Once more, January has worked its magic.

What??

This image, above, from this morning paints a more accurate picture of the often wet, grey gloom, and sodden ground which limits outside work at the moment. Not to mention the cold, gusty winds which have been a feature of the second half of the month, peaking around Storm Chandra on Monday, January 26th, but without much respite.

It will almost certainly be the dullest January since I started recording our PV output (only around 64 KWH for the month). Yet despite these drags on bonhomie and creativity, it seems that January often seems to inspire me to write a few verses. (9 poems in recent Januarys trump the 7 completed in December, its closest rival). How strange that the most miserable weather months, with shortest days have enabled some positive thinking.

However! There have been plenty of delights this year, to inspire and excite me, apart from the flowering of the garden which always accelerates in the last week of January, whatever the weather is like, or has been earlier in the autumn/winter – 1450 mm of rain from September to now, has taken its toll.

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For anyone interested in visiting the garden this year, our open weekends are listed on this webpage. There are fewer of these than before, and next year will see a further reduction in opportunities, so for anyone wishing to see the garden in real life during May or June, please take note that this year will likely be the last one when we’ll open at this time. (If you can muster a group of between 10 and 20, then we’ll still be able to arrange a bespoke visit for you on other days during our garden open months).

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My second effort at a poem this month, after ‘When the World Whispers’, was an acrostic poem for the month – I produced a few last year, but only began in fickle February, so missed one for January. Once the events have passed, the words never seem to flow for me. I take a while to kick around what stands out in my recent memory, and I do dislike the more limiting discipline of this format for a poem, but here’s my effort – inspired by January 2026 in upland West Wales.

January

Jaded mind awakes, mourns dark clouds, stained blood-red

As nights begin to shrink, as days trail slowly, dead.

Now wind, now rain, now mist, or denser, stealing fog

Unwelcome blindfold – New Year’s dawn, suppressed.

As snowflakes fall, rare sensory treats entrance.

Raw wet, grey blow; joy-flushed thrush sings. Precocious,

Yellow, trumpeted ‘Sensations’, flex and dance.

22/01/2026.

This references many novel experiences, including the last influence from the relatively heavy snowfall earlier in the month. With the much hyped threat of further snow falling as named Storm Goretti passed through around January 8th, we escaped with a very limited additional 2 cm of hail and snow.

The starlings were unperturbed as they gathered in a nearby staging ash tree, before flying North at dusk.

(Local readers will have noticed that it now seems we don’t just get our own British named storms, but those of other nations too – which instantly means we get far more of them!)

This last snowy layer began to melt on top of the residual snow, during the day. What followed was a light frost to minus 2 degrees C, and by the following morning this had produced a rare noisy and risky scene to venture out into: black ice on the cobbles, and a hard, cracking, snow surface to walk over through the fields. What the Norwegians would call, I think, Skaresnø – crusty snow.

This is what it looked and sounded like, filmed by Fiona and I on our mobile phones, as we walked down, sticks in hand, to feed the sheep:

With relief no more snow has fallen and we’ve escaped more frosts, but just as the warning of the next British named Storm – Chandra – was approaching, I began to hear a hidden bird singing in the trees to the North of the house. It took a while for me to register that it was a Mistle Thrush – a bird we do see and hear regularly, and indeed at this time of the year. Its grandfather, or father (perhaps) even part inspired me to write another poem titled January, (though not an acrostic) way back in 2022, which I’d forgotten about. But as Goretti’s winds and rain buffeted us for days, and I chilled down rapidly trying to record some of its near constant singing, I marvelled at its persistence, stamina and incredible ability to hang onto tall, leafless branches as gusts up to 60 mph blew up the valley. It truly is a stormcock.

The scientific name for the Mistle Thrush, our largest songbird, is Turdus viscivorous. (= Thrush – Mistletoe eater). I’ve never seen mistletoe growing locally – my own efforts, years ago, to establish it on our apple trees failed miserably, but it has an omnivorous diet of invertebrates, seeds and other berries. His singing preludes courtship behaviour including the male presenting the female with tasty morsels, and then a strong bond forms with this mate (I should think so too, after all that effort on his part.)

But sadly for him, only for that year. He’ll have to do it all again, should he survive, the following winter.

We often see families of them at work later in the year, hunting for food in our hay meadows.

Although a few other birds, like the robins, nuthatches and common tits begin to sing here a little in January, this bird was extraordinary.

