Evening primroses – emerging and unfurling in the late afternoon for a single night

In the evenings I walk in the garden and they glow lemon yellow in the dusk

This scent too reminds me of my mother, of long midsummers and falling asleep when there is still light…

The birds love the seeds later on, and meanwhile these delicate beauties attract moths at night, bees by day

I love too how the fading flowers turn to a burnt orange red the next day

7 flowers for summer solstice

I love the rituals associated with both winter and summer solstice. We make some of our own in my family and we follow some traditions. This week the first sweet pea flowered in the garden, the scent reminding me of mothers and grandmothers…

Some so fragile they last only a day and are so precious for that quality alone, I make sure to pause – and hard to capture as their petals flicker delicately in the breeze..

Others captivating and attracting the bees from afar…

Red oriental poppies as large as a dinner plate this year..

and standing tall in the grasses where they self seeded… I can hear the noise of bees humming inside them …

The garden is singing with these yellow ones and they choose the margins, the nooks and crannies, the edges – unfurling crinkly petals…

And suddenly up pops a ragged beauty whose petals begin to drift …

May and now into the start of June and the creamy white blossoms are here: hawthorn, elderflower and Queen Anne’s lace, and a carpet of wild garlic in the woods…

plantain the healing plant…

In my family we call these moon daisies…

A path through… intricate blossom. Very little elderflower this year though to find…

Blue forget me nots in my garden sprinkle the ground, tiny blue stars..

Bluebells in the garden and the shaded glades – there are cool woods not so far away but not visited this year, where my eyes scan a hazy sea, glowing and ephemeral..

Trees after some heavy but much needed rain – walking a path looking out over a spectrum of greens and greys

Some vetch spied in the wayside hedgerows peeping out

Clover, beloved by the bees, is starting to flower in our grass and in the fields

I think it is the rain that drew me to look at these cool colours in the stillness that followed, whilst a few days ago it was the creamy white cow parsley dancing in the wind.

I made some field recordings of skylarks rising from the fields nearby. The swallows swoop the old farm buildings and this one was singing and twittering on the wires

And then last week we heard them coming, and lifting our gaze saw the first returning swifts overhead. These are sounds that mark out the turning year for us and are a backdrop to the rhythm of days and evenings and eagerly anticipated.

This post – on Beltane – is all about the yellows

Cowslips in the fields – more this Spring, or is it me looking more carefully. I have been looking inside the flowers as part of a survey and the little orange flecks are a delight.

A frosted dandelion. Many early mornings of frost followed by dry cold sunshine.

They are one of my favourite dye plants – especially for solar dye – for a slow thoughtful dye process as Spring deepens. Never the first flushes – they are needed by pollinators, so watching and waiting a while. The hope and energy of Spring returning.

Walking and watching and waiting in a daily rhythm, the fields then become studded with starry yellow – little suns

…and then, it feels to me like the moon follows the sun and the fields are ethereal with moon globes of seed

In the garden we see birds with little beaks filled with these seed heads and in a never ending long tradition we blow the seeds to tell the time and to remind us about time…

And now buttercups follow and the recent rain has helped them bloom overnight

There are yellow poppies in the garden – I must remember to take some snaps of their crinkled petals…

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At the foot of a tree which is part of an old pathway with intertwined oak trees whose branches hold each other up

I have a little collection of feathers from these walks – have to be careful tucking them in a pocket or holding them gently for the rest of the way

My Mum talked to me about finding feathers, about signs, symbols. About noticing and treasuring and thinking what they represent

Buzzard I reckon – it has photographed a bit darker than it is. I hear them most days before I look up and see them wheeling overhead.

The petals are just starting to drift down in flurries silently and gently

there is a scent like honey

It stops us in our tracks daily to gaze and rest our eyes on beauty

Unfurling into Spring on the equinox – leaning towards the sun

Mostly around about here I see the darker purple violet and then, unexpectedly a couple of patches of pure white under the trees

Then these – quietly there with delicate petals suffused with violet

An overwhelm of too many images I can’t seem to select from! So, where to start to unravel my thoughts

Lets go back to neutrals – those I wanted to notice before the beauty of Spring blossom distracts my attention

Textures, shapes, tones, patterns – the way the eye notices these more when the colours are more muted. There is restfulness on my eyes and in my brain when I look at neutrals.

Against the pale blue sky I see starlings on a line. I have always loved these birds, their chatter, their characterful interplay, and especially those iridescent colours within what – at first glance – looks like oily black which then sparkles with a myriad of colours. That I like – the initial colour that reveals so many more on a closer look

I like the lines, the marks on a line too. I often think of stitches that resonate with something I see

Twining stems and wrapped stems – another thought of stitch, wrapping, weaving

This time the weather. Hail, so strong the sound of wind preceding the ice roars and we shelter under the trees in the garden as the hailstones forceful power strikes

Standing against the trunk of an apple tree at the bottom of the garden – a tree that fruits with small bright red apples – the kind where the flesh of the apple is tinged with the redness of the skin. It isn’t a large tree and is a little too hidden by a beech and a poplar. I leaned against the trunk and felt it warm and strong on my back. I nestled further in and found a sense that this tree seemed to hold me and as I leant into it I was rocked as it swayed in the wind – gently rocking. The rocking was a balm to a day when my heart was hurting for many reasons and I felt so deeply that connection.

I was planning a post about neutral colours but then, this morning, I found a treasure to share

It felt like a map from walking across a leaf

I realised that, whilst walking, I was rhythmically running my fingertips over this smooth surface whilst holding it carefully. For today this felt like an important connection to note down.

Looks heart shaped in line and colour turned this way…