This morning, for the first time since last summer, the sun pouring into my living room felt really warm on my back. Really frosty, though, and freezing cold once I actually ventured out onto the deck.
We've had two or three days like this over the last week--not so warm, but the same sequence of very chilly frost, followed by beautiful, pure, pale sunshine. For the first time, the grass on the lawn is an intense, gold-flecked, brilliant fresh green.
Since December, I've had a small but never failing daily lift to my spirits from the sight of the white hellebores blooming by the front door. They're the variety called "Christmas roses", but they rarely do bloom on time. You're much more likely to find them flowering in late January. But these ones have surprised me, first coming into flower before Christmas, and they just keep going and putting out more and more showy little white blooms. Now the oldest ones have just started turning green, which is a bonus, as I really like green flowers.
Out on the deck, IKEA have provided me with some brilliant pots of campanula as the centre of the display when all the potted shrubs had stopped blooming and the bulbs hadn't come out yet.
But here comes the cavalry! The iris reticulata came out early last week.
And this morning, there were fronds of new leaf waving about on the wisteria. The first muscari were turning a full clear blue.
On my Shabbos walk yesterday, I walked as usual from my home in Finchley, through the Little Wood and the Big Wood of the Garden Suburb, across the square and onto the Heath extension and the Heath itself. Then over into the astounding garden of Inverforth House. And that's where I saw the first japonica blooms of this year, fragile and pale coral, against a pale blue sky.
February 17th. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life" (Samuel Johnson)
A lovely walk. I used to live in West Finchley not far from Dollis Brook and we frequently followed this route. One of my regrets about leaving London for Cape Town ... Nostalgia, how sweet it is.
Posted by: Dave F | February 20, 2008 at 03:36 PM