What does it mean to bottle sunshine?

For Andy, it’s a way of carrying summer’s abundance into the darker months. Sharon finds pleasure in the changing light, while preserving as much of her garden as she can. And Mark, rather than clinging on to the sunshine, looks forward to discovering the light that only reveals itself in the shadows.

Saving summer

Andy 

I love summer. I love its long days and its blue skies reaching for infinity. I love its warmth, its ripeness. I love its freedoms and its effortlessness.

Winter feels more veiled, laced-up and guarded. I know that change is rest, for people and nature. And it’s not that there aren’t moments, and whole chapters, that I like: winter’s migrant birds; sharp frosts; low, buttery sunshine; sudden snowfalls; lighting a fire on a dark evening.

It’s just that I like summer’s opportunities so much more.

Working with SAD

I wonder how your seasonality shows up for you?

In winter, I can feel as though life is consuming my energy faster than I can replenish it. As though I’m sinking, gradually, to some unfathomable bottom.

Seasonality is in all of us, our legacy from living on a planet tilted twenty-three and a half degrees, as certain as gravity. The challenge isn’t that all of life responds this way, but that modern life doesn’t.

Light therapy, exercise, getting outside in daylight as much as possible — they all help. My best intervention by far is acceptance. Understanding that I will experience a different ‘me’ in winter. Knowing that denying it will exhaust me.

And looking for the gold glistering in this darker me: heightened sensitivity to emotions and contrasts; a willingness to consider the less rational path; and patience, giving things time and room to breathe.

All of this makes me a more creative thinker and a better writer. Maybe a better companion too.

Blackberry cordial

Something about last summer’s extreme heat really agreed with the blackberry bushes growing wild in the hedgerows hereabouts. It agreed with me too: I loved the weather, even as I feared its implications.

The birds, mice and squirrels took their share, and the bushes were still laden with the biggest, ripest, fattest, sweetest blackberries I can remember.

I made blackberry cordial — my first time. You mash the blackberries to release the juice, then simmer them in a little water until the fruit completely breaks down. Strain through a sieve to remove the pips and pulp. Simmer again with sugar to sweeten and preserve. Bottle hot.

That’s it: sunshine in a bottle.

I’m aiming to drink the last of it in a Kir Royale on Christmas morning, a reminder that the winter solstice is behind me and warmer, lighter days are on their way.

Welcoming the dark

Sharon 

I feel differently about summer. I love it for all the reasons Andy mentions, but I think I love autumn more.

And this year in particular, I’m relishing the fact that the Earth’s tilt has lowered the temperature. Clouds are beautiful. Blue skies at this time of year are delicious. The sun’s warmth is easy, not hostile.

I also relish the shortening of the days, at least for a while. I was brought up to believe that languishing inside when the sun was out was almost sinful. “Go and play in the garden” was drummed into me so successfully that it’s a relief to shut the curtains, light the fire and sink into the sofa without guilt.

Iceland like a local

This year I’ll be going to Iceland again in November, where dawn breaks at nine in the morning and it’s dark again by four.

Those few precious hours of daylight are wonderful. Even if it’s cold and cloudy, and it often is, I’ll be enjoying the outdoor swimming culture like the locals, who’ve learnt to thrive during winter’s short days.

And embracing the hygge. Iceland’s candlelit coffee culture is perfect in the low light. Who needs the sun when you’ve got a cardamom bun and a flat white, and you’ve been swimming before sunrise?

I said I relish this for a while. Come the end of January, I’ll have had enough.

My lightweight, non-clinical version of SAD is generally short-lived. If I haven’t seen the sun for a few weeks, my spirit flags. But it’s usually revived by the early signs of spring. The first bulbs breaking through are enough to tip me back into an optimistic frame of mind.

Preserving summer

You can take the girl out of the garden, but you can’t take the garden out of the girl.

With that in mind, my own version of bottling sunshine is making the most of my tomato and basil crops, both of which have thrived in this precarious, overheated summer.

I’m steadily freezing, pickling, bottling and cooking to preserve as much of the essence of summer as I possibly can.

Finding sunshine in the shadows

Mark 

Rather than bottling sunshine to carry light into the approaching darkness, I plan to use darkness itself to help me find the light.

Don’t get me wrong, I like warm days as much as the next person. But there’s something about the first grey skies of autumn, the shorter evenings, even the rain, that makes me notice things differently.

A shaft of sunlight through a dark cloud. The first frost. Leaves turning crimson. That particular smell after rain.

And it rains a lot in Wales. Often it’s that misty, drizzly stuff that tricks you into thinking you’re not getting wet until you realise you’re absolutely soaked.

The sizzle in the drizzle

When I’m walking my dog, I tend to look for the ‘sizzle’ in the drizzle. I try to change the lens and embrace the misty middle — that greyness between the bright and the bleak.

I find that some of my best ideas live here.

Celebrate scarcity

Abundance has a habit of making the remarkable look ordinary. Perhaps sunshine is more noticeable when there’s less of it.

When something is abundant, we take it for granted. It becomes the background. Normal. Invisible.

Scarcity does the opposite.

Think about the first sunny day of spring. We notice it. It becomes a talking point. Nobody talked about the 37th sunny day this summer! It just blended into all the other sunny days. It became the norm. But give us one unexpected, blue-sky February afternoon and suddenly everyone notices.

Scarcity creates contrast. And contrast gets attention.

Maybe that’s why I don’t particularly want to bottle summer. I’d rather embrace what comes next and look for the things that reveal themselves only when the light changes.

Perhaps there’s a lesson in there for businesses too.

Most have an abundance of things to talk about: products, services, features, accreditations, awards, customers. Like a bumper crop of blackberries, the temptation is to pick everything. The problem is that everyone else is picking blackberries too.

The challenge is finding what’s scarce: the things only you can say. The perspective only you have. The problem you understand differently. The experience your competitors can’t claim. The belief you’re prepared to stand behind when everyone else heads in the opposite direction.

Then, when you find it, pick it. Distil it. Bottle it.

It’s the thing that can keep you shining, even in the darkest of times.