Cherry Blossom Picnic

This weekend saw our annual much-anticipated family celebration of spring, adopted from our soul- heartland Kyoto, Japan: o-hanami, the cherry blossom picnic. We have really made it our own at this stage - we are now on our third one.

Weaving Summer Magic

I have been weaving summer magic in myriad ways. Connecting with the season through creativity. Touching its spirit.

After a couple of weeks away. A rocky transition in to the summer holidays. And my own ups and downs, I have been feeling the need to reconnect - with myself and the season and to ground myself, my body, to their place, this time.

On Saturday  had a full day to myself, after being in sole charge of kiddies for nearly a week. I wandered through the gardens of my father's house, harvesting flowers and foliage. Then settled n the sun in front of the tea house, my soul space, sacred space, I created a mandala and then surrounded it with the wreath, seated on the damp earth in the sunshine. All my sense alive. Drawn by my intuition as I worked - laying the plants out, bending, plaiting, stripping petals from stems.... drawn by their meaning and symbolism, as well as shape and colour, aware of the emerging wholeness, balance of the finished design.

Willow sliver grey and soft as mouse's ears, plaited for flexibility, strength and framework.
Pink hydrangea for beauty and longevity.
Regal purple clematis.
Roses to release anger.
Shamrock for luck and Irishness.
Melissa for calm and to ease anxiety.
Rose bay willow herb for my childhood and wild places.
Jasmine for purity and sensuality.
A pink rosebud at the centre, for the budding feminine.

Then later that day after meditation, feasting, writing and sleep I did a zentangle which I am delighted by - again being drawn to organic shapes, the mandala (or zendala as they are known!), the idea of the wreath, of weaving the season.

I am also doing a lot of harvesting and cooking: ice creams and sorbets, jams and savory concoctions. As well as lots of herb teas, including my summer tea of lemon balm, rose geranium and rose. Cooking with myriad fresh herbs, ingesting their magical and medicinal properties into our bodies is where its at for me right now. The same with the fruits, vegetables and flowers of the season - festooning our home with garden blooms, creating mini altars wherever their beauty touches.

Homemade raspberry and rose sorbet. Here's my recipe.

Bringing Spring In

We have been bringing spring in - in our craft, the flowers on our nature table...

Spring, welcome to the Pink House! We've been waiting for you!

Come on in (she threaded the big string of rainbow beads all by herself this morning!)

We're getting excited about our annual cherry blossom picnic - the buds are swelling - when will it be?
(Art by Lucy Pearce - for sale!)

Spring into summer

After a couple of weeks off, I'm painting again. Playing with new colours, loving the light blue of a spring sky and the vivid orange of summer.Bright green tendrils unfurling and butterflies flying. Tumbling wisteria blossoms hang like grapes. A swallow at rest. We are springing into summer.

Festivals of light

We are in the middle of a six week period where cultures around the world celebrate light - candles and twinkling fairy lights for Hannuka, Eid, Christmas and Advent, Diwali and Winter Solstice. There seems to be strong human urge to gather together, to feast, and to lift our spirits with sparkling lights.

Today is St Lucia's day. A festival of light. And my patron saint. Our name, from the Italian, luce and Latin lux means light. I loved this post from Twig and Toadstool last year about it, it's the first time I had heard of the celebration. Needless to say in an ideal world we would be making costumes and the like - but this, dear readers, is the year of enough- and that means enough guilt for all that we are not doing this season!

Driving home after yesterday's rant, we drove down the main street - and marvelled at the street lights, drove home past houses lit up inside and out. And my spirits lifted. This, this is what I love about this time of year, more than anything else. It used to be the music too, but with my failing Christian belief (more of which another time) and the fact that Christmas adverts start on the 1st November, I find them less rousing than once upon a time. Except The Snowman, I LOVE The Snowman - am linking to it here to get you feeling all tingly and magical.

But the light, the even the garish lights on the over decorated houses - you know the sort with a hundred inflatable flashing reindeer on the roof - they spark my soul with beauty and hope. And I realise that that is what we're missing here in the Pink House. Because of being energy conscious we don't "do" many lights - we have some on the stairs, our solar powered tree ones don't work - of course. I love lighting the (wilting) advent wreath with the children. I want to do more of that. And they love it too. They adore lighting candles.

And so, I think, this year I will pass on the carol service and the huge amounts of festive cooking. Gingerbread houses and dressed up santas in shopping malls be damned. I will celebrate a festival of light, a simple, gentle season of light and magic in the dark and cold. That will be my focus this festive season, in this year of Enough - to celebrate the light - to absorb the magic of the twinkling lights, and add a few of my own.

