Earth Prayers from June

~ Monday 2nd June ~

In the dimming light of early June, dhul-Hijjah’s half moon rises as the parties of swifts gather for their last daytime screeches. The first of the snapdragon flowers have emerged today, self-seeded from former broods, four years and counting of tending our humble backyard.

They have started to creep into the gaps between the pavement slabs, along with the nasturtiums, descendants from last year’s bounty, along with the Hart’s-tongue fern that guards the backdoor. Happy accidents that reflect moments past, celebrations of this moment in their custard yellow and dusky pink buds.

“Snap dragon”. And a moment of stillness and delight in the dying day, glowing with moonlight and animated by the soundtrack of songbirds and swifts.

~ Sunday 8th June ~

We walked around the Natural History Museum looking at models and taxidermized creatures but I couldn’t help feel like the best bit of it was spent in the garden, where my son found a spider. I can’t help but feel like we need more life not less of it, a forest over a museum any day, and less money spent rather than more. Somehow that’s what feels right. This moment, sat in the garden with the bees buzzing around the lavender, feels like the most precious thing to me.

There is a magic to the repetition of this moment – the sounds of the swifts screeching, blackbirds singing, but also to the clatter of washing up again from the neighbours, Eastenders from down the street some siblings squabbling again. From this spot, each one has a magic to it, like a sacred dance we do and call it the everyday.

A special sort of magic murmurs from our house – toys at play, a laugh, music. This distance, this practice, helps me witness it in new ways, drawing me into a different kind of presence with it.

~ The Story of the Little Muncher – by Yacoub El Fasiki ~

Once upon a time, there was a little muncher called fluffy, that kept going to Yacoub’s garden.

First, he was just relaxing on his plant pot.

The second time he went to Yacoub’s garden he was crawling in his plant pot.

The third time he went to Yacoub’s garden… he was munching on his snapdragons!!!

He bent down to see what else he could munch on and found a second snapdragon to munch on. He was struggling because he needed to bend his head right back. Then a bee came along and said “Why don’t you munch on flowers instead of leaves?”

Fluffy replied, “I’ve eaten a snapdragon before but I got tired of eating them so I went back to eating leaves.”

Then he started munching on his snapdragon leaf and as he bended you could see he was very hairy. (That’s where he got his name fluffy).

The End

~ Saturday 21st June ~

Summer solstice and I’m reminded that I always find this time to be a stressful spin, not a moment to “reflect on my achievements” but to grip tightly to the edge of whichever vessel happens to be carrying me down the rapids at this moment.

I do, however, enjoy the garden. To me, it feels like a time to be doing rather than thinking, or at least not thinking too much. A bird sleeping on the wing. I am so pleased by the joyful nasturtium blooms in all their amber shades, but especially those which have found themselves coming up through the pavement cracks after a heady year of growth last year. More fantastic yet are the snapdragons who have found themselves crawling out from between bricks in the walls, or on opposite sides of the garden to where I first planted them.

I am not sure if this is recognition or even appreciation of my lazy sort of gardening which favours letting all my plants go to seed and stay that way, bedraggled, all winter. My absolute distaste of any sort of weeding (the grass on the gravel is currently knee-high), and an underlying feeling that I should be intervening as little as possible with whatever the wildlife of my tiny yard decides to do. I must say I feel as much love for the plants I haven’t tended as I feel for the ones I have.

Perhaps that is my solstice blessing this year. A thanks for all the things I didn’t intend as the ones I did, and for the gentle hands that hold me tight when I am spinning. It might not be my own achievement, but it feels the biggest one of my life.