altar at Candlemas.


But there are other, more ancient myths about these Fair Maids of February, as snowdrops were also called. It is said that after being expelled from the Garden of Eden, Eve wept desperately as endless snow fell, covering the earth, removing all trace of colour and life. But an angel took pity on her, caught a snowflake in his hand and breathed on it. As it fell to earth, it became the first snowdrop. In Germany, there is a different tale. They say that when God made the earth, he told the snow to ask the flowers for some colour, but every flower refused - except for the snowdrop, which is why snow is white.

Snowdrops by Jennifer Mackenzie

Rather more mundanely, in some parts of the world, today is also known as Groundhog Day. Somehow it loses some of its magic at this point, but I have read that this was another Imbolc tradition. It refers to a kind of marmot in the USA, but here perhaps it was a hedgehog. Seemingly, the creature emerged from hibernation on this day, and if it saw its shadow, that meant six more weeks of bad weather. But there was one way to try and get around this eventuality - you could place a candle in your window on Imbolc Eve, representing the Eternal Flame of the Maiden Goddess. Back to candles again.

A friend has recently bought an old farmhouse in Wales. Recently an elderly couple came to the door - he had known the place since childhood, as it belonged to his grandmother. When his own daughter was young, he told my friend, she came running to her parents, whispering that she had found 'little secrets'. They followed her outside and discovered that she was talking about snowdrops, blooming in the nearby copse that is carpeted with them to this day. For such a tiny flower, this jewel of the winter has some lovely names, and 'Little Secrets' is another one.

Snowdrops at Millvale on a Frosty Morning by Cora Harrington

 

Thou first-born of the year's delight, 

Pride of the dewy glade, 

In vernal green and virgin white, 

Thy vestal robes, array'd 

John Keble's verse about snowdrops from his book: 

The Christian Year, 1827

Christmas Holidays

We've had a real Christmas holiday day. We got up late, had breakfast and then set out for our favourite beach. We've been wanting to go, but it has either been too stormy, or just so windy and wet that we haven't felt like going near the sea.
But today dawned blue and still - a rare treat at the moment.

Unfortunately, the rivulet on our favourite beach was in such flood that we couldn't get across to the sands beyond, so we went on to our second favourite instead, which turned out to be a Very Good Decision.

Pocketfuls of dog treats

Wandering along the stony sand, we picked up fragments of sea glass to add to our huge collection, listened to a warbling bird that we couldn't see or identify, admired the patterns the water leaves behind, and waved to a fisherman pottering on his boat, bobbing at anchor just a stone's throw out into the bay. The air-sea rescue helicopter droned in, low over the water on the far side of the bay and hovered over Strandhill for a while, but it was too far away to see anything except the constant line of breakers creaming in from the Atlantic.

Sand patterns like armies of woodlice

It's a wonderful beach. It has a long spit that curves out into the bay, and nestled in on the land-side are mud flats, some sheep pastures and sometimes fishing boats laid up for the winter.
But today the tide was in across the mud flats, and the dogs went crazy, chasing each other in and out of the shallow water.

An inland sea

 Model Dog practiced being a fish.

The TeenQueen practiced being a 3-legged dog.

 And we all practiced wading.


From the long arm of the beach, there is a wonderful view of Knocknarea, Sligo's No 2 mountain just across the bay, but you can't see the huge neolithic cairn on its summit from this angle, even though it's one of the largest in Ireland (and dates back to 3000 BC). The grave belongs, they say, to Maeve, the ancient Queen of Connacht, who was buried standing up so that she could keep watch over all her lands. By the time she died, her lands were extensive - due, no doubt, to her Lucretia Borgia approach to the acquisition of power. On a clear day you can see across 5 counties, I guess, as well as Sligo Bay and Donegal Bay. On a bad day, you are battered by the four winds of heaven and may see nothing but the vast tomb - 10 metres high and 55 metres wide.

We didn't mind not seeing Maeve's Lump (as it's affectionately known), as we see it from the road all the time. Instead we watched riders on the far beach beneath her. They were having a lovely time, with their dogs streaming in front like outriders.

We inspected the skeleton of a boat left to commune perpetually with the wind and the tides.

And we stopped at the pile of stones that always looks - from a distance - as if it started life as a beehive dwelling for a lonely hermit. When you get up close, you realise that it is, probably, just a pile of stones.

We decided that we'd round off our lovely, seaside morning by stopping at The Beach Bar for a drink and maybe a toasted sandwich or something for lunch, but then we discovered that although we had lots of dog treats, neither of us had so much as a brass farthing, so we went home instead. 

And this afternoon I finally put out the last of the compost.
The long border and the Moon Garden are officially bedded down for the winter, and I can go away with a clear conscience. They are done and dusted, and already the merry-go-round is bringing spring closer with every passing day. Even so, I put extra handfuls on all the little blades of green poking out of the soil. It is much too early for bulbs to be pushing up.

