Winter / Spring
"Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening and even the most experienced gardener can learn from the unrestrained beauty around them."
Vincent A. Simeone
January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days.
It is, on average, the coolest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere, characterizing the onset of the Winter and Summer in both hemispheres respectively.
January is named for Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway; the name has its beginnings in Roman mythology, coming from the Latin word for door (ianua) - January is the door to the year.
Traditionally, the original Roman calendar consisted of 10 months, totaling 304 days, winter being considered a monthless period. Around 713 BC, the semi-mythical successor of Romulus, KingNuma Pompilius, is supposed to have added the months of January and February, allowing the calendar to equal a standard lunar year (355 days). The first day of the month is known as New Year’s Day.
Although March was originally the first month in the old Roman calendar, January assumed that position beginning in 153 BCE.
January's birthstone is the garnet. Its birth flower is the carnation or snowdrop. The Chinese floral emblem of January is the plum blossom] The Japanese floral emblem of January is the camellia
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To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
- Emily Dickinson
February is the second month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the shortest month and the only month with fewer than 30 days. The month has 29 days in leap years, when the year number is divisible by four (except for years that are divisible by 100 and not by 400 in the Gregorian calendar). In common years the month has 28 days.
February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification
The birthstone is the amethyst, and the birth flower is the Violet.
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Gardeners, like everyone else, live second by second and minute by minute. What we see at one particular moment is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing. Seeing with the eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy, calls up
days and seasons past and years gone by. - Allen Lacy, The Gardener's Eye, 1992, p. 16
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