And then, a few days later, a second rival took up the challenge, serenading from the tall trees just across the stream, to the East. I’m sure we’ve never been treated to such singing displays in the last week of January before, which went on, and on.

It brought to mind the Welsh equivalent of Valentine’s Day – St. Dwynwen’s Day on January 25th (pronounced ‘doinwen’), who has been popularised as the Welsh patron saint of lovers. She was a historical Welsh figure referenced in folk tales for centuries, after establishing her own church on Ynys Llanddwyn, off the coast of Anglesey in the 5th century. This became a shrine and place of pilgrimage until the reformation, when it was largely destroyed, but she has become more well known in recent times after a student at Bangor University decided to design and sell cards to commemorate the day.

Such commercialisation opportunities ensured it blossomed in the psyche of a nation once more beginning to warm to the idea of a stronger, devolved national identity.

The story of who Dwynwen actually was, seems a little unclear, but her role as watching over lovers stems from her own wonderful and part mythical romantic story: a certain Prince Maelon Dafodrill, fell in love with her, but she rejected him, or perhaps wasn’t allowed to marry him since her father had promised her hand to another (versions of the tale seem to vary). What happens next in the stories is more interesting:

“Distraught, Dwynwen sought solace in the woods. She prayed that she could be delivered from her affections for Maelon. In a dream, an angel brought her a vial of a sweet-tasting potion, which brought the relief she sought. As Maelon was still in pursuit, when he arrived on the scene, Dwynwen was eager to share her cure. Unfortunately, when Maelon drank it, he was turned into to a block of ice!

Again, Dwynwen sought God’s help. She had three specific desires for her prayer. One that Maelon would be restored to life; the second – that God should look kindly on the hopes and dreams of all true lovers and third – that she would never marry, and never have the desire to do so in order that she would devote the remainder of her life to God.

As a mark of thanks, for her prayers being answered, she left for the solitude of Ynys Llanddwyn off Anglesey, becoming a hermit until her death around AD 460″.

I must assume that our Welsh Mistle thrushes know none of this ancient folklore, yet their singing, and Dwynwen’s story, got me musing:

Mistle Music  

Love is simply, wildly, hanging in the air

Sung with passion; duelling rivals’ flair.

The valley’s quietest moments split, by

Speckle-breasted songsters, dimly lit.

Rare clarion courtship calls their tempting bait

No mistle pearls as gifts for this year’s mate.

No matter lashing rain or Chandra’s blow,

Their stormcock riffs ward off unwelcome snow.

Their urge is strong, fires early, starting gun

For all behind, that track dawn’s rising sun.

They know not Valentine or Dwynwen’s Day:

Ice melts, our hearts are warmed, and come what may

We’ll celebrate, for years, their songs unknown.

Share songs, words, lives and music of our own.

 

30/01/2026

We don’t need to understand what, if anything, their singing means to appreciate it, as a wonderful hint of the end of the dark days of winter. What was even more special was hearing a Song Thrush start singing from the hawthorn in front of the house, just a couple of days ago. Not quite as loud, and I recorded a bit of its song with the mic. tucked into the holly hedge to mitigate wind noise. But all this even before the end of January.

A unique end to a special month of sights and sounds.

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For my musical moments in this post, I’m reflecting on this with some short songs in languages I barely understand. I need to look for translations of lyrics. But like the thrushes’ songs, maybe you don’t have to?

One can value them for their rhythms, rhymes and melodies.

The first, most appropriately, is a live version of “Le chant des Grives” – (“The song of Thrushes), by ZAZ, from her wonderful 2021 album “ISA”, which I’ve referenced before on this blog.

I’ve just bought her more recent CD from 2025, ‘Sains et saufs’, which is equally lovely as something a little different and contemporary, for wintry listening. I’m sure many will pick up on ‘mon amour’, and ‘sains et sauf’ – safe and sound, in this effervescent, live performance.

Then a very different beautiful Welsh language duet, “Y Border bach”, (The small border) sung by Bryn Terfel and Rhys Meirion, from their excellent Benedictus collaboration 2005 CD. The lyrics cover a familiar theme for ageing gardeners, tackling the prospect of seeing one’s beloved garden sadly change as age creeps on. There’s an excellent translation of the lyrics – written by Welsh poet, William Williams Crwys – on this blog post by Sharon Larkin Jones.

