I have to confess that I am not a Christmas person. My family did it but not in a big way, but secretly my mother didn’t like it. I’ve inherited this attitude but I’m not so secret about it.
Imagine my surprise to find my self assiduously cutting out paper snowflakes in white, green blue over the last week, and giving up my precious lunch hours to hang them at work. Here’s a snap of our first efforts.
What has surprised me about this process is how, just like in nature, no two snowflakes turned out the same. I always remember a line from Louise Hay about how many different ways there were to do the dishes. Well, cutting out snowflakes is a much more pleasurable version of the same exercise.
I’m still not much into Christmas. I hate the stress of the shopping, the crassness of the buy buy buy, the drama of handling multiple families, the endless Christmas carols. The airport crush. Hot dinners in a heat wave. I could go on. But the snowflakes are lovely. A little oasis of creative calm that was much needed after the crap end to my year.
From paper snowflakes to roses…there are predictably enough a lot of roses with snowflake in their title. HelpMeFind.com lists ten, beginning with a tea rose by Lambert from 1886. I have never grown a rosé with snow in the title. The two closest to the cold theme are the ubiquitous Iceberg in Mum’s garden, and more recently Icegirl in my own. She has not taken kindly to being transplanted, and has sulked mightily here in Watson. The intensity of her scent makes me lenient but if she doesn’t buck up after all the rain, I may reconsider.