The 72 seasons

Keen to look closer at changes taking place in the natural world, Lev Parikian applied the Ancient Japanese idea of microseasons to his patch of Britain across a year. Each offered something new to see, smell or hear, an alternative way of paying attention to what’s happening around us

THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO DIVIDE A YEAR.

We’re used to four seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter – so entrenched in our consciousness that we forget they really apply only to the temperate parts of our planet. Kurt Vonnegut reckoned the eastern seaboard of America had six: the usual four, plus ‘locking’ (November and December) and ‘unlocking’ (March and April).

You’ll find variations on that theme everywhere. Little additions, taking local conditions into account. The Hindu calendar has six seasons, or ritu, including the monsoon and a two-part winter. The Gulumoerrgin language group in Australia’s Northern Territories divides the year into seven.

Perhaps the most extreme example is the Ancient Japanese calendar. Four seasons, each divided into six, with each subdivision ( sekki) in turn divided further, for a total of 72 microseasons ( kō). Their names are dominated by elements specific to Japan’s climate – ‘east wind melts the ice’, ‘frogs start singing’, ‘cotton flowers bloom’. They’re rooted in the rhythms of the land, but also reflect what we intuitively know: that little changes require finer definition

– the difference between the first flush of spring in March and its maturity in May.

How do these 72 microseasons relate to the passing of the year in suburban London, where I live? Well, in many ways they don’t. Great Britain and Japan have different geology, different climates, different fauna and flora.

But while the precise rhythms of the year may vary, the microseasons act as an incentive to look more consistently at the slow evolution of the natural world around us.

Paying attention to this for at least one day out of every five ensured I didn’t inadvertently lose my connection with it. And limiting my observations to a small area I already knew

– our garden, the streets around our house, the local cemetery – made me look again and more closely at the familiar, the everyday, the easily overlooked.

If we want to find new ways of paying attention, and to give the natural world the respect it so desperately needs, the first step is to acknowledge that it’s all around us and – crucially – that we are part of it. We’re all in the same boat – perhaps it would be a good idea to get to know our fellow passengers that bit better.

SEASON 9 Cherry blossoms in full bloom 16–20 March

There is a place, not far from here, where magic happens. It’s a brief, evanescent kind of magic, but if you can catch it, the rewards are plentiful.

One cherry tree in blossom offers a splash of prettiness; 30 of them qualifies as spectacular, the clouds of pink-tinged white irresistibly festive. The transience of the blooms is part of the attraction. Constant beauty becomes wallpaper; give it to us for just a few days and it becomes a special treat.

The importance of cherry blossom in Japanese culture can hardly be overstated. So entrenched is the ritual of hanami (flower-viewing) that the progress of the flowering – based on 59 sample trees – is reported by meteorological agencies in daily bulletins.

These Yoshino cherry trees do their bit. Looking at their festive pink and whiteness against the regularity of the street’s houses brings a sense of freedom and calm. I’m unsure whether what

I’m doing counts as hanami, but it counts as a therapeutic activity, so that’s good enough for me.

SEASON 14 Migrant birds arrive f rom Africa 10–14 April

The soundtrack nearly passes me by.

A mournful descending sound, barely detected at first. Then it’s repeated. No doubt about it. Willow warbler, fresh from Africa. Soft in tone, there’s a plaintive quality to the song, often offset with a little skip in the step at the end, a moment of uplift, the Jaffa Cake hiding beneath the Rich Tea in the biscuit tin of life.

The willow warbler is no more than a scrap of a thing, yet every year it travels all the way from its wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa. The journeys these birds make. From Africa come warblers, swallows, martins, nightingales, cuckoos, swifts, and on and on.

And while they arrive, our winter visitors – redwings, finches, ducks, swans, geese and more – make their way back to their breeding grounds in Scandinavia and beyond.

Many die on the way. But many make it. That’s the calculation: better for the species as a whole to move. So they follow the routes of their ancestors, using instincts and knowledge we still don’t fully understand.

This willow warbler has chosen a tree near me to sing its song:

‘Here I am. I made it.’ It feels like a benediction.

SEASON 16 Lily of the valley blooms 20–24 April

An impulse makes me look low down. Sure enough, in the shadow of the wall I see the first stirrings of growth.

The lily of the valley is starting. If the delicacy of their appearance – pert hanging jingles on slender stems – isn’t enough to set the senses alight, it’s worth getting down on your knees. That passerby casting a sidelong glance? Let them think what they will. For they’re not the ones who will benefit from that scent, the kind of thing chemists labour for years to recreate. An aroma of intense, deep sweetness, not sickly but green and fresh, very floral, mmm, mmm, yes, and am I getting a hint of lemon?

