Quotidian

“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.

The full list of pieces that make up my A-Z in the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024 can be found here: https://davidgrahamclark.net/a-z-of-the-dumfriesshire-garden-in-2024/

An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Year ending

It’s always a delight to see these catkins as the year is ending. Bright, shining, moving in the breeze, they are an inspiration for the year ahead. But elsewhere in the Dumfriesshire Garden there are still plenty of reminders of the year that’s coming to a close. The pictures below also have their own beauty, revealing the structures and variations in common plants that fill our borders and the annual cycle of the trees.

The year ending, as I have shown in this A-Z of the garden in 2024, has been rather mixed. A curate’s egg, good in parts, but also with losses and disappointing results. Yes, the roses, the potatoes, the bog plants and the younger trees all did well. But the bursts of colour in the big border didn’t materialise as in previous years and the weeds got unruly. The garlic crop was meagre compared to last year. The spring bulbs were patchy. A number of transplanted viburnums didn’t make the transition. At best, we could describe it as a contradictory year in the garden.

Yet if we set these minor vicissitudes against the greater problems in the world, any horticultural misgivings seem a crass indulgence. Whatever the merits and demerits of the gardening year, we are always left in credit. The garden is something I live with constantly and day by day. When I’m away, I garner new ideas for it. The garden has a unique place in my life: the perfect backdrop to my quotidian world and the people I love most dearly.

So as this year nears its end, I feel thankful, and look forward to 2025 along with everything it may bring – and not only in the garden.

The full list of pieces that make up my A-Z in the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024 can be found here: https://davidgrahamclark.net/a-z-of-the-dumfriesshire-garden-in-2024/

An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Xanthocyparis Vietnamensis

This letter of the alphabet was causing me a problem with my A-Z of the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024. Then I realised the solution was right in front of me.

One day this summer, my neighbour rang to say that the owner of a large specialist plant nursery in Galloway had called to say hello and in his van was large number of interesting plants. This is a call which does come from time to time, and to which I happily respond. The horticultural equivalent of the ‘fish van’, albeit intermittent, is a wonderful opportunity to buy interesting material at the garden gate, and not to be missed. On this particular day I bought a variety of shrubs as well as an unusual hornbeam (Carpinus Fangiana) and a rather special horse chestnut, Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus Glabra).

Content with my haul, and somewhat poorer, I turned with my wheelbarrow, only to receive one more compelling pitch from the plantsman. The shining green specimen in question was the Vietnamese Golden Cypress – or Xanthocyparis Vietnamensis. Despite the ‘golden’ of the common name, it seemed to have a touch of silver sparkle about it. The plant was obviously healthy and had been grown locally. But I was told it had only been discovered in the wild in 2001 and is considered an endangered species. At £18 I added it to my purchases and vowed to take care of it.

Over the summer I kept it on the terrace among other groups of potted plants. When early frosts arrived in September I decided to bring it into the house, where it sits happily among more standard indoor plants. Thus cared for, it has almost doubled in size. I think I’ll continue with this interior-exterior mode of cultivation and if the plant gets stronger it will eventually go out into the garden proper. I’m hoping for great things from this recent and rare arrival – bought off the back of a van.

Sadly, it will no longer help with ‘X’ in any future A-Z that I may write. Following various taxonomic disputations, its name has now been changed to cupressus-vietnamensis

The full list of pieces that make up my A-Z in the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024 can be found here: https://davidgrahamclark.net/a-z-of-the-dumfriesshire-garden-in-2024/

An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Winter and its tasks

The tasks of winter in the garden, it seems to me, are twofold.

On the one hand there are practical things that need our attention. Pruning out the hazels, tidying up the rose arch and the bentwood hornbeam tunnels. There is some strimming to be done in the longer grass where daffodils and narcissi will be pushing through even before the year’s end. There are leaves to rake, first into serpentine forms if the fancy takes, and then piled up to make leaf mould or dragged onto weeded borders as a mulch. There’s also planting, mainly of trees and shrubs. This December in an unusual mild spell, I’ve been busy putting in rowans, acers, juniper and viburnum. Then don’t forget the vegetable patch – cleaning out some of the raised beds, tidying up the leeks, keeping watch for the garlic to appear in bright shining rows. Such are the tasks we take on when feeling energised or called outside by a spell of sunshine and a patch or two of blue sky on a winter’s day.

But there is another exquisite garden task in winter that should not be ignored or under-estimated. I am thinking about contemplation. For when the leaves are gone, the garden reveals to us its structure, drawing our eye in different ways and suggesting new ideas. When snow and frosts come (not much this year) the appearance of the garden is further enhanced. Winter is a time for deeper thoughts and plans. It’s also a time for reading and for entering the storied world where the unique array of relationships between gardeners and gardens are revealed in all their fascination.