As winter lingers, patience is tested — in planting seeds, practising tunes, and waiting for the season to shift. Our February diary recap reflects on small moments of progress and the beauty that arrives in its own time. Plus we share 5 cultural recommendations that have been uplifting us in recent weeks.
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There is a colony of crows in the gangly trees that line the car park. It’s a stark, eerie sight. Each treetop hosts a couple of nests, and above every nest sits a single crow, perched like a sentinel. They sit there, stoic and patient, keeping watch over their early eggs. They look so confident in their waiting.
I wish I had the same quiet confidence. I’ve been scrolling through endless pages of summer sandals, adding them to my cart but never quite clicking buy. I hesitate, second-guessing, caught between wanting and waiting. Patience isn’t coming easily, and frustration is creeping in. And I know I’m not the only one.
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Our daughter has been diligently practising her tin whistle for the town’s St Patrick’s Day parade – endlessly repeating the same four tunes while walking up and down the hallway. She’s adamant she must know every tune without looking at her folder of music notes. One night, she’s too tired. “I can’t do it,” she says, throwing the tin whistle aside in frustration.
I try to tell her she’s doing great. I say that not every day will feel like progress. Some days, progress can feel like moving backwards. But if she keeps at it every night, she will get there, I promise. What I don’t tell her is that her dad and I are secretly so tired of these four songs. (I will never tell her this.)
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Two weekends previously, at midterm, we drove south to West Cork, on the southern coast of Ireland, to visit good friends. We noticed that spring had already broken there. Walking in a little woodland, we spotted bright yellow lesser celandine and crisp white wood anemones. It felt like travelling forward in time – everything just a little more alive than at our home in Mayo.
When we got back from that trip, we planted sweet peas in potting compost in the cardboard toilet roll tubes we’ve been saving. We lined them all up on the windowsill and watered them gently. I read aloud the back of the seed packet and told the children that it could take up to 15 days for the seeds to germinate. The spirited four-year-old looked at me, disgusted. “Ugh … Fifteen daaaaays?! That’s soooo loooooong.”
I know she can only count up to 12.
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That afternoon, we head to the forest playground, but when we get there, we find it is still closed due to storm damage. Again, more dramatic sighs. “Ughhh … it’s been closed for ever,” the children sigh, staring at the pinned up sign thanking us for our patience. Large, old, storm damaged trees lean and creak over their favourite slide.
Around the edges of the cordoned-off woods, we spot heaps of neatly piled-up windfall: giant logs in one place, a giant pyre of tangled branches in another.
I peer down into the big woodland hollow, hoping to see the bright green spears of wild garlic poking through. I can’t see anything at this distance. Ugh, I think to myself. Our poor pots of basil didn’t survive the winter, and I’m so tired of buying sad plastic supermarket bags of herbs.
As we walk away from the empty, cordoned-off woodland, I half remember a section in a John O’Donohue book. I know the quote is something about shy animals in a quiet forest, free of strangers. Peering into the closed woodland I envy the shy animals – all that quiet forest they have to explore.
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Later, when I get home, I search for that paragraph about the shy animals. It takes me a while to find the right bit in the book and, as always with half-remembered quotes, I’m disappointed at first that it is not quite as I remembered. Its meaning, its emphasis, is slightly different to my interpreation.
I read the paragraph twice:
“One of the things I love about beauty is that it’s not in the preserve of the subject or the individual; you can’t call up beauty and say, ‘Hey, beauty, come on, show yourself!’ It doesn’t go like that. Rilke, the great German poet, was going through a period of great difficulty and he couldn’t write, and he came to Paris just to watch the sculptor Rodin at work. And he wrote two famous essays on Rodin. And he said that Rodin did not concern himself with the beautiful; his art was meticulous and careful and skilled and slow, and he concentrated on that, because he believed that the beautiful comes only in its own terms. And the phrase that he used was that ‘like in the forest, when the forest is free of strangers in the evening, the shy animals turn up at the river to drink.’ And that’s the way that the beautiful actually comes.”
