Putting the garden to bed

The cuttings are tucked up in the greenhoouse


I planted the garlic. It's very early, because of last year's frost. Imeant to do it towards the end of November, and around the sixteenth the cold started and the ground froze solid until the end of January, and the green shoots are up already.



The patio is swept, the summer bedding is gone and the bulbs are all planted.



And the winter jasmine has begun to flower.


There's a little more to do before the real bad weather starts, but already my mind is moving indoors and I'm thinking about making over the web-sites, the study programme for next year, and new ventures in poetry.

One thing I'm thinking, though, and that is that I'm going to delete the Lúcháir web-site. There will still be a page for it on the burnedthumb site,and here, and the core of the project goes on. The lúcháir way of thinking, living and writing is as important as ever, but the project never quite gelled as I had hoped.

This is because I don't work or write quite the way I had always imagined I would. I love to meet people and explore what they are doing and learn from them, but essentially my creativity comes from solitude. It's not just finding peace and quiet, or escaping from distracting responsibilities - it's the way I process what I learn and turn it into poetry.

Kenneth White has a phrase which resonates with me just now. "Poet, use well, the winter". I plan to.