We’ve had a series of miserable weather days recently – cloudy, grey, frosty mornings, drizzle. We’ve been lethargic, not moved to do anything – having finished the decorating has left us in the middle of a lot of small odd jobs. We’ve snapped ourselves out of it by going out for the day.
Cambridge Botanic Gardens.
It was a good choice, and the weather helped. We headed straight for the Winter Garden – designed to look its best at this time of year. We had blue skies, decent temperatures and there were not many people there, so we had time to wander around without being crowded. The daphne was out in bloom and the scent of it reached us about ten yards from the tree. A single bee floated noisily around the blossoms and away into the blue, and a few birds were singing Spring songs in the trees.
We both love the Winter Garden. He wanted to see the New Zealand section of the Botanic Garden, and I wanted to wander through the glasshouses – a mixture of warm/humid, cool and dry, hot and wet (with a bed of rice growing in that house). Fact of the day – it takes 2,500 litres of water to grow 20kg of rice. 90% of the world’s rice is grown in Asian countries, but I’m told it’s also grown in California, where water’s becoming a scarce resource.
Out of the glasshouses and back into the sunlight. We were both feeling achy by then – hips, back, knees and feet – so we walked slowly through as much of the bamboo groves as we could before heading back to the entrance. The best part of the bamboo walk goes in a circle, where at the midpoint of the path all you can see is bamboo on every side, seven or eight feet tall and hissing in even a slight breeze. Badgers enjoy the bamboo walk, apparently; they’ve dug a set under the path so humans aren’t allowed to walk on that part. I didn’t think badgers could get into the Botanic Gardens, but it seems they can.
Around the lake, down through the avenue of cedars and sequioas, a few minutes sitting by the fountain, back through the Winter Garden and out. Ninety minutes after leaving the gate, we were home.
It’s been a good day. Better yet, it’s jolted us out of the rut of doing odd jobs, sitting wishing the weather would stop being so miserable. We have a list of things we want to do tomorrow, starting with coppicing one of our hazel trees.
The cats were pleased to see us, and I hope they’ll follow us around the garden tomorrow, judging what we’re doing and making mischief. After a day out, it’ll be a pleasure to be at home.
I’m steaming ahead with the reading challenge, too. It’s 36 books, not the 24 I thought were originally set; nine down, 27 to go. I’ve enjoyed some and slogged my way through others – ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’, ‘The Patchwork Cat’ and ‘All Systems Red’ were fun, while the cosy crime book recommended by another member of the group left me furious at the lazy plotting and the facile division between Good People and Nasty People.
From Monday onwards, I’m back in the grip of The Literal Challenge, joining a few hundred people as daft as me trying to write 28 plays in 28 days. So I’m clearing up before I spend all of February writing – tidying up the memoir for the Globe Soup Memoir Challenge that had me exploring my home town more thoroughly than I expected and setting up a stage play template. I’m looking forward to February, though the game of wondering where the year’s gone has started already.
Julia Chalkley 