Winter is Coming

It really is this time!

Winter is Coming

Long before this phrase became somewhat popular, especially when uttered by the dour Sean Bean in Game of Thrones, I myself was wont to mutter the same with a barely concealed amount of joy, mixed with a little trepidation.

The signs of winter are reasonably well established (we have all been caught out before – one way or another) and known only too well to those of us who use this platform, but the feelings that this season provokes are mixed – for me the anticipation of winter is full of hope for cold weather, a return to the winters of my youth. To know that Mother Nature is pressing the pause and reset buttons on the world around me, which has so often held the promise of a fine spring and a good year to come. As a landscaper and gardener people are often perplexed by my hopes of a period of weather that must surely cost me my income, but my response is two-fold:

1. How much money can I make during a drought in summer – bugger all, so what is the difference?

2. The benefits of winter are underestimated by so many people.

While plants, particularly annuals are governed in their life cycle by the hours of daylight and day length, the warmth of the ground and environment cannot be underestimated. Anyone with fruit trees will understand the awful effects that a warm winter and a false spring can have, with trees throwing out blossom that is then cut down by frozen winds.

This is akin to the lack of dormancy, brought on by the cold winter, which plants need to achieve their goals the following year. A cold winter is the best killer of nuisance insects, having a large insect burden on young plants come the spring means that their growth is negatively impacted.

Even snow is beneficial to so many gardens. It acts as an insulator and actually protects plants from the rogue frozen winds and frosts. Winter has much to offer, aside from the beauty of frozen stems of verbena bonariensis and echinops bannaticus.

I have spent the last week regarding the quality of the game birds that have been released on the shoot where I live, they look fit and healthy and should provide many days of challenging enjoyment ahead.

This year marks my return to the beating lines, after a couple of years of absence, but a recent loss of some winter work has meant that I have more time to devote to one of my enduring loves. Though this year I will be returning without my beloved spaniel, who died a couple of years ago. To date I am still divided about the acquisition of another. And with so little work for a dog over the last two years there seemed little need to seek to replace a friend that I considered irreplaceable.

I am sitting in the office at home, desperately trying to make the accounts balance, which has inevitably led to my reclining the desk chair and looking out of the window and regarding the stark view of Titterstone Clee to the northeast of my home. The neighbouring farm has a slowly beautiful plume of smoke rising from their centuries-old brick chimney.

And while the sun is undoubtedly shining, the shadows are lengthening and there is no heat left in the day.

Today has been spent watching my son’s rugby team lose their match, in a rather humiliating manner, but the joy of being there on the side of the pitch, wearing slightly too many clothes as the sun makes its presence felt, is hard to hide, and I knew that the jacket would come in handy later on, when I watched the Colts play at home.

As I am writing this piece, I can hear the hens scratching around beneath the windows. It is not the sound of gravel being moved by these dinosaur-like diggers and scrapers, it is the sound of crisping leaves, not yet dried, but approaching their version of rigor mortis. There are growing sloughs of the things appearing daily – how do they find their way to the thresholds of every door to the house? I am certain that if I piled the damned things up the resulting mound would be taller than the tree that bore them all summer.

So, to resume… Winter is definitely coming. The short days and morning frosts, of which we have already had a couple. The Farmer’s Guardian reports that the long-range forecasts suggest a colder than average winter lies ahead.

I’m inclined to agree and not on the basis that a cold winter follows a warm summer – we need to look back thirty years for that to be a truism. However, there are early signs that La Nina is developing already in the Pacific Ocean and this usually spells a period of cold weather for the northern hemisphere.

I had better see to my preparations, what to do?

The firewood pile is looking very healthy, though the chimney is yet to be swept. I’ve serviced the, ever unreliable, Discovery and the preheater is apparently working (it won’t last!).

The stocks of rock salt are plentiful and there is a mountain of pallets in the yard, ready for The Boy to cut into kindling, for both use and sale.

I have already anticipated the cold with a nice piece of roast pork loin – summer Sunday roasts are just not the same thing. I’ve taken another glance through one of my winter preparation bibles: the wood fire handbook by Vincent Thurkettle – it is well to acknowledge that there is greater expertise than yours out there.