We've had a mix of sunny days & puffy clouds this week but mostly we've had moonstone skies. Niamh has started sleeping unitl eight but my body clock seems set now for five thirty. I get up before the girls and light the table candles, fill the house with the warm glow of the lamps. Outside the dawn light lasts unitl just before eight. I feel like I've finally embraced Winter for this year. It took a while to let go of Autumn but I'm really getting into the darkness & rain, the cold & grey. They make for a good excuse to stay indoors & drink tea under piles of quilts, read & bake. Zahra and I just finished The King of Ireland's Son, wow, what a great read. We talked and talked about it, had to go back over the plot to find out how he was related to her and what she was doing then, a real twisty, complex tale, like a celtic knot. We baked Great, Great, Great Grandmother's Lemon Syrup Cake from this cookbook. I've never had success with syrup cakes, the syrup always just running off & pooling in the pan. But this, this has changed my take on lemon syrup cake forever. No pooling, just moist, syrupy, lemony cake. The garden is chugging along. How anything grows or moves faster than a snail in this weather has got me. The only thing I seem to move quickly for is more lemon syrup cake.
The wintersweet is blooming at last in all it's understated beauty. Ours is tucked away in a dark corner of the yard under a giant Jacaranda. The tiny flowers have such a strong fragrance. Kind of a spicy, jasmine, ylang, ylangy sort of scent. The first year we moved in here I spent the entire Winter taking in wafts of it's perfume and not knowing that it was this quiet, unassuming, shrub over there beneath the evergreens. Like when you find out that the quiet kid at school has this amazing talent no-one ever knew of before. Every Winter now we watch the buds until they pop, but it's usually our noses that tell us before our eyes. It's chugging kind of weather, slow and steady. I'm chugging along with my flanelette, lap quilt & Granny's Favourite. We made Solstice beeswax candles and tin can lanterns for tomorrow. I can't tell you how much I look forward to Winter Solstice . Watching the sunrise & lighting the fire to burn last year's solstice tree, filling the house with candle light, the smell of pine & sage & woodsmoke, the beeswax figures Zahra makes for the Solstice cave, hot chocolate & toasted marshmallows, thinking about what we're letting go of and what we want to bring into our lives. Kind of like how Christmas should be in my mind...dark & cold, snow on the mountains, candlelight in the windows. I guess that's why people celebrate Christmas in July.
Wishing you all a peaceful Solstice, be it Summer or Winter, from all of us here in the house on the hill.
