Why I am not ready for Spring yet.

Give February a chance.

Have you noticed that people are saying ‘oo first signs of spring’ and ‘we are nearly through it’? Now I am lucky enough to work with the seasons and be outside during daylight hours, so perhaps winter doesn’t affect me anything like it does with office workers, but still, I am not ready to finish with it yet. There is still a whole month left and I am here for it.

My favourite winter things -

• Lying prostrate on the sofa reading or watching a movie under a blanket

• The woodburner on full whack

• The heated blanket in bed

• Slow mornings

• Hellebores

• Narcissus paper whites

• My birthday

• Scented winter shrubs

• Long dark evenings to rest

• Turning the page on the year

• Writing my ‘more and less’ list

• Slow cooking

• Roast dinners

• Planning planting

• Looking ahead to the year

And just one month more might be optimistic. We have had unseasonably both cold and hot springs the last few years. I asked a tree nursery when the end of the bare-root season might be this year, and he told me of the oft ‘second winter’ unpredictable but not unusual in March. The few times we have a snow fall, it has been in February.

I live for the seasons. They anchor me. I garden to know me, to connect. I think through ideas, problems and challenges when I garden. I have’t yet got bored of any garden tasks in my own spaces, because the last time I did it, felt so long ago. Raking leaves, edging beds, lifting dahlias, sowing seeds for the first time this year. Then into the summer, the first basil, oh tomatoes, tulips, roses and everything else. I can just about remember what the cut grass smells like from the summer. What a joy that we have seasons in the UK to track our year around.

I was reminded of how brilliant February can be: