HAPPY SOLSTICE!

HURRAY MY DRUIDICAL FRIENDS! Today is LONGER than YESTERDAY!!!

I found a cool website showing how Stonehenge looks with the sun coming through it. And it's always fun to read about New Grange too. 

I also read Simon Barnes at the weekend talking about hearing owls from his bed and talking about the solstice as "the year's handbrake turn" which I'm afraid is my new favourite poetic description of this wonderful event...

Sending you all many paganish greetings, happiness, and wishing all your plants a wonderful growing season ahead. 

Emma xxx

SATURDAY MORNING SHEDBLOG

After some Friday night shednagging we are delighted to be able to offer immediate response  shedbloggery from Vincent Square. Snow made out of felt, with real christmas greenery too. And no less than two santas one of whom I think was a girl. Or maybe an elf. These days, you never can tell. 

WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND: A STRICTLY HOMEMADE GARDENERS WORLD ONE-OFF SPECIAL

Yes, even Strictly Homemade Gardeners' Worlds can sometimes fill column inches with boring celebrity/ornament-driven show reports!  So here are my photos from this week's show at Vincent Square for those feeling too peaky / living too far away to make it:

You may not know quite how much I enjoy it when a banned article makes it into an RHS show. I can't help it, I just love it when I see a gnome gracing a show stand. As a result, this sight made me beam with joy at this week's Winter wonderland at Vincent Square. (We were actually asked to vote for our favourite stand and I was about to write down Trevor Wood's incredibly tasteful, beautiful, evocative willow display, and then I revealed my inner cheap and nastiness and just went for the illegal gnomes/succulents instead.)

Here is Trevor "Gandalf" Wood's lovely mouse assistant. And look at those incredibly tasteful, beautiful teazels and catkins in the background though.... mmmm....

There were some other purely beautiful things on display, so don't worry if you prefer your taste "good", I'm not going to make you look at tons of pictures of gnomes. Like this gorgeous white amaryllis, "Christmas Gift":

and this fantastic green and burgundy striped 'skinny' amaryllis which looks more like a weird orchid to me, except for those long stamens, and the colours reminding me of species gladioli I saw this spring at Wisley:

I think this is the Wizard of Ye Botanic Nursery. He looks slightly harried. I think Snow White might have been hassling him a bit to be honest. 

A very pretty businesslady negotiating to corner the world market in Poinsettia futures ("Buy, buy!" she's yelling down the phone to Tokyo.)

Trehane Camellias had hung little glass ornaments in some of the camellias, so there were these jewelled colours, however the owner surpassed herself by adding this amazing emerald outfit. What a colour combination, i just loved it:

The rock upon which my blog is founded, Sir Joseph Swift: he is having a little chat to the reindeer who runs Pennard Plants about their rare veg seeds. (I bought a packet of cold-proof lettuce called "Winter Density" from them, it has a picture of a polar bear in a deckchair on the front.) 

My award for the best outfit: Mike Park, botanical and horticultural bookseller, with his terribly pretty sister.

And finally here's one more Richard and Sheena's brilliant Snow White and the seven dwarfs, with seven different kinds of cactus playing the dwarves. Strangely American.... Now can you see why I felt it was worth my vote????

MY FAVOURITE KIND OF SCIENCE

The chocolatier has been on the phone as a new scientific study reveals that eating a chocolate truffle makes you want... to eat another one! 

LITERALLY INCREDIBLE!

However my favourite part of the findings is the bit where apparently, giving in to your desire for luxury chocolate can unleash your inner desires for other high-end goods like Louis Vuitton handbags. My, but chocolate is bad for you in so very many ways....

BRING US SOME FIGGY PUDDING

This was in the Telegraph last week, just in case you don't take that paper (ahem). A family from Yeovil in Somerset have spent five years growing two conifers together to make this giant Christmas pudding, which they've then sprayed with paint for the cream and added some plywood berries. 

Best of all, they are only called Mr and Mrs Holley!

BA TWAZ

I have already written elsewhere of my tender feelings for BA's new ad campaign. William sent me this a few days ago which just added to my sense of mirth. He made it specially, like. 

METAPHYSICAL POETRY, S.A.D, WILD HUNTING

This may be a bit of a mish-mash blog, perhaps because it's one o'clock in the morning! But as we approach the shortest day (much to my relief and that of my fellow S.A.D.-ers), my sleep patterns are now just nonsense.

One of my favourite poems in the entire language is John Donne's poem about St Lucie's Day, 13 December: the shortest day of the year in the old calendar. I just started looking some little things about St Lucy on Wikipedia, which is completely fascinating: a day very much still celebrated in Scandinavian countries with lots of little girls in white and candles, hence the picture.

But in fact Donne's poem is a bit more physical, earthly, even garden-ish, than these little girls might suggest. His "sap is sunk" and "life is shrunk", he says; "I am every dead thing". The world awaits renewal, Donne tells us, in the most fabulous seventeenth century poetry known to humanity. We are on the very brink of turning back towards the sun, he says, towards lust, sun and festival, from a dead, absent darkness. 

This wilder side of this time of year I found reflected in another Wikipedia article, entitled quite wonderfully "Wild Hunt". Had you ever heard of the Devil and his Dandy Dogs? Man, I really want to see them? (Or do I?)

(Most bizarrely of all, as we were nattering about Schoenberg earlier in the week, I just found out that there's a bit of his massive oratorio Gurrelieder that's based on a wild hunt. Cor, you never heard of something before and suddenly it's all over the place.)

Anyway I am going to go and try and calm my brain for sleep now, but check out Donne's beautiful poem when you have a quiet moment and a cup of tea. Tis the year's midnight, you know, and we now have only four days to go till the Solstice, which has a kind of wonder to it.