Tropical Zone Gardening: It's the season to be jolly... so there's no... without..., 1 by goofybulb

goofybulb wrote:
Today it's the winter solstice. Sometimes, people don't even realize that they are celebrating it!

As I told you earlier, in the villages, they still light up fires on the hills this night. And it's interesting that many religions have holidays around this time. I believe that as those beliefs developed, the previous (usually multi-god) traditions got assimilated. Almost any corner of this world celebrated at some point the Sun god. And maybe the fires were to hush spirits, to please the Sun so the daytime would grow again...

I learned that today the Hanuka starts. And I learned that there's also fire lighting (candles) for several days. Happy Hanuka celebrations for any of you who observe this holiday!

For us, and many other Romanian families, today is a cleaning day. Dave, I think, said somewhere about swiping your house today, as it brings luck? Well, than we should be lucky! It's very close to Christmas, and the house has to be spottless! Than, the New Year comes, and it is said that, the way New Year finds you, that's how it's going to be for that year...

It's a massive cleaning. Not just the usual "put things back to their place", not just swiping and dusting. Romanians have the habit of "beating their carpets". It is now forbidden by law in the cities, as it creates more dust, and noise, and doesn't look good. But let me tell you, for those carpets, it was a really good cleaning! They would catch the smell of fresh, of snow, of clean!

Also, in our house, this was about time to start listening to foreign carols/Christmas songs. I grew up listening Mahalia Jackson on vinyls, and Nat King Cole on magnetic bands (do you remember those? The predecessors of the cassettes? There was also a vinyl with German traditional carols, sang by kids! We used to listen it in the living room (the only room to have a pick-up and a magnetic-band player), or, if we had to be in a different room, the whole house would be filled with music, as we turned the volume up. I still listen to Mahalia (made a cassette and found a CD too...) and to the little German kids (I think they are all grown up by now, as I am too, but their voices will remain forever young). Nat King Cole was my mom's favorite Christmastime, but I still have to find him on a CD.

Apart from the cleaning, this year I decided to start a new family tradition! I received some plants and cuttings a couple of days ago, and I bought so many seeds! So, today is the beginning of our new tradition: gardening at solstice! Initially I was going to make it just "sowing seeds at solstice", but those plants made me change my mind.
I'll probably post pics of them tomorrow.

(The carpet beating is usually the man's job, and many of them do not enjoy the task... searched hard for a pic on Google)