The winter solstice, now just past, is an annual event that has resonated with people in the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. Though the change is almost imperceptible, small fingers of light are beginning to unravel the edges of the fabric of winter darkness. The optimist in me rejoices. We haven’t yet celebrated the calendar New Year, but the earth has already begun a new chapter.
I have been aware of this important seasonal shift for as long as I can remember. My mother, who was not a gardener, simply referred to it as “the shortest day of the year.” My father, who made a fine art out of grousing about the incessant snow in our western New York town, growled that the solstice was “the first day of winter.” Only one person I knew growing up thought of the event the way I do now, as the beginning of the return of the light. She was a family friend of Swedish extraction who observed St. Lucia’s day and always brought us Swedish limpa bread in honor of the saint, the season and the solstice. The limpa loaves were made of rye flour and studded with bright candied orange rind, a visceral reminder—at least to my taste buds–of the light’s return. Next week I plan to make some limpa. It will be a little after the solstice, but the bread will feed my taste memory and hopes for the future.
I contend that people who are in touch in some way with the earth—farmers, gardeners, nature lovers—can feel the solstice at an elemental level. It has to be elemental because we are all still stumbling in the dark by five in the afternoon. During daylight hours the meager intervals of sunshine are frequently punctuated with clouds bearing snow or sleet or that irksome form of windblown misery the weather people categorize as “wintery mix.”
I generally celebrate the solstice with hot tea and a few pages of one of my favorite garden books. Henry Mitchell, the great American garden writer, put pearls of horticultural wisdom on every page of his best book, The Essential Earthman. At this time of year, I also love Dear Friend and Gardener, a wonderful book of correspondence between English plantsman Christopher Lloyd and garden doyenne Beth Chatto. The two were great friends and though the letters were written with the intention of creating a book, they sound uncontrived, carrying the unmistakable voices of the two authors. At the end of the day, Dear Friend and Gardener is still a celebration of lives well lived, in and out of the garden.
I also observe the solstice by cleaning out the towering pile of gardening catalogs that has accumulated since late summer. I still love these print editions, though I generally order online. The autumn wish books will go out, the better to pave the way for the spring wish books that are coming in now. The first catalogs, from some of the major merchandisers like White Flower Farm, are waiting next to the fall pile. They have already been joined by smaller plant lists from intriguing specialized vendors including the starchy “Maine Potato Lady.”
The logical side of my brain knows that not much is stirring in the snow covered garden. On clement days I go out and work on the trimming and tidying that never quite got accomplished in the fall. Mostly my garden is a wellspring of optimism, but occasionally in winter it looks more like the graveyard of good intentions. I try to rectify that a little at a time. While I am doing so, I look for signs of new life. Right now I am on hellebore watch. The Christmas roses—Helleborus Niger—have bloomed as early as January here, so I check them regularly starting around the time of the solstice. If I sweep aside the leftover snow on the hydrangeas, I can also see the buds that will turn into next season’s growth. With luck the freezes will end in the spring before the swelling begins within the hydrangea buds. Right now they are still full of possibilities.
This is also the time of year when I consider the seed and plant orders for the spring. I spend weeks making lists, deliberately excluding any consideration of costs. I will face the balance sheet and whittle down the list when we are a bit closer to the spring equinox. For right now, the sky’s the limit.
There are plants out there, like the lowly skunk cabbage, which engage in thermogenesis, producing the heat they need to bore through snow cover and bloom while temperatures are still freezing. I like to think that the winter solstice starts a thermogenesis process within the hearts and minds of those who are connected to the soil. Unlike the skunk cabbage, most of us have to assist that process with multiple clothing layers and woolly socks. It doesn’t matter. The march to spring has started.