Oh what a lovely sight

And my reward for all the hard work?
A little posy of winter roses from the two bushes I cut back.

Winter roses

Turning

I lay in bed last night and listened to the wind howling through the trees and around the chimney pots, the hail spattering against the window panes and the distant rhythm of surf pounding on the shore.
Bleak midwinter indeed.
But, safe in my warm nest I didn't feel bleak. This is a time of year when there is something vibrant pulsing at the core, and when night enfolds you it is like black velvet wrapped around a bright kernel, so in the heart of the darkness, the wildness outside lulled me to sleep very quickly.
It is a time of year when the night is often better than the day. This morning was possibly the most horrible day ever spawned. Rain, rain and more rain, borne on winds gusting to 105km/hr.

A couple of weeks ago, someone told me we were going to have blizzards, and snow lasting into mid-January. To my mind, an infinitely preferable alternative.

But heigh-ho. It's only weather, after all, and I have spent the day in my kitchen, all the animals curled up in their various beds, snoozing the hours away. I've been decorating my Christmas tree, wrapping a few presents, and writing last minute Christmas cards.

My Christmas tree

My friend Mairead posted a lovely piece on her blog recently called In Praise of Christmas Cards which was very apposite and beautifully written. She mourns the slow decline of Christmas Cards, she feels they are an important part of our tradition and - perhaps more to the point - our personal history. She is, of course, quite right. How can an email possibly compare? However warm the wishes, it doesn't sit on your mantelpiece looking pretty and seasonal, or last. And as for texts - well, there is nothing to be said.

She and my mother are as one in this, although even Mairead probably doesn't expend as much zeal in the matter as my Mama. In truth, I have never known anyone who takes Christmas cards more seriously - she does a proper job, with news and personal letters enclosed - she probably thinks a 'round robin' is that plumptious little creature on her bird table. And she has them mailed in good time, not like my last minute scrabble to catch the final posting day.

It was today, the final posting day for Christmas. No surprise that I was writing cards, then.
I looked out of the window regularly, waiting for a momentary pause in the rain so I could scoot down to the post box, but the passing hours only brought more rain, blowing ever more sideways. Being washed down to the post office did not seem an appealing prospect , but then suddenly an angel appeared. It is traditional of course, at Christmas. This angel took the form of my friend the Talentui Goddess. I didn't see her wings at first, only when she announced that she was on her way into town did I spot the soft feathers fluttering behind her chic hat.
'You're not going to the post office?' I asked, hardly daring to hope for such a reprieve.
'No,' she said. 'But I can. I'm going past it.'
What a honey.


If pushed, I'd have to admit that it's not cards, but Christmas carols that are the essential part of the season for me. I don't mean bashing out O Come All Ye Faithful with some person coughing on your left side and someone else blowing their nose to your right, but rather the lucid perfection of King's College choristers singing John Rutter or The Coventry Carol or something angelic along those lines. It's not possible for me to make mince pies, or write cards, or decorate trees without those clear voices in the background. 

Essential Christmas

But I do love Christmas cards.
I don't send many these days - postage being so exorbitant - but I am very choosy about what I buy. They have to pass some indefinable yardstick. They have to really appeal to me, even if they are not conventionally beautiful. And - pleased as I am to receive any cards at all these days, I have a definite marking system for the ones I do get. Every year I keep one or two that I specially like, which are hung vertically on ribbons, and each Christmas all the 'specials' from previous years come out of their box and decorate the walls all over again.

One of my 'specials'

Perhaps loving Christmas cards is also about anticipation. To me, this last week or so before Christmas is almost the best bit of all.

I love midwinter, the days getting shorter and shorter, the trees bare against the darkening sky, the stars fierce and brilliant, houses filled with light and, despite the horrors of the world, everyone looking forward to something, whatever that may be.

Here we are, in the deepest dark of the year, the long, cold reaches of winter still to come, the slow return of the light tantalisingly ahead as the earth pauses - pivoting, slowly turning towards her next brave horizon; yet hidden within the folds of her dark skirts is Christmas, like a warm heart glowing in the depths of the night, a bright kernel shrouded in velvet.

Best Mates

Oh the joys of the modern world!
We have made a new friend.
Well - actually a virtual friend.

If only we lived in Suffolk, he would be a real friend, and Model Dog, SuperModel and I would want to see him every day because he is right up our street (so to speak. Alas not in actual fact).

After consultation with my girls we all feel that, quite apart from wanting you to meet this new and colourful character in our lives, we all would like to share his educational message and picture for the benefit of the less-informed.
I daresay there are many dog owners out there who live in blissful ignorance of a hound's very real needs at this time of year. Indeed, I confess with shame that I am one of them.
But worry not, after a severe lambasting for my total disregard for their welfare, I have promised Model Dog and SuperModel that I will mend my ways forthwith.