And finally, this wonderful song of melody and harmony, recorded live, very many years ago, anticipating the months of summer ahead. ‘Seidir ddoe‘ is inspired by the rural Welsh landscape, hay making and enjoying home-made cider. Composed and performed with accompanying musicians by the brilliant folk group Plethyn. 

I hope these are all enjoyable discoveries for any who read this and click to listen.

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Throughout much of the last 2 months, I’ve been working on a newly requested, and certainly a final, lecture/talk.

With the title above – geophytes (bulbs, corms and tubers) to lift the spirits from October to March. Such bulbous plants form a big part of the garden here, and I think are an underappreciated asset for any garden to help keep the gardener’s interest, mind and activity levels up throughout the year. It’s been a mammoth task for me, (any eventual audience will have no idea), choosing images and adding some text as a very necessary prompt for me with a memory which ain’t what it used to be. I’m glad the assembly at least is nearing its end, since by covering a number of different groups of plants, and such a long seasonal time frame, finding the many images to accompany about an hour of speaking has been a slog. Made worse by me having so many years of stored images (literally tens of thousands) which could be used.

Two things have struck me most in undertaking this photo trawl.

Firstly, how much the garden has changed over 15 years, and most particularly the fact that many of the featured bulb types don’t perform well indefinitely. Even the ‘toughies’ which we grow, and which are the ones I’m (mainly) talking about.

But secondly, and perhaps more surprising, is just how very few days have occurred over all those years, when lovely light has combined with peak flowers to enable vistas of flowers to be captured in a satisfactory photographic fashion. By way of illustration, January 22nd 2019 seemed to have been the peak for lovely Cyclamen coum, above, whereas for our many Crocus flowers, the best images are from Valentine’s Day of that year.

I only started to notice and photograph the merits of the foliage of our increasing  numbers of Cyclamen hederifolium in 2025:

And 2023 (and I think, also, 2026 will probably be) the best for snowdrops. So they’re definitely surviving long term better than any of our other underclass bulbs. In all the diverse locations where they’ve been planted over 30 years.  2025 was poor for many daffodils, but from the number of flower buds already emerging, 2026 looks like it will be much better. But then, 2025 had lovely sunny weather to appreciate the flowers that did appear, for many days.

Will 2026 be as good? Who knows, but the odds are against it – so probably far more flowers, and fewer pretty pictures. Plus ça change.

My takeaway from this is that if you’re one of those people, like me, who does like to look back and reflect on times past, then having a good photographic record is invaluable.

Words are wonderful for expressing ideas and thoughts, but I reckon for many of our best garden moments, you can’t beat a well taken photograph, to take you back in time.

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As well as working this project up, I’ve also discovered some wonderful new botanical information about just how remarkable many of these winter/early spring geophytic plants are.

It all began with me despairing after seeing the flattened flower stems of the earliest Narcissus ‘Rjinveld’s Early Sensation’, after they’d endured snow and freezing temperatures for several days – only one stem had kinked, the others were shallow arcs, with the flowers close to the ground.

I was amazed to watch them gradually straighten themselves over the next few days, to look as good as if nothing had happened. How did they manage that? It turns out to be just normal plant growth and their ability to head for light (phototropism), and away from the downward force of gravity, (geotropism). All controlled by plant hormones producing differential rates of growth on both sides of the stem. Together with the amazing intra-cellular hydrostatic turgor pressure which I’ll mention again later.

What I also discovered, which was much more interesting – and I’d not realised before, was how well adapted the daffodil flower stem’s anatomy is to cope with the almost unique problem the plant has created for itself: of having a large flower, fairly rigidly fixed, at right angles to the top of a tall stem.

This is a big issue when the wind blows strongly, and the flower presents itself as a big resistance, creating torsional stresses for the fragile plant tissues. It deals with this in a number of ways – the flower closes a little as winds strengthen, and tends to face more downwind. But also the flower stem has a very sophisticated and changing anatomy. If you make a clean cut across a mature stem, at a number of points from base to tip, this will become obvious.

Firstly, it’s not a cylinder as in a tulip, where the flower sits at the top of the stem. It has a clearly elliptical shape with a pair of strengthening ridges at opposite sides. I’ve marked these with black, or white, in these photos.

Secondly, the flower stem is solid at the very base, but then hollows out for much of its length. It also has an internal system of peripheral strengthening, cotton-like fibres, which are most obvious in the top section.

Finally the whole stem has a twist in it of about 90 degrees from bottom to top, which again is influenced by the prevailing wind direction.

