As the light comes back

We’re on the way back up again!

With the solstice, and our shortest day, firmly behind us we in the Northern Hemisphere, can start to enjoy days getting longer again. The worst misery of the long nights is done. While officially winter has just begun, in reality we can start to feel that spring is on its way. 

As it happens, here in Valencia, there’s been little sense of anything like real winter. It’s no doubt down to global warming, sadly, though I have to admit we’re enjoying it for now. While the nights have been cold recently (well relatively), the days have been positively hot, into the low twenties.

That’s Celsius, I swiftly add, for the sake of my Transatlantic friends.

Bleak midwinter in our woods

The warmth was something we were well aware of, Danielle, our son Michael and I. Our back garden is far from big. In its layout it’s moderately long, and thin. What made it even less far from big was that both sides were lined with thirty-year-old cypress hedges, impressive when it comes to securing privacy but, boy, so invasive. They turned the garden from long and thin to long and thinner. At certain points they grabbed two and a half or three metres of our space.

We decided it was time to do away with them. Simple fences would be fine instead, with climbing plants to decorate them. We got a couple of quotes to have the work done by professionals and, frankly, they seemed ridiculously excessive. Why not, we thought, do the work ourselves?

Well, we have. The job’s done. But the effort it cost explained why the quotes were so high.

Having Michael around to help was a blessing. Because it wasn’t just a matter of cutting down the old hedges. Quite a lot of the cypress had grown into the fence on one side, so that meant cutting out metal wire from old, thick trunks or branches. Then the cut material had to be bundled up and tied with twine: the local council is great, because it will collect garden waste for free, but only as long as it is left out by the side of a street in bound bundles below a certain size. Tying the stuff up and carting it to the street was a lot less easy than you might imagine.

Fortunately, once the hedges were more or less gone, we tackled a much pleasanter task. To get ready for the forthcoming visit by our grandkids, soon after Christmas, we set up a children’s playhouse in the newly widened garden. That initially meant preparing a base of gravel to rest it on and extending the existing crazy-paving path to lead the kids to the house.

In the unseasonal warmth, the hedges and the playhouse had us working in shirtsleeves and still complaining about the heat. Well, not complaining that plaintively, to be honest. Blue skies and sun might mean higher temperatures than strictly comfortable but it was preferable to rain or freezing cold.

Anyway, it’s all but done now. All that’s left is a little more clearing up and another stone to lay. Then we can sit back and wait for Matilda and Elliott to arrive and, I hope, be wowed by their gift. 

Should be fun.

December sunshine on the grandkids’ playhouse

And, of course, we can just enjoy the warmth and clear weather in the meantime. Knowing that, with the solstice passed, we’re now on the way back up towards springtime. Plenty to look forward to.

So, for now, season’s greetings to you all. However unseasonal the season is. And, of course, to my friends in the Southern Hemisphere, all my sympathy.

Unseasonal season’s greetings