Tomorrow it’s June, and May has been a basket case. The year is turning faster than it has any right to do. It’s an established phenomenon that time appears to pass more quickly the older you get, and ironically, I’ve just spent far too long reminding myself of why this might happen. There are several theories. Paul Janet proposed in 1877 that our experiece of time varies proportionally to our longevity – as a child, summer seemed to last for ever because it was far more significant relative to our age than a few weeks in July and August will be to someone in their fifities. More recent research suggests that our brains encode new experiences in greater detail than routine experiences; that increasingly familiar events and seasons demand less mental space than does novelty, and that the relative lack of novelty as we age explains the perception of time passing more quickly than when everything we experience feels like uncharted territory. Do new things, live longer – it’s not a bad idea.
This recent weather seems new, and unusual, and it’s been doing its best to be confounding. Summer seemed impatient to arrive, and turned up two weeks too soon, with record high temperatures bringing forward the season of trudging up and down the garden with a watering can in each hand (at least I’ve got a nice new path now, though). I don’t need psychology to tell me why it feels like time is moving with indecent haste.
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We’ve had several warm springs lately, but this year the timing’s been different, and I’ve been reflecting on the garden’s response in each case. An unseasonably warm and sunny March or April can have a frazzling efffect on the garden as much of it is thinking about emerging from hibernation, and eager young foliage has yet to acquire the wherewithal to deal with an agressively summery sun. It’ll move the tulips through their cycle faster than you’d like, but most everything else behaves itself as you’d expect. By May, though, everything has gotten its act together, the days are significantly longer, and a heatwave such as we’ve just enjoyed acts as a immensely powerful catalyst. The month’s exploding growth rate moves from prodigious, to something verging on absurd – you might remember that I’m supposed to be getting rid of Shed #3 this year, once I’ve cleared it out. Right now, I can’t even find it beneath an raucous symphony of Iceberg rose, nettles, bindweed and bramble. If I ask nicely, maybe the garden will dismantle the shed for me?
Right now, it’s undisciplined and wafty, which I’d expect. It’s full of handsome docks of Unusual Size and presently utterly overrun with roses. though if the weather doesn’t sort itself out sharpish we’ll be out from under the first flush before the first week of June is done. I’ve no real inclination to tackle it just now. I enjoy the contrast of fresh green growth against a tightly clipped outline (so much easier just to write “wafty”), but I know that given another couple of weeks the new growth will begin to mature, darken down and thicken. Still, if I were to get clipping immediately, it would only need doing again in a month, so I’m resolved to let things go for a while longer. Same goes for the docks (I do like a rumex, or a dock-adjacent thing like a persicaria) – I should be sensible and cut the flowering stems off before they rush to seed, but where’s the fun in that? I’d miss them splitting the sunbeams and throwing sparkles through the woodland edge shade.
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