equinox

Clothes with floral patterns in purple, black, deep blue colour schemes hang on a washing line. In the background a fruit tree is just beginning to bloss6

Here’s a very pink-and-purple selection of pictures to mark the tipping point between long nights and long days (in this hemisphere, at least). There’s yellow out there, but I tend to think of that as belonging earlier in the spring, or maybe a little later, as dandelions replace tired daffodils. Here, now, the rosemary is running riot (and quite right too, with Lady Day next week), and the violets are bringing their own colour, and there are grape hyacinths all over the place, and it’s a lovely day to get the washing out. Overhead, there’s white: plum blossom and cherry blossom (next door’s plums are always ahead of ours, so the show goes on and on).

Some people take today as the first day of spring. I prefer the Celtic calendar, which puts it at the beginning of February. Despite the occasional cognitive dissonance (and wasn’t February miserable this year?) I like it that way: mostly because I can’t be doing with Midsummer Day somehow being the first day of summer. Anyway, I’m in too good a mood to argue today. Today’s it’s definitely spring.

A bee rests on a lavender head, on which only a few flowers are still blooming

It felt rather appropriate to be sitting in the conservatory yesterday, looking out at the roses still just about blooming and ripe apples on the trees, drinking the tea that came with this season’s Ffern perfume, and embroidering a reindeer into a baby hat. Today we rotated the mattress. It’s not exactly a ritual; it’s just that we’re more likely to remember to do it if we link it with the solstices and equinoxes.

I tend to mark the changing of the seasons by the cross-quarter days (I find it less depressing that way) so for me, autumn began at Lammas, at the beginning of August. That doesn’t mean that the half-way point isn’t important, though. It still looks very green outside, but when I look a second time there are a few red and orange leaves, and tonight there’s a patter of rain on the conservatory roof, and the promise of more.