Source Winter solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, The Guardian, 21 December 2024.
It was the winter solstice yesterday. About 4,500 people gathered at Stonehenge, our ancient monument built to align with the summer solstice sunrise and the winter solstice sunset. Another 100,000 people watched online.
There were snowflakes gently drifting down when I looked out of the window this morning. They haven't settled but the air is chill, about four degrees centigrade, grey with gusty winds and more gentle but relentless showers forecast.
This time of year would see the single glazed windows of kitchens and sculleries steamed up with a roast in the oven and the final Christmas preparations underway. When the whole place was streaming with condensing water the scullery casement would be flung open letting in a welcome gasp of cold air.
After dinner, when the mince pies were set to cool, and all the pots and pans and plates and knives and forks and spoons were washed up and put away, there would be the last minute wrapping of presents for this cousin and that auntie. A visitor would call and another parcel of never-you-mind would be stowed in the bottom of wardrobes or secreted in the top airing cupboard next to the fireplace, anticipation mounting the closer we got to the big day. Could we wait, was it actually possible?
Love the delicacy of the white chili flowers against the blowsy geranium. Two friends who aren't quite sure how it happened.
On the RHS website for gardeners it says a December task is cleaning all your pots ready for the spring. I have never done that. I have external taps back and front of the house now and I have an idle fantasy that I'll have a butler-style sink fitted and scrub away at pots when it's warm. Meanwhile it's not a job for the short dark cold days of mid-winter.
I'm sitting facing the glazed doors to the lean-to, an inside-outside part of the house, tiled and covered with a perspex roof and a Mad Max style wooden partition with a door and jalousies at the top leading to the garden. Suddenly, I see something skitter across the tiles. I suspect a mouse and there, it flashes again across the floor and behind the wintering geraniums and the olive tree sheltering from the frost.
It must have crept in under the wooden door, the tiled floor has sunk there with the continual passage of feet in and out. There's no food out there, some bulbs and seeds in the garage and a bag of garden waste, waiting to go to the tip. Either there's no way into the garage or it's too frit to find it.
I've had a lingering low-level anxiety of rats finding their way into the house with the cold weather. The water mains excavations at either end of the house with the ceramic ducting running in between looked like the kind of invitation it would be rude not to accept. To my relief, the new supply is in place and the metre deep holes have been filled and laid over with a new concrete floor in the house. That should work.
Ah, it looks like the mouse has found its way out. It made a run for the door and slipped underneath. Perhaps I should get a cat.
The houseplants are doing well in their temporary home. It's the coolest room in the house, a little like a veranda in shape, long and narrow, with sun from the early morning until about 2pm this time of year. After the neglect of the past eighteen months, they are recovering and some don't seem to be bothered at all. The cuttings are doing well and will soon be ready for transferring to a nice pot. I call in to see them every afternoon.
