Quotidian

May be or May be not

In my forthcoming debut novel and in effulgent terms, I describe May in south west Scotland, where I live.

May can be the finest month in the Nithsdale year. Through the woods, bluebells nod in drifts. Along the loanings, cow parsley froths and swaggers. The lovely campion and cuckoo flowers are everywhere in the grassland. In gardens, the borders pulse in waves of perennials, from aquilegia to allium, meconopsis to meadowsweet. Everywhere, azaleas and rhododendrons clamour for attention. The long evenings are here too. People take quiet walks after the day’s work is done or head into the garden for undemanding jobs like deadheading the narcissi or staking the paeonies. In the fields, tractors are nudging through the day and into the evening. They cut grass for silage to store in huge clamps for winter fodder. Spring barley pokes through the soil in shining drills. Growing lambs and wobbly legged calves animate the pastures. The whole of Nithsdale seems alive and lush, open to the fragile promises of the summer ahead.

May in 2025 was quite exceptional and had many of these features. There is something almost overwhelming about the greens of May, the speed of change in the garden, the mood-lifting longer evenings, and the pleasures of sitting amongst it all with a cup of coffee. But this year there have been problems too.

Lost in the allotment garden

There was always a laid-back air at the Tír na nÓg community gardens. Working collectively, growing fruit and vegetables organically, and sharing the produce equally, its members, youthful in the 1960s, were continuing their dreams in later years. Some evenings, blues-inflected guitar music would drift across the plots. On hot afternoons, a few folk might get together under the fruit trees with an assortment of instruments, and play songs from the Incredible String Band’s second album. It was a place of peace, harmony and not a small measure of nostalgia.

But on this day, a certain horticultural tension was in the air. In the exceptional early May weather, spears of asparagus were already poking through the rich soil of a carefully nurtured raised bed. The emergent shoots were being kept covered under a protective cage, to prevent damage from birds. Yet the gardeners knew this to be a critical moment. The crop would burst forth very quickly and would need immediate cover from sun (if too hot), from rain (should it be heavy), and from frost (for the cold mornings persisted).

Experience showed that an ingenious home-made cover, put together a few years back from upcycled materials, could solve all of these problems in one go. The trouble was, it was nowhere to be seen.

April come she will

April can seem full of deception. Promising much, then failing to deliver. Eulogized by the poets for its splendour, but also exposed by them as painful and cruel. The gateway to Spring, it still has frost on its back. Not for the first time in my life, I associate it this year with death and bereavement. April can wake up cold losses from the past, whilst all the while building warmer hopes for the future. Janus-faced, it needs careful watching. Anyone who spends time in a British April will have some story to tell you about its unpredictability. Thus it has been for me this year: April 2025.

“Interesting to read in five years’ time”: a pandemic journal of April 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic gained momentum in the Spring of 2020, I was telling an acquaintance that I’d started keeping a detailed journal, documenting daily events, news, personal reflections and accounts of living under lockdown. ‘I suppose that might be interesting to read in five or so years from now’, was the rather sceptical reply.

It didn’t deter me.

When Spring arrives

The man of March he sees the Spring and wonders what the year will bring*

My early days of March are blighted by a heavy cold that vitiates productivity. The flu-like symptoms are made worse as our household struggles with the loss of a dear friend. On the weather front, it’s a month of hail, then frost and strong winds from the Arctic; but also of warm sunshine, briefly soaring temperatures, and a not fully realised hope for the ending of Winter. Despite the stop-start, by month-end, it’s possible to declare that the Spring has (just about) arrived. But the wider promise of Spring is a hollow milestone as missiles continue to rain down on Ukraine and Gaza and as the global ‘deal makers’ stumble from one egregious claim to the next. March this year is living up to the month’s ancient association with Mars, the Roman god of war. At the same time, the turning of the seasons brings us back to basic rhythms, and more gentle values. So for me, March 2025 has been about focussing on small matters within the daily ambit, whilst not losing sight of the big issues, however much we feel they lay beyond our immediate control.

February’s charms and alarms

The February man still shakes the snow
From off his hair and blows his hands (1)

For the Romans it was a month of purification. British weather lore declares it brings rain or snow, or both. The Venerable Bede called it the month of cakes. From Brigid to Valentine, many saints are associated with it. The shortest month of the year seems packed with connections and affordances, inspiration even. But there’s also a devious side to February, it can flatter to deceive, offer up false promises, and unsettle us with its fickleness.

This February has been particularly turbulent. Like so many others, I am reading the daily newsfeeds with increasing concern, whilst at the same time trying to hold onto the simple assurances of daily life. How do we reconcile these conflicting tendencies? In uncertain times, there is some merit and a degree of comfort in keeping a focus on the quotidian world. But not at the expense of realism and an effort to understand what is happening to the wider world. These twin poles have been much to the fore in February 2025.

