I love May

Dear friends,

Summer is starting to breathe its way into the year bringing tasters of heat and sunshine and ice-cream.  Summer in May, but of course it doesn’t last and this morning was as chilly as ever.  I always used to think that summer was my favourite season with memories of sun-burnished holidays.  But the sun is often too hot in summer, and I think now it is late spring when all the leaves and flowers are finally out in a wealth of colour and scent and freshness and the sun is a warm friend. 

So my first piece on my website http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/ celebrates this time of the season.  It is also when I have my birthday and I now feel very blessed by that (I didn’t as a child, contrary as ever).  I was born in the season of new-green fullness; peonies are my birthday flower.

I LOVE MAY

I love May.  Everything is here, new-born after winter’s absence, fresh-green and glowing.  The newly hatched leaves are translucent and are as perfect as a baby’s toes, eliciting the same surge of awe.  The trees swell to their full size and you can just catch them in their playdays, unfurling fingers, learning the lure of the sun before they settle into the majesty of their maturity.  The world is green again, and for a moment it is surprise, it is joy, it is balm, before we acclimatise ourselves and it becomes backdrop to our everyday occupations.  I love the green, I drink it in deep breaths to water my parched heart.

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/words

There are so many changes in spring, each week a new flower or leaf is out, but that also means that we lose those that were blossoming before.  It is a feast with many courses.  As I said last time, it is like the sequence of words in a sentence, the conversation of spring.

THE CONVERSATION OF SPRING

The garden is a magic place this morning, hung with sun-spun scents and sounds, blossom lazily spilling to the ground, birds interpreting the silence.  There are bees humming among the flowers and planes humming far overhead but it is early on a Saturday and not many sounds of people intrude.  The space belongs to the garden and I feel privileged to be allowed in.  The green is so new, so fresh and shining.  Even the shaded places tingle in anticipation of the day.  The oak leaves are just full-sized, covering its huge stature with yellow-green light while the hawthorn flowers shine white below, enjoying the attentions of the sun and the orange-bottomed bees. 

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/words

Lastly a poem I wrote on clouds.  I love the sun, it brings out my own happiness, but that means I am liable to feel low on grey days when it is cloudy.

CLOUDS ARE MY WEATHER

Today
the sky is filled with cloud,
not a blanket grey
that hugs the sky close
so the air seems dimmed
by the bruise of it,
but a duvet of down
in tumbling clusters of grey
and walkways of white,
clotting and frothing
like foam, like cream,
a sheet of cotton wool
spread overhead
to mop up the spilled sun,
scrunched from its spun silver
like cold candyfloss.

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/poems

June will be a great month for us because as well as bringing the summer it will bring Joy home.  She is on her gap year and has spent 5 months in Australia, and then 10 weeks in Kenya volunteering, with a couple of weeks home in between.  She will be back on the 9th and we can’t wait! 

I hope June brings you good things too.  If you want to reply, don’t forget to use the contact form on the website; you can’t reply to this newsletter.

Love Jane