Friday Flowers Club #17~Torpor

Hello Friends.

We might well have the first snows of the Winter on Tuesday. Somewhat prophetically, last Friday saw the last supermoon of 2024, the Beaver Moon (picture above from my full moon swim at Redmires), also called the ‘Mourning Moon’ as it is the last before the Winter Solstice. The ‘Dark Half’ of the year is most definitely upon us and to coin a now overused phrase, ‘Winter is Coming’.

We are already being assaulted with frantic adverts counting down the days to Christmas and urging us to spend, rush, buy, plan, panic. But these are modern constructs at odds with the natural order of this intermediate period.

Only three mammals in our country truly hibernate, but that’s not to say that the pull to slow down and allow Winter to adjust the rhythms of our lives is not present for us too. Does any other seasonal change provoke such a primeval shift? The subconscious drive to conserve our energies, to restore and repair.

We do this through hunkering; cosiness, warmth, a gentler pace, comforting food. ‘Hygge’ is not just a lifestyle concept, it originated out of necessity. Stocking up on cakes and candles and reverting to a state of slow living remains a means of survival in many countries at sufficient extremes of the hemispheres.

Of course, we can’t hibernate. But the months ahead are cold and dark, and the wheel of the year compels us to enter a state of natural conservation nonetheless. Of Torpor. To light the fires and settle in. Let’s allow ourselves to move to a slower beat for a while.