LIGHTEN OUR DARKNESS

There’s something about these darkest days of the year that seems to make me want to remember, snuggle in, and put up lights. One walk through the dark streets in my area makes it clear that it's not just me, although I’m not sure where the urge to put up six-foot-tall inflatable gingerbread men and Father Christmases comes from. They’re fun, especially when they break free of their moorings, leaving a group of us chasing down a gingerbeead man and wrestling him to the ground. I still much prefer the family of penguins in the house opposite us and the reindeer next door to us. I rather like the Grinch window stickers in the house at the top of the road too. He’s stealing a decoration, which is good because I like a touch of sharpness to go with all the sweetness.

Most of all, I enjoy going for a walk as darkness comes in to see who’s done what, and see it changing each year as the children grow up and are replaced in due course by grandchildren. Either that, or people simply like doing it.

That’s not my thing, but I am gradually growing what I’m thinking of as my Night Garden. As my husband pointed out, it’s not as if I wanted much. It needs to look good in daylight as well as at night. It needs to be easy to install and maintain. It needs to make me smile. It also triggers memories in me because we saw a light installation by a group called Carabosse a few days after my husband was told that he wouldn’t live to see Christmas 2015. (Spoiler alert, the cancer treatment turned out to be late onset, and he’s been discharged from the hospital 10 years later, very much alive.)

Here’s a link to an image of Carabosse Fire Gardens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHi2c15gyQ0 Yes, they were real flames. Yes, again, I only have a tiny garden and I’m not sure how well they’d stay alight without setting light to the area, so the obvious compromise was LED Solar Torches. And, by a happy coincidence, they discount the packs of solar garden lights quite heavily at this time of year, so as the days get longer and the nights shorter, I choose to celebrate the darkness. I’ve been doing it for 5 years now, and they’re amazingly durable, so they’re concentrated in the areas that get the most light.

This year, I added to them some solar-powered dragonflies and butterflies, both of which have meaning for me and which go on either side of my baby wildlife pond (actually it’s a big shallow plant pot with a fountain in it, but it does attract dragonflies and butterflies and cats who like fresh water and pond snails. It’s a tiny vote for biodiversity, and I even had a single waterlily flowering this summer. I don’t know how it got in there, but it was very pretty.)

On top of that are some solar-lit flowers. They’re whte because the bees and butterflies like that colour, and I can make up a sugar solution for them and spray it on, which is especially good when our migratory butterflies and the bees from the hives over the main road, whose honey tastes extra nice because the bees come to our garden to feed because my goal is to have flowers in bloom every day of the year. I’ve managed it for the last two years.

Each year I add a few more lights, and reorganise what I have as well as moving the pots round, and the local dog walkers and parents and children sneak a look over the garden wall at what they call the Tardis Garden because it’s bigger on the inside. Not that much bigger, sadly, but the thing about most of it being in pots is that I can change it, just like I can already see the spring bulbs coming up.

Because dark nights and hope are both amazing, but I do like knowing that spring and new hope are just around the corner. You know by now that I believe in hope, and now you know why.

Till then, you might like to stockpile some winter reading while it’s on special offer. If so, then here are this week’s special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US.

There are to choose from this time, so

AMY HAMMOND

Ghost of Christmas Past - This, obviously, is set at Christmas time

The Past is Always With Sweet Revenge Handmade Crime - This one is set around preparing for Christmas

WINDY BAY - None of them are set around Christmas, but you can have too much of a good thing, can’t you? Or at least I can, which is why I like the Grinch.

It takes a Village

A Village Spring

A Village Wedding

And writing as ELEANOR NEVILLE, from my SHADOWS Series, so a little darker, in case you fancy a complete change, with handsome heroes rescuing girls from cults, some of whom had worked very hard to get themselves in there and didn’t need anyone wrecking things by deciding to rescue them.

Warriors Way

Cynics Way


So that’s that for today. See you at the weekend, by which time it may have stopped raining and blowing a gale here. I can see the green hills of Dorset in the distance. Right now, I know why they’re green, and I’m not convinced that they’re not mouldy. Take care, wherever you are, please.