Hello,
I can hear them on the beach. The sounds of splashing, children laughing and crying out about jellyfish. Parents knee deep in water modelling the glee they want their children to feel. Summer afternoon in early June.
At home in the yard the lilacs are blooming, lupins are coming out. I have the house filled with bouquets. The scent has intoxicated me all week. Who needs wine when you have June. The geraniums have been planted. A few marigolds are lining the hostas. The first warm days are approaching.
My lavender is waiting to put on a subtle show and fill my hands with scent. The trees and alders on the side of the road are even blooming. Old forgotten apple trees are blushing in the ditches laden with flowers. Ferns are unfurling as the light shines into forest.
The days are long. The light lasts into the evening. I hook into the evenings if I feel like it because the light of day continues to shine. I stay up later just so I can have a bit of darkness to call me to sleep.
All this is beautiful, but what is even more beautiful about early June is the promise it holds. Somehow we set aside our work and our routine as we start the slow slide into summer. We predict joy. We measure our lives by time spent with each other. We know there is a summer full of evenings ahead of us. We believe that we will reap pleasure, strength and togetherness. June makes it easy to believe.
It feels like a new way of being even though we come back to it year after year. It is the month we meet summer. It is a month to love whatever it is that grows in your world. It is a month to sow seeds for both pleasure and sustenance.
There is a promise of bloom after bloom, of bike rides on grassy paths, of picking a box of strawberries on your way to the shore. Something that is full of promise requires something very important. It will need love and nurturing. It will need to be savoured so that you can feel the joy coming. You will have it to give it your attention.
Bring your rug hooking out on the deck in the mornings. Listen to the bird sing, and the peepers peep, and listen to the call of summer. It is talking to you. Listen.
So June is for listening. For paying attention, for savouring.
Oh to be June. Imagine. All that nurturing. All that attention. All that blooming. All that growing. It is a month for us to come to ourselves. To use our senses. A month to breathe in, to touch and feel, to be carried back to our grandmothers yard with the scent of lilacs, to see the beauty and to hear the call.
Come back to your senses, it calls, come back to yourself. Sit and make, and savour, and drink me in.
Love this month. Make beauty. Be good to others.
Thank you for reading.
Deanne
PS. Be sure to check out my new course on the Jeanne Oliver Network with five great small projects! Save on the preregistration price of $42US. It goes to $62 on June 17.
