This month's essence
Bottling March
Hello friends and thank you for your patience during a lull in missives from the still room. It feels good to be writing again at this particular point in the year when day and night reach a point of balance.
We’ve reached the Spring Equinox, and finally it feels as though the long grey winter is behind us.
Throughout January and February I have missed the light. But being a winter lover, I hadn’t realised just how much I had missed it until stepping out in to the spring sunshine in the middle of this week.
You see, I have grown to love the quiet months that start the year more and more: cherishing the pared back qualities of the winter landscape, the intricacy of the hedgerows and trees all bared of their leaves, and the otherworldliness of the mist that fills the valley below us, casting an enchantment that sometimes rises and drifts on the air across our own garden.
But this year has been different.
There has been little contrast in the light.
The fiery sunsets that usually flare behind the copse at the end of the day failed to ignite, and the magical ink-black skies, spangled with bright stars, that we have grown to expect, have been few and far between.
January and February’s damp, grey days left me not only reluctant to venture out into the garden with its rain-sodden, heavy clay soil, but out into the fields and lanes that I usually relish spending time in at the start of each year.
As a result, words have failed to bubble up to the surface, and two vials are now missing from the shelf.
But if I think back, there are scents that could have been bottled:
~ the reviving aroma of ginger rising from a generous bowl of Japanese noodles
~ the joy-filled fragrance bursting from a freshly-opened packet of tea
~ the tang of marmalade baked into a loaf cake
~ the distinctive smell of vinegar-soaked newspaper.
In the last day or so, the air has changed, and the presence of the sun means the characteristic long shadows of the ash trees stretch across the lawn once more. I have roused myself back into the still room and bottled an essence for March.
And here it is:
Top notes: subtle aromatic fragrance of newly-opened magnolia blooms
Mid notes: pungent, spiced-pollen scents of daffodils and hyacinths
Base notes: earthy aroma of damp moss
With thanks as always to Beth Kempton for the writing prompt that inspired these “bottling” posts.
You can find Beth’s beautiful writing community, Soul Circle, here