Here is our new best mate in all his glory.

And here is his educational message. Please read, learn and inwardly digest!
(I have tried to pick a colour of which he would approve.)

'Wen it be's sooper chillies, like wot it be's in Lowstuff ats the moment, it be's sooper himportant to keeps warm. So I did finks to meself to makes a heducayshonal foto fors all hoomans wot is new to ownings hounds this winter. Fings you will needs: sooper luffly warm coat wivs tummy warmings fing, leg warming fings, feets warming fings, hat ands scarf (probly best ifs thems matchings), ear warmings fings (wot can be dedded ferst like wot mine woz) ands a hot waterbottle. Then you's reddy for winter walkies bys the marshes!'

I am appalled at my own inadequacy. But before making this delicious boy's acquaintance, I hadn't realised just how important it is to keep those brindles warm, nor how many garments are required to do the job properly.

And my own hounds have made their feelings very clear. When I showed them this picture, I perceived immediately that they had (to use our new friend's inimitable language) their most envious 'eyeborls on'.
No words were necessary.

We are still in major discussions at this end, as to style, colour, yarn texture and overall look, though inevitably - being ladies of decided but individual fashion - we are not yet in complete agreement.
But I am preparing.
The wool is out.
I am sharpening my knitting needles as I write, and just as soon as a decision has been made, I'm ready for the off...

Under starter's orders...

After all, you know what I love best! You know how itchy my fingers get!


In the meantime, you can learn more about this remarkable hound by clicking on the link below.
Read how, in true crusading spirit, he has written to the Queen with 'hinformashons on his polly-sees to ban flashbangs' and also his 'Campayn to be Prime Mincer'.
His manifesto is full of good, sound stuff, and although the 'elekshuns' are not imminent, I know who'll get my household's vote!

Maybe I should knit him a soap-box while I'm waiting for my girls to decide?
Or a campaign banner? 'VOTE FOR THIS DAVID!'

Read all about it! Read all about it! 

                     

Lost Season

A winter's day

I am missing winter.
There - I've said it and you can pelt me with rotten apples if you want.

Today is cloudless, the sun is warm and the snowdrops are rushing out as if they'd missed the early train.
But I see daffodil leaves and bluebell shoots poking up too.
It is the 12th of January for heaven's sake.
What happened to 'due season'?

Winter river

In place of winter we have monsoon and everything squelches beneath my feet, while new and unwelcome leaks have appeared in our house as tired old fabric gives way to the merciless onslaught of water.

For just one morning this week, we woke to the still silence of frost, a gentle shroud of thick winter mist. Our lovely, meagre trees were cocooned in soft white cloud, and a pearlescent ivory glow replaced the light of day.
But one morning is not enough.

Moody river

I want the moody river, the intransigent earth and the sleeping garden. I want the sharp, cold knife of frost, and the forgiveness of snow.
I want winter.

I have posted this poem before, but, as I haven't been writing any poetry recently, here it is again.
After all, nothing has changed.

Paper Rooks

Give me a winter's day, all knuckle-

bare, with nothing left to lose,

a day you couldn't choose in summer

when froth lies on the daydream.

But give me a winter's day: the lean

picked bones of trees gaunt on the 

purple air, a sigh of wood smoke

drifting on the breeze. These are my

thin, spare pleasures, my treasures 

rare - all fair and square my own.

Not summer's careless bounty do I

swear by, but these certain measures:

the clean, warm snuffle-breath

of cows, soft by the flung farm sheds,

the sparrows there at dawn to share

my breakfast bread. This is my wealth

when life pares to the quick: a half-

fledged, squeamish day, with sifting rain

on fields all blanched and slick, a cold

low sky uncertain when to lift,

the late grey dawn a sudden, unexpected

gift of pooling gold peeling back the east;

this heartbeat rush of wind-torn paper

rooks across bleak skies, the emptiness

that hurts the wide horizon of my eyes,

a feast of snowdrops caught beneath

the hedge - give me a winter's day.

LF

 

                             

 

In Memory of the Elm Tree

I sat down to write something about my beautiful elm tree (now deceased) the other day, but I got waylaid.

Someone had left a comment on my post Picture it in your own words - Regret, in which they said: 'I hope you have a picture of your beautiful tree', so I fished out my old shoeboxes of photos, but then - immersed in a zillion captured moments of my life, I ended up writing On Reflection... instead.

But I am shocked to discover that - so far - I have only unearthed one photograph of my elm tree. A winter picture.

