Goodnight friends! Warmer and very gently overcast for much of the day, about 21°c with the stuffy air bright but silvery, and thick with the smashed chlorophyll scent of shorn lawns. Every step through tall grass loaded me up with spindly little seeds, caught in my clothing and the hairs on my arms. Pink-tinged umbels of hogweed beginning to open up, along with bright yellow blazes of floppy rose-of-sharon flowers with pincushion explosions of stamens.
A cold unfortunately settling in a little, the sides of my neck feeling swollen and tender, a feverish hot blushing feeling constantly on my face, sneezing and sniffly. My thinking and movement unsurprisingly extra labourious, leaden and painful. Taking things at the slow pace I need to, and not really being able to put much creative thought into anything, was pretty tedious at times, but I found my slow mind looking at things for long periods, bring able to savour the details slowly coalescing. A curiously pleasant way to spend the long light hours of the solstice.
May we find moments to re-experience the wonders and joys tucked away in the corners of our everyday lives today!
Image ID: Photo of a spray of blackberry flowers on gangling green thorny stems, their crumpled linen-white cinquefoil petals cupped around tassels of purple-tipped stamens.
Photo of a bright azure sky, with a clustered smattering of pale dappled clouds and the black double chevron silhouette of a gull in flight.
Photo of the bright white-gold seedhead of a stem of tall oat grass among other wild grasses, clusters of tiny pale seeds in a long spike, tipped with whiskery filaments.
Photo looking up into the canopy of a sycamore maple, pale white light filtering through a jigsaw of black branches and mottled greens with occasional daubs of rosy pink.