This contributes to exceptional flexibility and strength for such plant tissues. Click here for more detail on the biomechanics, in a readable paper by Shelley Etnier and Steven Vogel (Reorientation of Daffodil (Narcissus: Amaryllidaceae) Flowers in Wind: Drag Reduction and Torsional Flexibility).

Another recent study by South Korean scientists modelled the daffodil stem morphology and reckoned it was extremely efficient at minimising wind resistance and also wind-induced damaging vortices as wind flowed over its surface – way better than most human designed equivalent towers, cylinders or chimneys. They were so impressed that they patented a shaft design for a golf club based on the daffodil’s ‘design’.

Although the daffodil and snowdrop are closely related European origin members of the Amarylloideae subfamily of bulbs, the snowdrops (Galantheae), don’t have the same problem to solve – their flowers close in inclement conditions, so offer less wind resistance. They also hang down, and are suspended on a thin, flexible pedicel, which means that in any wind, the flower is extremely mobile and can be blown around with less stress to the stem.

A group of ‘Atkinsii’ flowers below, in a blow illustrate this – look at flower orientations:

If you cut a snowdrop flower stem, you’ll find it’s proportionally more slender, is hardly elliptical at all, and is solid for its entire length.

The other structures which I’ve noticed before on some bulb’s foliage, but never known their name or function, are ‘cataphylls’. These are thin, sheathing layers which serve to protect the first leaves of geophytes as they push up through the ground to reach the surface. On many daffodils and snowdrops their remnants are obvious as tissue like structures just above ground level.

Snowdrops have additional pointed spathes to protect the emerging flower bud, which are sometimes a more prominent feature in cultivars such as ‘Galadriel’, ‘Scharlockii’, and ‘Cedric’s Prolific’, below.

Not to be outdone, Crocus have similar flower protective cataphyll sheaths, obvious towards the base of the C. tommasinianus self-sown flowers, below.

I was intrigued to notice something else this week, when I did my occasional clearing of fallen oak leaves from pots of C. tommasinianus corms which are just beginning to shoot. There were multiple examples of Crocus leaves which had, with considerable finesse, pierced the tough oak leaf, with minimal peripheral damage.

Not a tear, not pushed the leaf off the ground, or deviated a little, to pass round the edge of the leaf. Pinpricked through. How on earth do they manage to do that, given how fragile a Crocus leaf is, and how tough and full of lignin a dead oak leaf is?

Again there are multiple biomechanical facets to how the Crocus leaf (and probably other geophytes) achieves this:

A specialized “needle” tip to the leaf encasing sheath which is itself a hardened, tubular cataphyll or coleoptile, which tapers to a very sharp, robust, and hardened point. This structure concentrates the upward force from the growing leaf tissues into a tiny surface area, maximizing pressure on the surface above.
The growing plant cells at the tip are highly turgid (filled with water), creating high pressure. This pressure acts as a hydraulic piston, pushing the leaf tip upward against the resistance of ground litter. The pressure inside the cells, at between 0.5 to 1.0 MPa (5 to 10 bars), equates to about 5 X that of the air inside a car tyre! This pressure acts like a hydraulic ram, allowing the soft plant tissue to behave like a stiff needle that can exert enough force to puncture tough structures like old oak leaves.

The energy for this thrust comes from converting the stored corm/bulb’s carbohydrates into simpler soluble sugars, which creates an osmotic gradient that draws in water to maintain high turgor

Early-stage leaf tips are often reinforced with cellulose and lignin, making them stiffer than the more mature leaves, allowing them to pierce through litter without buckling.

The growth habit of bulbs, with the shoot tip always facing up, allows the bulb to directly translate its stored energy into a vertical, driving force akin to a needle or spear.

I can’t include any links to this last, italicised information, I’m afraid, as I usually do. It all popped up on unsolicited AI generated material, with apparently no obvious scientific papers, or clear articles to confirm what I’m including here.

Welcome to the Brave New World of AI Google responses. Which I don’t think we’ve been consulted about. This source will increasingly become THE TRUTH, in years ahead. Like it or lump it.

For anyone thinking of visiting the garden this year at snowdrop time, there’s another reason why I think this year might be special. So far, I haven’t seen a single honey bee in the garden. I hope that it’s just because it’s been very chilly and windy. But there may be more serious problems after this poor autumn and winter.

What it does of course mean is no bees = no pollination = much longer lasting flowers.

Every cloud…