January in Spain is a strange month to explain to anyone who’s only ever gardened in Ireland.
Back home, January is blunt. It arrives like a closed door. The garden is asleep, the light is thin, the soil is cold all the way through. Nothing is pretending otherwise. You can stand at the window with your tea and think, fair enough, we’ll begin again in March.
Here, January has better manners. It doesn’t slam anything shut.
The mornings are sharp, yes. I’ve gone out early enough to feel that little sting in my fingers, the same way I used to in Connemara when I’d insist on checking something I couldn’t possibly fix. But then the sun lifts, and by eleven it’s warm on your face. Warm enough that you start doubting yourself. Warm enough that the garden looks like it might be about to do something.
And yet it doesn’t.
Not properly.
The citrus tree in the corner looks almost smug. Green leaves, solid, unbothered. No drama. But when you look closely, there’s no real push of growth. It’s paused. Waiting. The kind of waiting that isn’t empty, just quiet.
Rosemary, of course, is doing what rosemary always does, which is thriving as if seasons are for other plants. I sometimes think rosemary is the neighbour who never struggles and still manages to mention how early they get up.
There are weeds too, which feels unfair. In Ireland, at least winter had the decency to wipe the slate clean for a while. Here, even in January, something always thinks it has a right to be here.
The air smells different as well. Not frost. Not that deep wet cold that sits in your bones. It’s more like damp stone and faint woodsmoke from someone’s stove down the road. Winter, but softened. Winter with sunlight in it.
I find myself doing small jobs in January because I don’t quite know what else to do.
A bit of pruning. A bit of tidying. Moving pots that I moved last week and will probably move again. Checking the soil even though I already know what it will feel like. Cold underneath, dry on top. Spain’s little trick.
It reminds me, oddly, of grief. Not the sharp part. The quieter part. The months where nothing looks like progress, but something is still happening underneath. Roots still working. The world still turning, even when it feels paused.
I spoke to a neighbour the other day who mentioned tomatoes, casually, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be thinking about tomatoes in January. I nodded, because that’s what you do, but inside I thought, no. Not yet. Don’t rush me.
January here isn’t dead. It isn’t spring.
It’s the garden holding its breath.
And maybe that’s enough.
The garden isn’t empty.
It’s resting in a language I’m still learning.