Wake up now, this is the time you’ve waited for

The start of February marks the traditional Druid festival of Imbolc, celebrating the beginning of spring, being about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Of course these days, Imbolc is some six weeks ahead of what we now tend to think of as the official start of spring in March, but nonetheless, this is the time when the first earliest signs of the garden waking up start to appear.

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January Gardening Begins with the Dream

January tends to get a bad rap as a month.

We blame Pilot for letting the rot set in when they sang in their 1975 No1 hit single “January, sick and tired, you’ve been hanging on me”.

But as Josephine Nuese, author of The Country Garden pointed out, gardening really begins in January, with the dream. So come last year’s cold snap, or this year’s unseasonably mild weather, we kind of quite like January here at The Secret Acre.

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Hello Imbolc

The start of this month was Imbolc, the traditional Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring.

It is about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, as the very first hopeful signs that life will start to return from winters grip start to emerge.

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Happy Spring!

Today is officially the first day of spring, if you’re a northern hemisphere type of person that is.

Of course the early signs of spring have been popping up everywhere already, but today the sun has done its stuff, at 10.28am to be precise if you were in the UK. Continue reading