Celebrating February, a month on the brink…

Posted:21 February 2016

Our ongoing course, A Celebration of the Seasons, is well underway – each month a seasonal dinner, talk of the month’s delights and tasks an opportunity to appreciate and embrace the changes in the seasons, and explore how to make the best use of the produce you grow and that you find locally – in the garden, allotment, countryside and seaside. CLICK HERE to find out more.

Taken from Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee:

“February is zero, twenty-eight days of waiting, a month of silence and frozen growth, when all the germs of spring stand on the brink of stillness, life loaded but as yet unfired. The tight buds of the trees hang like polished bullets ready-poised for the sun’s first spark. Roots are buried fuses, set for the detonations of petals; fields stand stripped for the first green flame. It is a month when all life huddles in a carapace of ice, in a shell of necessary impatience.”

At February’s session just a week or so ago, we made beautiful terrariums, looked at sprouting seeds and growing micro greens.

 

 

We also propagated the popular houseplant, Streptocarpus, taking leaf cuttings and placing the cut edge in a mixture half compost and half vermiculite or perlite and read poems and stories about this precious month.

February-Fill-Dike by William Barton:

February fills dikes, overflows fields

and streams, turns paths to slippery ooze.

Petulant winds crease the surface of the lake

and agitate the fast flowing river.

Hail and sunshine play follow-my-leader

across a shifting sky where lazy seagulls swing.

Gorse brags bright yellow flowers.

On hawthorn hedgerows, buds swell with red tips

and bright clusters of dark green leaves.

Daffodils force green shoots through layers of leaf mould.

Moss creeps and bark rots on fallen trees.

New stems and shoots glow red in the setting sun.