On Midsummer
Officially it is the day before the Summer Solstice.
Both the longest day and shortest night, marking the meteorological start to the summer. (Though I’m not sure the weather gods are running to the same calendar with chucking high summer at us so early.)
It is the Christmas of floriculture.
A week of midsummer celebrations!
The other side of the year’s clock to midwinter, the shortest day, now the longest, more feasting and glass clinking, instead, being outside as much as possible.
We just had a new moon so there is no milky lunar light, yet after sunset, the night has a magical quality, a liminal space between dusk and dawn, where in midsummer, darkness disappears altogether. In the past, it was believed that there was a veil lifted to the ‘other’ world on the shortest night. Maidens jumped over fires, I’ll light them this week too, but more carefully since even with the rain, plants are like tinder.
It really is time for a break, the sprint of the spring has reached the finish line. Sowing and (most) of the planting out has been done. I can’t lift and move plants around now. I am taking a little pause just as the pendulum of the year holds momentarily before it swings back in the opposite direction.
There are so many opportunities for starts in the horticultural year, there never really is a New Years Day but all things considered, September is that for me and right now is a time for reflection before beginning again.
I’m reviewing plans.
It feels crazy to think about this time next year, or perhaps spring but if you don’t think that far ahead, then start. It will be the making of your growing. Order your spring bulbs now for September delivery. I am even collating dahlia lists because I was too late this year for my favourites. I’m thinking about shrub and perennial lists to order later this summer and plant this autumn.
I may have mentioned once or twice that my usual failsafe star crop of rancunulus did fail. Due to such a damp cold winter, most plants rotted. Ditto the dahlias. Or so I thought they did. I left them in the sandy soil of the gardens where they store far better than if I lift them. I kept poking around and they seemed good until April when suddenly there were craters in the soil where I expected dahlias to start emerging. Tubers were rotting and the soil collapsing. I panicked. Because like I say, I was too late ordering more dahlias. I kept stoic and sowed a lot of sunflowers and took chrysanthemum cuttings instead. However just a few weeks ago when clearing the green manures to check on the dahlias, I found that actually most had survived! And in the meantime, I had found some more dahlias. Ahem.
There are lessons here. I can’t control the plants that do thrive, however well I plan and grow. There are so many variables. But I like it like that; each season will provide a slightly different palette of flowers to work with. It makes things more interesting. What was a huge success, was, all the perennials that seem to have thrived from a deep winters rest and returned stronger than ever. The same for any shrubs that didn’t succumb to the sub zero conditions and die. The long border looks the best ever but I want it better. The designer in me still rises; I want undulating billowing ribbons of planting, punctuated with pops of wafty prairie flowers. And for it to look even better all.year.round. Not that I don’t celebrate and absolutely inhale the gardens as I walk through them daily, appreciating the now. I am also looking ahead and enjoying its next ‘act’ and season, preparing for that. I have never known a gardener say ‘ yup, it’s done now’.
Whilst I pause in midsummer, I’m also enjoying a little pause in the flowers too. Even right back last September, I sowed those that are coming to the end of their flowering for a number of events and classes. I am looking towards August and September. Those plants are sown and planted now; needing to be staked, fed and nurtured through to their time to perform. The gardens are not really that big and it’s a juggle to plan. There is certainly a peak at the end of the summer but always beds in flux, seed trays groaning, transplants growing, crops dying back or being cleared. In between, I need to be able to cut week in week out for subscription buckets together with beautiful intimate weddings, planned in just a couple of weeks. I think *whisper* they are some of my favourites.
I love all the seasons. I love the slow changing of them and the different plants each brings. I love that it all will come back round again, albeit too quickly. Pulling fruits from a plant, arranging flowers in a vase celebrates that moment with a taste, a smell, a sight right now. True connection to time and place. Midsummer is rich in this very moment.
Happy Summer Solstice.