***

The Vice-Chancellor’s Handover

When Professor Sir Angus Brown gave 12 months’ notice of his impending retirement, he envisaged a dignified departure from the University, preceded by an orderly transition of responsibilities. The conclusion of his nine years as Vice Chancellor of one of the oldest seats of learning in the land would be a measured and celebratory affair, with a whole month of overlap between him and his successor, to ensure continuity.

At this time Professor Brown could still persuade himself he was leaving the University of Rheged in a much better state than he had found it. He could point to the massive rise in research income and the excellent results in the last Research Excellence Framework – the periodic assessment of quality that is so important to the academic world. Undergraduate student numbers and entry tariffs had continued to rise. Applications from international postgraduates remained on an upward trend, bolstered by new ‘markets’ opening in India and Nigeria. Picking up the annual ‘University of the Year’ award at a glitzy event in London had proved extremely pleasant, as was a visit from the Monarch to open the new Institute of Advanced Studies. The knighthood had been a final salute to his achievements at Rheged: the cherry on the top, as it were.

In and around the garden: some fragments from January

The January man he goes around in woollen coat and boots of leather (1)

The year begins with weather warnings. Frost settles into the garden ground and doesn’t move. Motivation is low. Piles of hazel thinnings lay unsorted or trimmed. Tall herbaceous plants, long past the ‘interesting in winter’ stage need cutting back. Leaves are still to be raked up. But by the first weekend of the year, such tasks go unheeded. Piles of books and winter fires seem more inviting.

The morning and evening dog walks continue however. A steady routine that keeps me in close touch with the garden and arboretum, no matter what the season. On the sixth of January – the night of Epiphany – an unusual experience awaits.

A walk by the Solway Firth

With my teenage daughter, on the second day of January 2025.

We arrive at Southerness lighthouse, on the Solway shore.

The tide is just on the ebb. To our right we can paddle through lapping waters and reach the track beyond. Here we pass huge boulders of white granite, barricaded to protect the properties above. Cockle shells crack and crunch under our feet. Another walker comes towards us, carrying a plastic haul of netting, bottles and single-use detritus.

Wading birds – knot and dunlin – collect on the littoral. We watch them lift in small groups. Then comes a long column in an extended fly past. Difficult to capture on a smart phone. ‘Stay in the moment’ my daughter says, as the squadron passes to our left and lands in the bay beyond.

We come across an archipelago of pools on the salt marsh. Around them, wind bent grasses swirl and sworl. In each pool the brackish water is plated with ice and frosted on the margins. Behind us, tall reeds sway in the light breeze, washed out and drying against the China blue sky.

Here is a single black trainer. We smile, thinking of a friend who takes pictures of such objets perdus. I recall a Scandi-noir novel, where one such trainer also contained a foot.

We stop to examine an improvised lobster pot, fashioned from a plastic fuel can. Lengths of rope lie half buried in the hard sand. On the top of a dune to our right, golfers come into view, preparing to tee off, and bantering in the sharpness of the day. A driftwood branch, like a long lizard, surveys the scene.

Now the sun is dipping lower over the retreating Solway tide, losing its warmth. We stand and look across to the Lakeland fells. The chill is settling in. At the water’s edge we spot a thick tide mark of ice crystals.

Walking on, our steps find an arbitrary turning point, and we decide to head back the way we came. Reaching the Southerness lighthouse, where the walk began, we make New Year resolutions: to do this more often.

An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Zen influences

On a spring break this year at a well known family resort, I noticed that adjacent to the ‘spa’ and overlooked from the heated recliners was something called a ‘Zen garden’. I have to say I was quite taken by it and for some months pondered how something similar might be created in Dumfriesshire. Yes, it did look a bit kitschy, perhaps over-populated with items, but there was something attractive about the concept and how it faded into the surrounding woodland.

Dry or Zen gardens of course have a distinguished place in Japanese culture and are taken very seriously. Often located near temples and shrines they symbolise elements like mystery, simplicity and assymetry. Mainly comprising rocks, moss, gravel and sand, they are intended to be looked at in a meditative way from a single viewpoint. In Japan they have evolved over centuries and taken on many aspects, thereby stimulating numerous interpretations. More recently they have found multiple expressions in the west.

Since that spring encounter at the resort, I’ve pondered on a Zen garden project at home. There is a terrace where the planked decking is coming to the end of its life and could be replaced with something quite different. I even made a rough sketch of a ‘Zen garden’ that might be made there. But gradually my enthusiasm for the project has faded. Partly on practical grounds – would it work and how would it be maintained? Increasingly on aesthetic grounds – would it just look like some ill-conceived confection, born of syncretistic whimsy? I’ve slowly dropped the idea.

In fact rock and gravel are already present in my garden. I look upon them quietly most days. I’ve arranged some of the stones in a way that has a planetary dimension to it. The combination looks wonderful by moonlight, in rain, and whenever there is snow or frost. The lesson is clear. Sometimes, even in a garden, the things we seek are there already. We just need to let them find us.