This post should come with a warning perhaps: It is a deeply personal piece and will have little to do with plants. And while I usually try to write positively, or at least give my posts a positive spin to make them a little uplifting, I’m not sure I’ll manage this time.

As I write, the sun shines from a clear blue sky, the birds tweet like mad, it’s warm enough to sit short-sleeved on the roof terrace, the forecast having promised temperatures of up to 18 degrees Celsius: everything screams SPRING. Yet it is only mid-February, today is the last day of school before the winter break and children here would normally expect (or at least hope for) frost and snow. Indeed, there are bits left over from a snow storm less than two weeks ago that was heavy enough to ground planes for a day at our local airport.  It’s truly weird – and so are my feelings about it. On the one hand I long for nothing more than the return of the sun, warmer days, flowers and green, the return of life. On the other I don’t feel ready for it just yet. It just doesn’t feel appropriate – and that, for me, is only in a very small way linked to the time of year.

There was an early bee humming next to me, gathering nectar in the collapsed and shrivelled Helleborus niger flowers growing in some of my pots. No idea why they have collapsed; maybe for a lack of water at some point – or perhaps because of too much moisture when the frost hit? In any case, they are a very sorry sight indeed and I took pity on the bee. Yet it would accept neither the tulip flowers in a vase, nor the highly fragrant white flowers of the Sarcoccoca confusa which I brought from its winter quarters in order to offer the poor insect something fresh! It much preferred the Helleborus. The bee on the dead flowers seems an apt metaphor for my own situation. This winter has been horrible, and I’m not talking about the weather.

Several personal crises have converged over the past months, some long-running, some more recent. The move back to Germany last summer has contributed, not least as I’ve lost not only my own beloved garden but also immediate access to Kew, always a source of comfort, and the network of people and friends for everyday moral support I had in London. You know, the heart-to-heart over a shared coffee, the chat with other mums in the playground whilst the children are running around… The situation with Brexit hasn't helped either. At the end of 2018, I mentally hit rock bottom.

                                              The cat in the bag, the tree in the net...

While usually I’m a sucker for Christmas, this – last – year for various reasons I was dreading it. To the point of not really wanting or caring to have a Christmas tree. For the first time ever in my life I felt that indeed this was just grooming and dressing a dead horse. It did not seem to represent the anticipation, the joy of Christmas with its lights but something dead: dolled up, but still dead and sad. In the end, however, the children and I went out to buy one. Poignantly perhaps, when we got to the yard where over the last few weeks I had seen the Christmas tree sale, everything was dark and deserted.

Now, unlike in Britain many people in Germany will not put up the tree before actual Christmas, with Christmas Eve morning being the time to decorate it as this is the big and main day for us. So a week before that did not really seem too late to be buying a tree. Yet when I asked the lady at the till in the small petrol station nextdoor, she confirmed that indeed the sale here was over for this year. However, there were a few left-over trees the seller had left, readily netted for transport, leaning against the wall of the yard with bits of paper attached that told the suggested price people should pay for them and leave with her at the petrol station, for the seller to collect later. She assured me that the trees, grown regionally, were usually well-shaped and since I didn’t have much of an option (i.e. no car and no other point of sale anywhere nearby – this was just a tram stop from our place) we bought the cat in the bag, or more precisely the Christmas tree in the net.

Unlike other years, it was not a Nordmann fir (Abies nordmanniana) but a Blue Spruce (Picea pungens) and as I was lugging the 2.50 m tree home – the kids helping to carry it at the sawn-off end and the tip – it felt more like I was hugging a cactus, the needles sharp and stiff like a hedgehog’s spines. We got it home and upstairs and put it outside on the roof terrace of our flat for the remaining days. I didn’t see it as an omen but neither did it lift the mood when three days later in high winds and torrential rain the tree was toppled and fell – without much damage – despite being sheltered in the roof’s recess and screwed tight into the tree stand.
        
                                           Not in Christmas spirits...

The next two days Dad was entirely bed-bound. He said he wanted to make it into the next year, not sounding confident that he would. Pain and panic attacks during the choking fits that had plagued him for months had left him wishing for a quick and quiet death – he’d confessed to me a few times before: “If there was a button I could push to end this all, I definitely would” – yet human nature clings to life and the unknown scares us.

As he lay there, he had a good view of and much enjoyed the Malvaviscus arboreus in flower on the window sill. It’s a plant he loved, draping even the spent blooms over foliage indoor plants below, so as to savour their bright red a little longer. Dad said he didn’t remember it ever to flower so profusely before. I was glad I could remind him that the plant came from a cutting I had taken a good fifteen years ago on a joint holiday to Madeira – meaning more happy memories to share.

