Snowed in

The perils of living on a hill in January

Last Saturday, we thought the snow might have melted enough to make a quick drive to the shops possible. Twenty seconds later, we realised we were horribly wrong.

The poor little car - my late Dad’s VW, in fact - was stuck in the middle of our steeply sloping road, wheels spinning. My husband had summoned me out to help but in his infinite wisdom kept the car window closed while he made panicked, irrational driving decisions, so I was having to yell ‘REVERSE UP THAT DRIVE’ at the top of my lungs like a complete lunatic. I thought he’d reverse up the opposite drive and then park up on the kerb, or come back into our driveway, but instead he pootled off downhill to the steepest, slipperiest part of the entire street - the part where cars all end up crashing into each other - and got himself stuck again.

Eventually he managed to reverse onto the kerb - one wheel on, one wheel off but with all the wheels spinning hopelessly and a van directly parked downhill of the car there weren’t very many other options. Later that day I kept finding him missing from the house - he’d spotted an impending crash as passing Amazon drivers also got themselves stuck in the same spot and had been helping to push the van out of the way. I did not sleep very well last night. We will not be attempting to move the car in the ice again.

It is faintly ridiculous, with really only a few inches of snow, to be so completely stranded by relatively predictable winter weather. In a way, it is quite nice to be so beholden to the whims of the seasons. If it snows, there just is no option to leave. And for a few days, it’s nice to check out from the world, build a snowman with the kids, bake some biscuits and trudge down to the park to pull a sled around.

I had returned to work a few days before the snow fell - but it was a brutal return. I’d had weeks off over Christmas and my body had gone soft. Two full days of raking, and cutting, and dragging branches to make way for a new dead hedge had my arms screaming and my brain questioning my life choices.

Gardening as a career is a brutal one in January. It is about survival. It isn’t really the cold - anyone can pull on a few layers. But there are tricks to get around the chill which creeps into wet gloves and bites at cold toes under chilled rubber. I layer cheap supermarket woolen gloves beneath gardening gloves. My boots - I’m on my third pair in as many weeks as they all keep leaking - now have the secret weapon of chemical foot warmers nestled above my toes. The tricks will get you so far, along with bowls of hot soup, hot coffee, herbal tea (dehydration is arguably a bigger risk as it’s easier to forget about water in the cold) and very hot baths after work. But they can’t mitigate the fact it just isn’t spring yet. They can’t make the sun rise any earlier. There are a few green shoots, but the presiding colour is brown - or white. The walled garden has been strimmed to the ground. Sound echoes around the empty space. There is beauty in the frosty mornings but there is also a mild terror in driving to work over black ice. In January, the flowers feel so very far away.

Still, with the whims of climate change, the day after the snow melted the temperature shot to 11C and stayed pretty warm all last week. I’ll be making the most of this springlike winter weather before the next icy blast arrives and when it does, I’ll stay indoors and tend to my succulents. Over the last year I’ve amassed a small collection, and that is set to grow as I cannot resist propagating more. The plan is to have two or three big pots of the mother plants on display, and slowly propagate their babies from leaf and stem cuttings. Later this year, if I have enough, I’ll take them to a craft market to sell along with dried flowers from the garden. They might become a little side hustle - but for now, they are a way of keeping myself sane while the soil is too cold to get my hands into.

Wherever you are, I hope you have enough food, and heating, and that you - and your plants - are finding ways to survive this, the very bleakest month of the year.