This evening, as the sun set on the first day of summer - May 1st, or Beltane, I have been repotting a gifted lemon balm and the strawberry plants my youngest has been growing for the last three years. She enjoys watering and tending to them, and eating juicy fruits, but less so the transplanting part just now. She is up in her tree, practising balancing acts and climbing skills, and bird spotting. Despite the gray sky that really wasn't representative of the mood of the day, I have swept and replanted, pulled up the things that were growing in the wrong places (I really don't like to say weeds, because they're not!) and sowed the calendula seeds we saved last from year's wild, untended flowerings. Enjoying the feeling of the wild energy of summer warm through my veins and the feeling that I'm finally getting ON with the business of growing. I've been determined to get started on our garden space, which has been utterly neglected over the last few years, but have been struggling to find time and energy. It feels good to be getting my hands into soil again and have the goodness of earth flowing into me. I dug out the bottom layer of my compost bin earlier in the day, to get a top layer on a pot of Tesco grown miniature roses that youngest bought with her own money (earned making and selling fudge at a local fair) and which definitely needed some extra sustenance. I've been teaching her to nip out the spent flowers and she's been saving the petals from them to make potions with.
As the clouds gather ominously, we fill up pots with saved rain water and give her wild flower seedlings a drink, and then the privet topiary that has needed a trim twice already this year and always seems in need of water.
As we start to gather up trowels and sweeping brush and watering cans to go inside, a little girl and her grown up walked past the gate. The girl is roughly the same age as my youngest, and we watch as she stops at our neighbour's garden wall, bends over and runs her hand over a bunch of dandelion flowers. Our neighbour's garden is full of them, a glorious patch of sunshine, small globes of bright optimism shining out to cheer everyone who passes. The girl's grown up hurries her along, and I see her give one last longing glance at the bright yellow flowers, just waiting to be picked, carried home, a tiny piece of wildness in a hand and in heart, left behind. In less than ten seconds, the universe has provided me with yet another small illustration of why we are so blessed to be Home Educating. My children have time to stop and look at the dandelion, take it home and put it in a jam jar and draw it, learn how important it is for the bees, or how to make fritters from its petals. They have time to be out in the wild whenever it suits them, to lean into the seasons and the magic of the natural world. I know that our life is blessed for all the freedom we have now, and that one tiny interaction between a child and the tiny part of nature that she wanted to connect with, but couldn't, reminds me so much of how societal norms and expectations try so hard to drag us away from the wildness we all belong to. Tonight as the darkness closes in, we are snuggled up watching bats, and later, we will light a Beltane fire and send our gratitude out into the night as bright as the dandelions in the warm summer sun. Giving thanks for how blessed we are in this glorious life we have. However you are marking this day of shifting seasons, my hope for you is that it is with light and sunshine and dandelions.
Blessed Be.
Love, Kate.