On New Year’s Eve he wanted to rest at night but asked us to come just before the clock would strike Twelve. We did. My mum, sister and I with a glass of Sekt (German version of Champagne), a glass of homemade elderflower lemonade for my dad. And still he couldn’t take more than a sip before he started to retch again as he had done for much of the previous days. So the four of us sat there, quietly in the dark, one of us either side of him to help him sit upright in bed, watching what fireworks we could see through the window (crazy numbers of private fireworks blasted in the sky being the German way to welcome in the new year).

I don’t know how my dad felt about it – on one level he was clearly glad he had made it, against his fear and a doctor’s prediction, into the new year and seemed to enjoy the spectacle. On the other hand he must have known it was to be his last. Despite irrational hopes – hope is the last thing that dies, they say – deep down we all knew. So sadness and a heavy heart dominated even though we tried to hide it. “Next stage goal is your 80th birthday!” I said, trying to sound cheerful. But I guess he already knew he wasn’t going to make it that far.

Still, the milestone of making it into the new year must have given him a boost for on New Year’s Day he got up and dressed again and even had lunch with us – a tiny portion only, but it was real food rather than the somewhat slimy soup made of flour which had been the only thing he’d occasionally kept down during the last few days.

It didn’t last long though. And when I had to say Good-bye and leave the next day, it was total agony as I felt very strongly that it might be our final farewell.

It was. The next time I saw him, he was already dead. He had died a few minutes before I reached him.

                        
                          Snowdrops give comfort while Sansevieria meets antipathy

Still, after much suffering throughout January we were extremely grateful that the strong painkillers and sedatives which he had been given after a day of choking fits that came every three minutes meant he died peacefully in the end, something we had hardly dared to hope anymore. I also drew a strange, if tiny, sense of comfort from detecting the first snowdrops in bloom as I arrived: at least he didn’t die in the depth and gloom of midwinter! Nature was no longer “all dead” but showed the first visible signs of its “resurrection”. Surely that was an omen?

I know this is mean of me, but I have to admit that the sight of a Sansevieria trifasciata 'Hahnii' on the other hand repulsed me. It had been a gift to my Dad when he had passed his PhD exam, well before I was born thus I have known it all my life. The idea, however, that this plant which I've never liked since it had never seemed truly alive, never had changed in any visible way, would survive him was simply too much.

However, the most poignant thing to me was the following: Dad’s biggest favourite among the house plants was a Hibiscus schizopetalus, grown with tender loving care from another cutting I had given them years ago. He adored its intricate flowers, marvelled at their lace-like delicacy and shape. Unlike my own though, my parents’ plant sadly flowered very rarely indeed. I suspect it was down to a lack of nutrients in the small pot it had to be confined to and perhaps the pruning, too – both due to the limited space available and yet a desire on my parents’ part to keep this particular favourite.

During Dad’s last few weeks, as he was entirely bed-bound, my mum told him that a bud had formed on their plant and he asked her to take a picture when it would flower and show it to him. When the bud eventually did open, my sister lugged the pot from the living room to his bed instead so he could see the real thing. But, she told me, she wasn’t sure he actually still noticed it.

My own plant meanwhile had fared really badly in December and then again around the end of January: suddenly dropping great numbers of leaves without apparent cause, whole branches dying whilst others remained fairly unscathed. I had – and have – no explanation for it, but was alarmed and very concerned. It seems even stranger then that after months, perhaps even two years with no flower my parents’ Hibiscus schizopetalus by contrast bore another bud. Hibiscus blooms last only one day: the second bud flowered the day my dad died... It was Candlemas, once considered the last day of the Christmas season.

Apart from those general musings, it’s been a particular joy to observe at close quarters the huge beech tree in the yard. Though it has long been my favourite tree species, I’ve never before had such a prime position and view into its crown as I have now, curtesy of the roof terrace and half of the flat’s windows. It has been fascinating to sit there on still late-summer days and hear a constant sound of soft crackling, pop after pop after pop, of the husks cracking open as they ripened and dried.

Quite a few of the seeds, the beechnuts, fell out with a “Plop!” back then already, but most waited until a few weeks later when the first strong gusts of wind shook the branches. Then it became a shower of missiles raining down so hard you instinctively took shelter. Less so on the roof terrace, but certainly when down in the yard. The roof of the carport was a noisy shelter though, the small but solid nuts capable of a drumming far beyond what you’d expect from something that small. Also, I was surprised how loud a bird trying to crack them open could be – it positively sounded as if a person stomped atop the carport’s roof.

