This Gloomiest Month of March
Erasing the sun
I wake to silence and white and understand why Austrians and Swiss have different words for snow. Even I, with my unsophisticated English eyes, see it is the type of snow that hovers between ice and water—heavy, wet stuff that will not last the day.
All morning plops of snow slide around the house, a constant rush of melting and the air pops and fizzes and glistens, bristling with its new found white. Amidst the white, the euphorbia are limest of lime. How aptly named they are: one letter from euphoria.
A parakeet chatters in the empty beech tree. Like a child, high-pitched, excited, endearing, a happy chap. He takes flight and his tail is a rudder in a blue sea. I hear him again in the afternoon, a chuckling plucky snap of joy.
Magpies on the rockery. Arguing, their blue and white wings flash and flap. They disperse, only to come together for another burst of strife. What harpies, flinging their gold in the market square. They soar over the cedars, trailing their spat behind them.
One morning, my coffee goes cold and when I drink it I am pitched into summer and iced coffee. It’s a reminder of how powerful are our senses, stores of memory, of place, of time, of the very air.
The rockery looks like a yeti, furred with yellow moss and the ever creeping and ironically named Mind-your-own-business. Suddenly, it comes to me, the sheer amount of toil a garden demands, toil that will fill the coming months.
After the dash of snow, comes March’s usual spiteful winds and slate sky. Being the third month, I expect more. Breezy mornings send the yucca bristling, shaking himself as if he is offended. Another yucca has dropped all his leaves, they lie scattered at his singular foot, victim of frost. Meanwhile, the giant yew waves as if he is drowning.
Out walking, a Christmas wreath on a door and through the hedges reach lines of small yellow hats of forsythia. A variety of daffodils: the lemon chiffon ones, the bright-as-egg-yolk ones. Platoons of daffodils on Promenade, like drumsticks with their tight bandaged buds. Where the yellow heads are not yet fully unfurled, they angle sharply like snowdrops, like street lights, like switch blades.
Turning a corner, I meet daffodils in full sombrero, their yellow twittering in the breeze. Pass a garden with purple so purple it is blue, hundreds of ipheion, star flowers, their faces supplicating like buttercups. The cherry blossom already sprinkles its confetti petals that stick to my cheek. Passing magnolia trees, a hundred parasols furled with raspberry ripple tips. The naked limbs of trees are Japanese line drawings.
Ghastly day of white rain. Rain drops so heavy—weighted with near snow—slay and hurl against the paving stones, and later perch on the bare branches of the beech tree like fat pearls. After a night’s tempest, all is washed and brushed and glowing. Cold but soft blue sky and angles of shadow.
On a dry day, I clip the hydrangeas of their sepia petticoats. A rustling paper sound as I pile the airy heads into a tub. Just as I finish, a wild wind hurls the tub, flinging the heads all over the garden. Like cerebellums, they roll and become trapped in stems and lodged against trunks: a French Revolution in the garden. The hellebores nod their bonnets like a clutch of women, baskets in arms, in the shadow of some invisible guillotine.
Evening, and the clouds are edged in pink, and Donne, as always, has the words: ‘like gold to airy thinness beate.’ A better morning. A Tintoretto sky, soft blue and gold with rose clouds. The olive trees are full and milky green. The tulip leaves are taller, fuller, fatter, a jungle. The yew is only fluttering, not in an uproar like yesterday, only a stirring, some garden gossip.
Birdsong is clear and sharp and bright, like polished raindrops spilling and sparkling. All through the month’s grey and gloom, the birdsong is resolute. Weather turns mild but is full of Celtic rain that has the air of permanence, of duration, of staying power.
As the sun is erased, so I erase a newspaper article:
If life seems dull that may be down to feeling a long time ago and joys months away. Also something to do with the weather, the dullest March. Less than half the spring sunshine and winter is lingering. A particularly overcast start to spring, less than a third sunshine, see the sun an hour and a half a day. The grey down to low pressure, frequent cloud and showers. Meteorologists forecast poor showers and cloudiness, fleeting scatters of sunshine. Typically, the sun should have been out. Time for sunshine, too early to speculate yellow weather warning, this morning strong winds set to batter coastal areas.
From ‘Southerners Stuck with one of Gloomiest Starts to March’, The Times, 22 March 2023.
When it comes to weather, us Brits are forever sanguine. Depressed by March’s deficit, we shift our hope to April.