The last full month of winter is here. The northern hemisphere is spelt warming up, having increasing daylight and all sorts of wonderful things are waking up. Spring bulbs, birds, hibernating bugs.

Hello February!

We start the month of with Imbolc and/or St Brigid’s day on the 1st, marking the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice (Yule) & and the spring equinox (Ostara) and the start of the LGBT+ History month! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

On the 2nd we have Candlemas, st Brigid’s day bank holiday in Ireland on the 5th. The lunar New Year’s Eve falls on the 9th, followed by the start of the Chinese new years the next day (10th) which marks the year of the Green Wood Dragon 🐉🪵

Shrove Monday is on the 12th followed by everyone’s favourite day Shrove Tuesday (13th) or pancake day! Will you go traditional with lemon & sugar or something different entirely? 🥞🍋🥓 Ash Wednesday follows the treat on the 14th which is also, of course, Valentine’s Day. February’s significant days finish with Lord Buddha’s Parinirvana Day (Buddhist) on the 15th.

The full moon this month is the Snow moon and falls on the 24th. As the last full moon before the spring equinox it is also the Lenten moon 🌕❄️

Not to forget to mention that this year is a leap year and February is one day longer than normal. This month I’m hoping to finally give the greenhouse a deep clean and sow the first seeds – I’m going with sweetpeas ☺️(and maybe some other things too)

I celebrated my 40th birthday on the 27th – which was fantastic and I may let my friends organise things for me more often 😉👌 It was perfect and I got thoroughly spoiled. Along having my family over for the event and going out for dinner and having them all over for various breakfasts I was given a record player and a very good start on a collection of some fantastic sounds on vinyl, an oak fountain pen, clay studio sessions incl firings at my friends studio, more records, tasty sounding drinks, a brilliant birthday cake, cocktails, decorated house with photos of little me and buntings galore. It was so much fun and I can’t wait to do it all over again this summer to celebrate with everyone else. it’s hard to fit so many people in the house and winter isn’t really the best time to have a bbq in the garden now is it?

Other than celebrating a big one, I also spotted that the first of my spring bulbs are coming up which just fills me with joy. I’m very much looking forward to seeing last years crocus, muscari, tulips and daffs back in bloom.

I also made my Christmas tree gin infusion last month (January) and have finally bottled it and It smells lovely. The very first whiff smelled like turpentine (not too much of a stretch as some pines produce the sap that becomes turpentine) so I was quite worried that it wasn’t ok. On a second sniff and smelling it whilst I poured it into its final home it smelled lovely and citrussy as well as like a proper christmas tree smell. It has a yellow colour (when I first showed my husband I said “look at my bottle of wee!” but it certainly is not that and it smells nice 😆 I’m looking forward to exploring to make and drink various things from it – among them; jellies 😋 The recipe for infusing will be online soon, plenty in time for the next Christmas 😆🎄

Happy Feb all!

Ps the woodlice is my Grandfather. On his deathbed he was asked as what he’d return and he said a woodlice (or pissebed for the Dutch), so ever since any roly poly, pill bug, pissebed, woodlice or other is sacred and not to be squashed. This on on my finger (photo below) I found on the morning of my birthday and sent the photo to my mum that her dad had joined to party with us.