There’s a danger that we forget to notice what is there in front of us. But lily of the valley is an antidote to that. Vibrantly alive, drawing you in with its delicate appearance and arresting aroma, and with a season no longer than a pint of milk’s, it’s a reminder, more than any mindfulness course, to live in the moment. »

SEASON 20 Bees all over the place 10–14 May

There, on the clover, bees. The clover is coming into peak condition, and they are over it like a rash. No wonder it used to be known as ‘bee bread’. And the bees, now I look more closely, are of several different species.

For years I thought there were three kinds of bee: honey, bumble and other. But there are, as I learn when I browse the Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland, hundreds of the beggars. To be precise: 270.

Of those 270 species of the genus Bombus that have been recorded in the UK, how many am I likely to see in south London? Fifteen or 20, at most. But I look with fascination, and it’s quite the eye-opener to discover that there are insects going about with names like Carrot mining bee, Sheep’s-bit dufourea and Hairy-saddled colletes. I can’t help feeling that my world is ever so slightly enhanced by the knowledge that I share it with such things.

The individual I’m particularly interested in refused to sit still for long enough for me to get a good look at it, so I’m relying on my visual memory.

It necessitates much browknitting and lip-pursing, but taking into consideration multiple factors, including tergite banding, malar gaps and its cute and fluffy white tail, I eventually come to the conclusion that I have no idea. Bees, like life, are just a confusing mess.

SEASON 49 Maple reaches peak glory 8–12 October

It’s the annual game of dare that is Heating On Or Not Yet?

I nearly crack on day three. Nearly, but not quite.

It’s not so much the air temperature as the mood. The dampening greyness that lowers the temperature of the soul.

The garden is a saving grace.

The spread of yellow is gathering momentum, offset by the glory of the small maple. For months at a time, it’s elegant but relatively anonymous. But come the moment, and it takes centre stage.

It’s been showing promise for a couple of weeks, and now it’s a riot, a glowing pool of oranges and browns and reds.

You can take pleasure from observing this process without understanding the science behind it. I did for years. And then someone pointed out that the colour change isn’t a change so much as an unveiling. The chemicals responsible for those colours – carotenoids and flavonoids – don’t appear from nowhere. They’re always there, waiting for the chlorophyll to disappear so they can strut their stuff. Like a heat-sensitive mug, revealing its true nature only under certain circumstances. This knowledge is like the explanation of a conjuring trick to a child.

The demystification doesn’t strip away the wonder – it deepens it.

SEASON 62 Grey skies are unremitting 12–16 December

Some seasons you savour because they hint at what’s in store round the corner. Others you relish because of what they are. And others you can’t wait to get rid of because they seem to offer nothing of use to man nor beast. Hello, Season 62.

The absolute grimness of the grey, the sullen cloud hanging uniform and low.

A day to consign to the bin.

Late in the afternoon, the sun pokes its way through the clouds for a few minutes and treats anyone who might be interested to that glowing angled wintry light.

Then it disappears, the light goes, dusk gathers. Just as I’m about to go back inside, a robin starts singing. Silvery ribbon, fluttery warblings – the usual routine. Something – perhaps the stillness of the air, perhaps the particular angle of delivery – makes the sound more than usually resonant. It’s enough to keep me out there, hanging on its every warble, until darkness descends and it calls it a night.

In times of need, send birds.

SEASON 70 Snow sometimes fa l l s 20–24 January

I am a mature adult, nearly

56 years on the planet. But show me snowfall and my inner eightyear-old bursts out in a giddy cloud of excitement and starts shouting "SNOW SNOW SNOW."

Growing up in low-lying Oxfordshire, snow was a noteworthy occurrence, eagerly anticipated but not often experienced.

It wasn’t just the possibility of a day off school. There was the sheer perfection of a newly laid blanket of snow, waiting for me, and only me, to be the first to disturb it.

Had snow been a more regular occurrence, perhaps even to the point of banality and possibly hardship, my attitude might be different. But I’m still in the grip of that excitable eight-year-old.

When it does come, I stand by the window, nursing a coffee and nibbling on a biscuit, and watch it fall. A simple, calming meditation exercise. There’s a bare sprinkling at first, dandruff flakes.

The advance guard dissolves feebly on the ground, but bit by bit the flurries turn to billows and the billows turn to swathes and, as it thickens, the wind picks up and soon it’s a swirling mass.» And as they start to take hold, the dark brown of the terrace, pixel by pixel, turns white.

It won’t quite achieve the status of a full snowfall – when the white carpet covers the grass completely without even the hint of a spindly disturbance. But for a couple of hours, it ticks all the boxes.

Spring will come. The flowers will bloom. The birds will sing.

But for now, we have the snow.

Adapted from Light Rains Sometimes Fall: A British Year Through Japan’s 72 Seasons by Lev Parikian

(Elliott & Thompson)