Summer

Dear friends,

The summer holidays are here and everything feels different.  The days are mainly my own without school or other commitments and there is more time to relax, and to get out and explore.  One of my favourite places that I went to a few weeks ago for ‘Sacred Nature’ was Othona in Dorset.  As well as lying on the beach, or under trees, to experience nature with eyes open and shut, we learned some of the names of the common plants and insects.  This inspired me to look up the ones that dwell in my garden when I returned, and to write about them in the first new piece on my website http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/.

IN ACCORD WITH ITS NAME
The summer is sizzling the lawn.  The short grass has bled its green into the dry earth and has taken on its colour, brown with yellow highlights in its hair from the steady sun.  The longer blades are still green so the lawn is mottled with tufts of grass and suckers of trees, and with the green of wildflowers that have now come into their own.  Clover predominates, trefoil leaves like lace and white flower heads with russet at the roots.  In one corner I have a patch of bright yellow flowers waving in the breeze with deep purple below among the clover.  The purple I know, it is self-heal, such a powerful name for so unprepossessing a plant. 

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

I am a sun lover.  I don’t sunbathe but I sit in it to read or write or garden, and my moods are coloured by its presence or absence.  This is not a problem when it is sunny, but can be when the clouds hold sway.  So I am working at loving the duller days too.

CLOTHING THE SUN
The sun has hidden away behind the swelling clouds that have covered the sky like a new landmass.  The air has lost its bright shine and rain has returned to dampen our gardens and our spirits.  The light is dull and life feels dull as I had got used to soaking in the sunshine and enjoying each flower and leaf and tree as it blazed against the blue.  But it will be back.  The grass will make use of this change to refire its yellow fibres with green.  And the flowers and I will wait.

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

And lastly, a meditation on summer, a hymn to this wonderful season of green and warmth. 

SUMMER
I can immerse myself in the bowl of summer, feel its edges around me and sink down, down into its unfettered abandon.  The sun is loose and free, it soaks through the air, through the ground, through my skin like caramel.  The clouds are friends scattering the sky with white or bringing the rain we need to maintain the green and to open up the earth.  The days stretch into the night like a house with extra rooms added each summer, rooms to fill with all we want to do in the light and with all the occupations of nature.

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

I am off on holiday to Dorset and Cornwall with family and friends.  I hope you all enjoy whatever holiday you have and are refreshed and energised.  Don’t forget you can’t reply to this email – use ‘Contact Jane’ on the website.

Love Jane