The beech nuts and their husks literally covered everything below the tree. I’d never seen such dense carpet before.  As acorns likewise were especially abundant this year I figure it must have been what is called a Mastjahr in German – a “fattening year”, the word stemming from a time when villagers would herd their livestock, especially pigs, to the trees so they would feed on the bounty and fatten well.  I briefly wondered if the nuts and husks would make a good mulch in my pots over the winter, but of course thousands of beech seedlings would appear come spring and create a problem – especially for someone who is loath to killing a healthy young plant, even if in the wrong spot.

Instead, my little one and I spent a few hours picking tubs full of beech nuts – ostensibly to feed the birds in winter, but I’m not sure the birds really will be the beneficiaries: not only are there still thousands and thousands of nuts on the ground, even after the caretaker has raked most of the leaves and husks away, more importantly, we also love eating them. While tiresome (and back-hurting) to gather and somewhat time-consuming to shell, they are delicious. They have a true nutty, slightly astringent flavour and I actually prefer them to many other nuts.

Bilberries or whortleberries (Vaccinium myrtillus), too, are tiresome to pick in the wild and yet there are so many recipes to put them to good use – why, I wondered, did I not know a single one involving beech nuts? Then I vaguely remembered reading they contain high levels of cyanide thus prohibiting consumption in quantities. A little research confirmed they do indeed contain cyanide and other toxins – although I also read these can effectively be dealt with by either roasting the beechnuts or scalding or blanching them with boiling water. Still, as an occasional snack of a few even raw beechnuts are unlikely to do harm: I think the birds won’t see many of the ones we gathered.

Speaking of birds, I observed no fewer than 9 species regularly in the tree so far: chaffinches, of course, their common German name Buchfink (beech finch) clearly indicating the birds’ preference for this species. Woodpecker, nuthatch, treecreeper and jay did not surprise me either. But I hadn’t known how keen tits – great tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits – were on the nuts. Or was it just insects they were after? No, it certainly didn’t look like that. Likewise the doves. And there I was, thinking they’d only go for soft or grain-like fodder! While not totally unexpected, it certainly is eye-opening to have such close view into a mature tree at crown level.

Aside from the beechnuts, there were other attempts at harvesting nature’s bounty – and not the most obvious kind from orchard or veg plot. For instance, we did go foraging for fungi and found a few. They were of an inferior kind only, nothing to boast about and certainly not on a par with the basket full of big lucious ceps (Boletus edulis) a gentleman we encountered in the forest had gathered.

As every forager of fungi would be, he was evasive about the exact whereabouts of his find but polite enough to not just tell that this year, because of the extremely dry conditions, your best bet was in some lower-lying, moister areas such as the banks of ditches, brooks and ponds – this much I had figured out myself – but, as we were new to the area, to point some out. My little one, who up until this encounter had wanted to return home, was electrified and wouldn’t stop pleading until we turned 180 degree on the spot and walked back, in pursuit of those porcini. Surprise, surprise - we didn’t find any, but, as mentioned above, enough “lesser” edible fungi to make a good meal. I guess we’ll just have to explore and get to know the forest better in the years to come – something I certainly look forward to.

Even more surprising was the water melon we encountered on the river banks: it’s not as if melons are common even in gardens around here. But there it was, surely self-seeded like the tomatoes, with a fruit the size of a fist or small cantaloupe. Once discovered, the little one guarded it as jealously as a hen its eggs. He took up his post next to the plant and wouldn’t budge or leave when another family settled two metres away, blissfully unaware of the treasure. My suggestion to let them in on the secret and in return request they don’t harm the plant or damage the melon was frowned upon, even though the two children sure didn’t look like wanton destroyers and our chances of a melon harvest were next to zilch anyway. For even in the unlikely case of no-one else discovering it, plant and fruit would either freeze to death before ripe or the rising water levels of the river once the rain returned would submerge it. The little one was having none of it – not that afternoon at least.

Sure enough, when we returned last week after a while away, the river had taken it. In fact, there was nothing left of the plant – only pebbles where it had grown. Though not a tidal river, the current must have been strong enough to dig it out and sweep it away. We had better luck when chancing upon the ripe fruit of Cornelian cherries (Prunus mas) – they were at their dark-red, delicious best, juicy and sweet, and only the lack of a kitchen so far (more precisely a stove) to turn the bounty into jam, jelly or anything else held us back from gathering serious amounts. Next year though…