*Apologies if you have received this email more than once! I had a bit of trouble getting this to send to inboxes, so I’ve had to re-send!
Hello, and thanks so much for reading my newsletter - I had the pleasant experience of discovering there are a few more of you this month! Thanks for subscribing.
Here I share some of the things I’ve observed, contemplated, and enjoyed over the past few weeks.
I send these letters out every fortnight (ever 3 microseasons, if you want to get technical), with about 6 newsletters a season. You’re reading the final installment of winter - I call this ‘Late Winter’, or the Japanese season Daikan - ‘Greater Cold’.
If I were to give this mini-season a title, as there is in Japanese - this period is called ‘Hens start laying eggs’, according to that system - I’d call it ‘Strong winds blow in Spring air’. The season began with a bit of a ruckus. On one Thursday lunchtime we began murmuring about heavy winds, which turned quickly to closures and mandates to ‘stay at home!’.
The winds did come, so I spent the day watching the hedgerows bend at an angle I didn’t think they’d be able to bounce back from.
The hedgerows survived and, bar a couple fallen trees, it seems most natural things did. (My neighbour’s fence was not so lucky.)
After a strange Saturday morning, the weather began to right itself into a calm, sunny, and reasonably warm week in Edinburgh. My first market of the season, though frosty in the morning, was such a pleasant, sunny day!
Notes on flora:
It is hard to write about anything other than the snowdrops, crocuses, and even early daffodils that have begun to spring up. I have taken a picture of *every* one I’ve seen, to commemorate the change of seasons. Nothing feels quite so fitting for this time of the year than those delicate flowers poking up out of the damp soil.
However, I am also surprisingly invested in the slow emergence of the few-flowered leek and cow parsley that is just starting to come up along the Water of Leith. You wouldn’t know it, but these will soon cover the place in just a few short weeks!
Notes on Fauna:
We recently took part in the Great Garden Birdwatch, in a spot we’ve frequently seen some exciting species, such as redwings and bullfinches. We were not so lucky this time around, only spotting a few common (and sometimes annoying) birds.
However, I realise these things are so relative - if we saw this many birds last year, with untrained ears and no equipment, I think we’d have been very pleased. In the same way, I feel I get to this time in winter, when I feel a bit underwhelmed to realise that bird I’m hearing is ‘just a robin’.
Still, I’ve enjoyed hearing, alongside the Robin’s song, the sort of ‘seesaw’ sounds the Great Tit.
I have strange mnemonic for birds - I’ll describe a starling in flight sort of like an ‘X-wing’ in Starwars. The burble of goldfinches sounds somewhere between bubbles and electronic interference to me, and I think they fly like helicopters. I don’t know if this really makes sense to anyone else. Of the great tit, I’d say listen out for a ‘see-saw’.
Notes on Art:
I ran my first market of the year in Portobello - it was a real joy to see the local community come out for it; I hope to go back soon!
I am currently working on a shop update to celebrate the start of Spring, which should be live before the next newsletter.
I attended a brilliant plant dyeing workshop hosted by WoolenFlower, which re-ignited my interest in making paints and pigments from natural materials. This hopefully will help me to put my muller to use! Stay tuned for this :)
Until next Microseason,
Natalie
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