My pine cone ritual
The light is already leaving the valley on this December mid-afternoon, though it lingers on the larch tops in the hillside wood to the north. Beyond that, the high fields are suffused with a rosy glow. The four Scots pines by the river are taking on the softness of dusk as I pick my way towards them through sodden rushes. A half-detached limb sweeps down to rest on the grey drystone wall and I've come to pick its cones in a personal annual ritual.
The cones, closed and pointed, have a rough solidity under my fingers, their overlapping plates rhythmical in their Fibonacci arrangement. It takes some tugging from the springy branches to stuff my pockets. Once home, I fill a terracotta dish and set it by the wood burning stove, a small celebration of hearth and winter. By spring the tough cones will have expanded, loosening their papery seeds, which I will sow in a nursery corner of the vegetable garden.
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