Happy days: celebrating autumn

I LOVE autumn - the changing colours, the bright berries, the bite in the air, the mellow afternoon light. Walking the country lanes and popping blackberries into our mouths. Another day, another warning, (for our first blackberry warnings see here!) This time, rats! Back off people and just let us ENJOY them!!

I also love celebrating. But we have no official mid-autumn celebration - harvest festival is past and halloween still a couple of weeks off...

So this is my own celebration of autumn, just because I can! We have an autumn wreath on our door, made of twined wild clematis (old man's beard), with fallen coloured leaves, hawthorn berries and crab apples attached with wire. 

Our nature table  (want to  make one of your own, see here!) is overflowing with finds, including a new little mama-crafted baby acorn boy in his own oak leaf snuggle bag. Do check out this season's Rhythm of the Home for craft and celebration ideas aplenty.

And walks, as many walks as we can, with gladness in our hearts. Happy days!

(with thanks to my dearest husband, Mr Dreaming Aloud himself, for his wonderful photography skills  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

The autumn striptease

De-du-de-duh , de duh de duh!

If you listen carefully enough, you will hear Patricia the Stripper is playing.

With each coyly turning leaf, and cool morning breath, this is the suggestive feel of autumn.

How I long to cling to the warmth of summer. Or the fantasy of that warmth. To days on the beach, sexy bikinis...

But seeing as the trees feel free to disrobe themselves with gay abandon.

I thought I should too!

Dum, de-de, dum de-de!!

Fewer committments

A sloughing down of the soul

A winding down of worry

To cosy into winter, into my warm winter fur coat (shhh! no knickers!)

And there I shall sit, by the crackling fire. finally doing my patchwork,

Making blackberry jam

Settling down into my bones

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Blackberry jammin'

There is something so precious about blackberries and their sheer abundance. They are truly wild, free and seasonal. I savour the timeless joy of walking slowly along our precious inheritance - the mixed hedgerow - and popping sweet berries into my mouth by the handful. Heading out with a pot to collect them in, and ending up heading home with a small haul, and a full belly. But what is best - they're good for you - a good hit of vitamin C as the autumn chills hit, and even better, all children seem to love them.

Each local culture has its own customs and lore for the harvesting of wild foods, and they are particularly unique for blackberries I have discovered. I am used to blackberrying in late September and early October. However, here in County Cork the superstition says that the witches piss on them after the last day of September, or the devil. In fact many Irish people do not pick them at all as they are the property of the fairies and to pick them tempts the wrath of their curses.

Creating a Nature Table

Nature corners or season's tables originate from the Steiner tradition and are a mainstay of every Steiner kindergarten. I have been creating them for about three years for my children. I am certainly no expert - there are a host of great resources out there to educate and inspire. This basic overview was requested by Rachael from The Variegated Life, leading on from my post earlier this week on Everyday Zen about creating pockets of  beauty, sacredness and calm in our busy homes.

Harvest Moon

This weekend is harvest moon: the full moon closest to the autumn equinox.

The time of reaping and celebration of the year's harvest. Where communities would traditionally come together. Sharing the work, sharing the rewards. Feasting together. Companions, literally people breaking bread together. The bread which they had tilled the soil for, scattered the seed, joined together to cut the wheat in fine weather, to thresh and make bales.

This is the time for bringing the harvest home - physically, spiritually , stocking our larders to see us through the cold, dark months ahead. Though most of us are cut off from the literal harvesting of our food, unless we have a vegetable garden of our own. Our food is disconnected from the farmers. Food is always there, on the shelves. We forget the joy of the harvest. The physical exertion traded for stored calories. The reliance on every member of the community to make it happen. Food is just food, a commodity, easy come, easy go. We don't need each other any more to survive. We don't need to celebrate nature's bounty: it is always there. And so whilst we are rich on easy calories and  in money in comparison to those rural farming communities of bygone days, we are poor too if we do not gather together, to feast, to celebrate and give thanks.

It is fitting that this weekend is a weekend of community celebrations here - a tapas evening at a new local cafe, eating with friends; our multi-generational community will share a life affirming luncheon at Saturday Pizzas; drinking together to celebrate a friend's birthday and then a motherblessing, a group of women gathering to celebrate and nurture a pregnant friend about to give birth, with love, massage, mindful connection... and of course food!

