Brompton and Chelsea galanthophilia

Chelsea Physic Garden was advertising the first of its 'snowdrop weekends'. Though as a Friend I can pop along at any time, I thought it was a good opportunity to have lunch once more at the Physic's Tangerine Dream Cafe. Which in the end we didn't do, since I was so sidetracked by the masses of galanthi in Old Brompton Cemetery, always on my cycle route southwards, that I turned up a bit late.

They always cluster off the northern part of the great avenue which leads - in a modelling based on the approach to St Peter's Rome - to the chapel, currently under restoration.

Looking north:

Croci, too, were making appearances here and there,

not least to the side of this cross,

and the first of what I always think of as a special late-winter light, silver-brown, was illuminating one of the cemetery's most striking angels

as well as what is now established as a copy of a memorial for a 13th century Sienese saint containing the remains of artist Valentine Prinsep.

Overhanging the Swan Walk wall of the Physic Garden are the remaining pomegranates, symbol of Persephone's winter sojourn in the underworld

while within there were some rather gimmicky arrangements of snowdrops, though this one is at least  part of a tradition.

The most fascinating, for us at least, is a variety called 'Blewbury tart', which our dear friend Juliette Seibold claims was named after her by the Oxfordshire neighbour who claimed it. My favourite actually turned out to be a snowflake rather than a snowdrop, a relation in the family Amaryllidaceae: Leucojum vernum, the Carpathian variety.

The only other flourishers in late January were hellebores, not normally plants I'd chose for the garden, but look at the exquisite markings on this one.

A rose, 'Graham Turner', was doing surprisingly well

while berries add a splash of colour in the otherwise dormant order beds

and the striking remains of Helianthus annus 'Tall timber' remain sculptural,

complemented by the peppers in the medicinal garden.

One other specimen doing well: Brassica oleracea.

By way of west London coda, my three or four times-weekly visits to the gym in Normand Park, two minutes' walk away, give me passing insights into the great outdoors, and the other evening, as I was returning, I just caught the rising full moon through trees.

 Last daylight on the gym side:

Everyone got excited that this was a Super Blue Blood Moon  - the papers are making a thing of moons now, though that's fine if it gets more people looking - though it turned out that the UK wasn't getting the blood red effect. Still, how exciting for the fourth time since early November 2017 to see the craters on our nearest neighbour in space.

Auguries of Spring

Deep in the late winter freeze, it's hard to believe that last Friday I and friend Cal were sitting outside warmed  by the sun at the Chelsea Physic Garden, where in snowdrop week the excellent, if chaotically run, Tangerine Dream cafe serves up some of the best cakes in London. An hour later, the sun vanished for the weekend.

The lure for galanthophiles is the pretext for the 'psychic garden' opening to the public for a week in February - though of course members can come and go as they please. I hadn't renewed my subscription owing to high dudgeon at what they'd done to the south-eastern corner of the garden: once a glade with winding paths in marked contrast to the formal, educational beds elsewhere, and now a bleak suburban patio to show off medicinal plants. Still, the trees remain and the magnolias are in bud.

As for the snowdrops, there were more clumps in Brompton Cemetery as I cycled through on my way

but you do get a chance at the CPG to see their subtle differences up close in the 'theatre' by the statue of Sir Hans Sloane. This is galanthus plicatus 'Dionysus'

and this 'Trym'.

There's also one unpoetically called 'Grumpy' because it's down at the mouth. On the humorous front, I was taken in at first by this cactus in the little greenhouse abutting the house, though a little suspicious of anything of the sort flourishing in Wales and the Shetland Islands.

Cal laughingly put me right and touch confirmed this was indeed Notacactus.

Our lovely friend Pia Östlund, brilliant graphic designer for the CPG and elsewhere, was offering an all-day workshop on 'the lost art of nature printing'. Simple: you take your leaf or flower, ink it up with a roller between a folded piece of baking paper and then press in on to a folded card so that you get both sides of the leaf/flower in symmetry.

The subtlety of the leaf design comes through in all its glory, and of course it can be very different on each side. Geranium leaves work very well, I thought. Sadly I've lost both my specimens; either I threw them out with the bag in which Pia returned a Bergman DVD with a tiny snowdrop, or they're buried somewhere in this room. But I think it would be a good thing to take up for greeting cards at home. 

Pia was inspired by Victorian books which had made use of nature printing, sometimes via more complicated techniques. Here's Pteridium aquilinum in Thomas Moore's 1857 tome on tree ferns, nature-printed by Henry Bradbury.

Back to the time of year. Pancakes were consumed last night, and now Lent begins - as I'm very well aware with my Sunday Bach cantata ritual coming to a temporary halt until Easter*. Last Sunday was Estomihi or Quinquagesima. Its New Testament reading from Luke 18 verses 31-43 finds Christ not only healing the persistent blind beggar in Jericho - represented here by Duccio and an exquisite Rembrandt drawing - but also making the first announcement of his impending passion to the disciples. 

'Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott', BWV 127 followed directly on the heels of the earth-shaker I chose last week in the Leipzig 1725 calendar. Recorders (I like flauti dolci) soften the floridity around the opening chorale setting, very sensitive to 'endlich starbst' and 'bittre Leidung'. The tenor's fluid recit sets the scene for a total charmer - and a big soprano solo at last (on the Suzuki recording I heard, the estimable Carolyn Sampson). The vocal line of  'Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen' is complemented by a glorious oboe obbligato and supported by staccato chords from the recorders and pizzicato continuo. In a wonderful moment, the word 'Sterbeglocken' ('bells of death') brings in pizz. strings.

More typical contrast in Bach follows: the bass solo is another of those half-recits which break into arioso. It's the Last Judgment, so sound the trumpet, but only in sporadic animated bursts. It tumbles to earth and signals destruction, but Christ offers comfort. So, of course, does the closing chorale which ends with a sleep of sweet dreams. Here's Herreweghe on YouTube.

*not because I'm observing Lent by not listening to/playing music, but because Leipzig did.