The next morning, I find the littlest ones gathered around the sweet pea pots, poking at the dark soil. “Nothing’s happening,” they complain, exasperated. “We have to be patient,” I remind them. “It’s only been one night.”
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On a Sunday afternoon, I stop by a garden centre to ask one of the gardeners a question about soil for our new polytunnel. I find the main gardener deeply engaged in conversation with an older couple. They are talking about planting hedges. Then I spot that there are four other customers patiently waiting for their turn. There is no official line or queue system, so we all hover, at a polite distance, shuffling from foot to foot.
Everyone else seems to be OK with this casual, friendly, eye-contact-and-nod, west of Ireland non-queue queuing system. But then my impatience begins to bubble up. I try to distract myself by reading the signs posted around the shop: ‘Nothing worth having comes easy – plant your garden with patience and love.’ I decide that the font is ugly. I slope out of the garden centre and remove myself from the non-queue queue. I'm a busy person! I can’t wait that long!
That evening, I head out for a walk – I throw caution to the wind and go without a coat or a hat. I’m sick of wearing my winter coat. Unlike our toddler, I am old enough to know this is reckless behaviour in the west of Ireland. Of course, I come home 40 minutes later, soaked through and freezing, my fingers pink and numb.
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In the studio, I’ve been working on new additions to our woodland print series – I keep drawing and redrawing the design but I just can’t seem to get it right. I want the images to have clarity, simplicity and ease. Everything I draw looks forced.
I can’t listen to the news – I can’t abide bullies. I try instead to read good and important stories - ones with depth, nuance and humanity.
I try flooding the studio with gently uplifting music.
“Some days, progress can feel like moving backwards,” I remind myself. But we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. “Do the next right thing,” as Anna would say.
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During the week, I’m in the library waiting for our eldest daughter. I flick open a book. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Huh, I think. But it doesn’t land. Our daughter checks out 12 books.
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I keep finding the smaller children poking at the little potted sweet peas. Nothing is stirring. I begin to doubt myself – maybe the seeds didn’t get enough water; did we put the seeds in too deep, upside down, or at all? I put the tray on a higher shelf to keep them safe.
This winter is never-ending I think.
I am so antsy. While waiting for my houseplants to come back to life I decide to repot them all. I decide they’re not growing because they’re hemmed in. They need bigger pots.
I text a friend and remind her to take vitamin D. She texts me back and reminds me to keep drinking water.
The next evening there is a little more light in the western sky. A friend texts to see if I want to go for a walk after dinner. I say yes, of course. This time, I will wear my coat.
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And then it happens – our eldest has had a tin whistle breakthrough. “I can do it,” she announces. She marches up and down the hall, proudly playing tune after tune, no sheets of paper in sight. “Well done,” I smile. “You kept practising every night, and you got there.” She nods and smiles proudly as she plays.
“And sometimes beauty is like that,” John O'Donohue writes, “it turns up as a minuscule moment in a dark landscape, and recalls us to possibility and inspiration and encouragement.”
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After dinner, looking up from her homework, our eldest daughter asks, “What does it mean, 'to be on the home straight”. I explain the concept to her. Then I look over at our calendar - the Spring Equinox is in just two weeks - we are on the home straight, I tell her.
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I arrive at the studio and spot more positive progress in the long march towards spring – the first of the acorns on our windowsill has burst open, its green shoots reaching towards the sky.
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished,” I write it up large on the wall behind my printing desk in the studio. Huh, I think. We turn up the music louder. I turn towards my sketches, pick up my pencil and get back to work.
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On our way to drop the children to school this morning, we spotted a swan flying high above us – its long elegant neck reaching out and pointing towards the sea, the mountains and a little more brightness in the western sky.
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5 things we have uplifted us recently:
1. A good read: Five Bridges Colm Tóibín in The New Yorker
(along with this interview about the undocumented Irish and writing in real time)
2. New music: In the Blue Light by Kelela
3. An old book that feels like the antidote to the news cycle : John O'Donohue, Divine Beauty
4. This time last year: Tiny Desk Concert by Thee Sacred Souls
5. Following everything that Hometree have been working of late especially the artists involved in the Dinnseanchas project.