My children and I gathered wheat and barley which had sprouted on the roadside. We pounded it into flour and used it to make a harvest loaf together, watching the miracle of yeast and grain and water become our daily bread. We feasted on our harvest loaf and gave thanks for the turning of the seasons.

Do take the time over the next couple of weeks to celebrate with your companions. Take time to break bread, to raise a toast to each other and the farmers who provided your food, to the sun and the earth. To bring harvest home to you and yours.

This post is being contributed to the Big Lunch which celebrates communities eating together every June in the UK. Do take some time to check out their great blog.


To find out about Dreaming Aloud's Big Lunch experience do check out this post . And this one about  why I decided to get involved with The Big Lunch.


Do take time to read my posts on Radical Homemaking. 


For more on the spiritual and astrological aspects of this harvest moon time see Hey Allie 

Seasonally impossible

The first time I saw it I thought I was going mad.

The next time my husband thought I was going mad.

But then I saw it again and got proof... elderflowers and elderberries on the same plant... in September!! Have you ever seen this before?

But this is not the only unseasonal occurrence in the past twelve months.

We had snow on roses and ripe strawberries in our garden in December last year. Daffodils too! The parsley and chives were up and green in January and had gone to seed by May. lettuces sown in late March didn't sprout till mid August.  Surely this is climate change in action. Do you have any strange unseasonal happenings in your neck of the woods?

Happy Easter

It's Easter time!

The eggs on our nature table hatched! These baby chicks appeared today!

We have been busy making Easter things: cards, boxes of chocolates for friends, the kiddies even made their own easter eggs and wrapped them in coloured foil - they are very excited about eating them tomorrow - they have jelly beans inside!

Hot cross bun, hot cross buns - our annual tradition - raising, baking, glazing these spicy currant treats - we have friends over to share the eating.

The Easter bunny visited our garden today...
Timmy left a map so it knew where to leave the eggs!
And we left a carrot which was eaten!

The garden bloomed with chocolate

Chocolate lady birds too!

Treasure!

The treasure hunters!

A glorious day of chocolate, sunshine, friendship and shared meals.

Happy Easter to you too!

A Cherry Blossom Picnic

Having lived in Japan, we fell in love with their spring tradition of o-hanami, a spring picnic under the cherry blossoms (sakura). In late March and early April, in parks, gardens and along river banks around Kyoto, famed for its cherry blossom, you would find o-hanami in full swing. Grandparents and grandchildren. Mums and dads. Lovers. Lots of students. Many in traditional kimonos. All out to celebrate the season's snow-petal beauty with mochi (rice cakes), plum wine, rice balls...

A Wishing Day

Today has been a sunny wishing day. Timmy has been home from school for the past two days, awaiting spots, which never arrived! I have enjoyed our couple of home-schooling days. Since we can't formally flexi-school, then we are freestyling it. We take a day out of school, now and then "for family reasons" and have a special day of craft and educational outings. A day for the soul and creative spirit which doesn't get much nurturing at school.

So we made wishing eggs, inspired by my dear friend Laura at Nestled Under Rainbows. The eggs came from our happy-ish free range hens who live under the trampoline. we wrote wishes on paper, put them into the empty shells and wrapped them in bright tissue paper and raffia ribbon. Wishes included... "I wish I was a digger driver", "I wish for a pants super hero birthday party at my house" and "I wish it was Christmas"!!!

They are now adorning our seasons table and will be taken out and hidden in the woods at Easter time where the fairies will find them and grant our wishes. We are waiting for the arrival of our very own fairy: the cherry blossom fairy, who will grace our nature table any day now. The buds are swelling in the garden outside and we're counting down the days till our first o-hanami (Japanese cherry blossom picnic) under the cherry trees in our very own garden in the Pink House. But for now we are enjoying the bright yellow daffodils, and blue wood anemones and grape hyacinths we planted last September.

Happy Spring

It seems like after the fun and frolics of Christmas and New Year the celebrations calendar dries up for months, except for the pink ruffle of Valentines Day. Easter celebrations seem a long way off. But then, like buses, in two days four celebrations come up at once, taking me totally by surprise. They are celebrations I knew nothing of really until this year.

Craft-Tea Christmas Celebrations

Welcome to the December Carnival of Natural Parenting: Let's Talk Traditions
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama.

Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
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We love Christmas in our house. And for me it has to be a home-made Christmas. 

The excitement is two-fold: the craft element of making and decorating, and then the food aspect of stocking up and then feasting on special seasonal treats. I start to get excited about Christmas in September, so by the beginning of December I feel entitled to go all out in celebration. After all I have been waiting so long for it!