“I’ll tie the universe of stars to the net with green garden twine, which has that dusty, dry smell I love so much.”
It would be this time of year, that they are blooming, in Ireland. It is such an inherently unruly shrub. There is no ‘training it’, taming it. It huddles and skulks, overflows and droops and just wants to be wilder than most will let it be. When you grab it, to tie it up against a barren, block wall - it does indeed struggle against you - like a wild and unruly galaxy would, I imagine. It IS a galaxy - of winter blossoms, slight fragrance. Its the harbinger of the harbingers. It’s one of the shots of sunshine yellow that nature, whomever she may be, gives us as we muddle and drag our way through the depths of winter darkness. Followed by gorse. Forsythia. Daffodils. Remember, she says, what sunshine looks like and feels like and smells like. Even that coconutty fragrance of the gorse - the smells of summer and sunscreen and the tropics. She knows…we struggle. With the cold and dark and sometimes forget - spring is almost here. Summer will come again. The light will come.
photo credit to Bug Woman London