My beautiful elm on the left of the gate, clothed all in white, it's younger sibling standing to attention alongside

The picture is appropriate to the time of year, and beautiful withal, but it doesn't speak eloquently of the elm's soft summer grace, its bountiful green shade, or the delicate elegance of its long, serrated leaves.

How can there be no pictures of my elm? It stands (its poor amputated limbs pleading with the sky) outside my bedroom window, and even more significantly, in full view of the place where I work. I gaze at it every day either consciously or unconsciously. The rooks squabble noisily in its branches every spring, vying for the prime real estate sites - south facing but with the full sea view. Many have had to settle for second best - a grand sea view, but north facing.

Pleading, but to no avail

And here I am, still thinking about it, and writing about it, in the present tense. Because the trunks of both trees still stand, savaged and mute. Any day now, they too will be felled and I shall have to get used to the past tense.

The day he came to remove its crown

I fell in love with the elm tree as instantly and as completely as I fell in love with the house. Except the tree came first, by a whisker. The ash, on the other side of the gate, is also magnificent, and its status has now been bumped up considerably, in the face of my loss. But the elm was always the one.

The butchery begins

In my mind, the tree is soft and green and overshadowing. The sentinel at the gate, the bower of rippling shade that marked our comings and goings, that fretted the early morning sky with filigree lace, that held the evening sun like a great, glowing bowl of light. And in winter, night and morning, the rooks would blow in on the wind like wisps of torn paper, and perform their ritual dance up and down the four corners of heaven before settling on every branch, filling the tree like an outrageously vast crop of fat, black pears.
And its singing has become the music of my life. Flailed by the winter storms, its song was loud and plaintive and robbed my sleep of comfort, but in summer rain, or a summer breeze, there is no better sound than the whispering of a tree - with or without the birdsong.

It is all in my head, but no photographs. Just an abiding familiarity, like an old friend, or the bed you creep into every night. As I said in On Reflection, the best memories, and the stalwarts of our lives aren't necessarily the things we snap. I have spent the last 18 years loving the elm tree, seeing it sometimes more often than members of my own family. It is part of who I am, but there's no photographic record.

I suppose I never needed one. I just had to look out of the window.
But no more.

I am very sad.
Kahil Gibran wrote: 'Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness.'
How true, how true.

A lovely friend sent me this poem. She said it had consoled her when she also lost a tree she loved.
I think it is beautiful. Thank you, my friend.

 
The Tree Speaks   by Cathal O Searcaigh

I am the tree that will be destroyed,

tomorrow I will be cut and laid low.

My dignity will be hacked at;

my limbs will be strewn

in the dirt of the street –

my strong limbs.

The white blossom of my laugh will be stolen.

Everything I have stored

in the marrow of memories will be destroyed;

my first tears of joy; my first leaves of hope;

the first syllable of music pulsing through my branches;

the first Spring which clothed me in a green dress.

The tales of adventure related to me

by the birds; the nests that flourished

in the leafy shelter of my eye,

the storms I calmed

in the softness of my embrace.

The children who swung between life and eternity

in my branches; the whispered secrets

breathed to me in the night shadows;

the moon who dressed me in the golden lace of autumn;

the angels who alighted on me with the snow.

With the fluent tongue of my leaves

I defended, passionately,

this space in which I thrive;

in which I spread with wonder

the green thoughts  that come to me in Spring.

With bounteous seeds I covered

this earthly space around me with certainty,

in celebration of the Tree Spirit

that quickened firmly in me

as I came of age.

And tomorrow when they burn me,

when my bones will smoke,

I will become one with the Sky, the Fiery Sky!

that has fuelled my imagination from dawn to dusk

With brightness, with Light

How beautiful the colours and textures of these elm logs are

 Another kind comment I received expressed the sanguine hope that Spring would put new branches and leaves on the elm's severed limbs. Sadly, even if they did, they would die. Dutch Elm disease is carried by a beetle that gets under the bark. Apparently it flies at a certain height, and once the tree is infected, that's it. Curtains - eventually, although it takes a few years. This poor tree has been green and dying for some time. But there is hope that some young, smaller trees, if kept coppiced, might become immune, if they don't grow up to 'beetle flying height'.

The trunks of my trees are going to a friend who will wait patiently for them to season and then use them to make something beautiful - floors or furniture. And I have already kept several pieces that another friend is going to make into something for me to keep as a memento. I will treasure whatever he reveals from the wood.

But, sad as I am now, the future beckons. I am planning to plant two blossom trees where the elms stood. It will take them a few years to grow, but they will have their own identity and be beautiful in their own right. And as I plant them, I shall think of Henry van Dyke's words: 'He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.'

As I have done, all these years past, as I have done.

I will also remember the Chinese proverb.
'Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.'

There will be singing again, one of these days.

Perhaps I'll plant something like this - not an elm, but beautiful in its own right