Happy Solstice 2010

Seems like  only yesterday when I wrote a post on last year’s midwinter solstice. But how glad I am to have had my dinner in the warm garden with no shoes on tonight and to have been blessed with a fine flamingo-coloured sky that is still looking rather splendid in its last turquoise phases.

Solstice means a lot to me (both the Summer and Winter one). I can understand it easily and clearly see the point in celebrating it. It is a tangible notion the Earth has reached one of it’s many axes and If the whole of Summer was a weekend, the solstice would be its big Saturday night out. Outside, nature is literally cascading over itself.

I think there’s also the folklore side of it. My Mum quietly harbours some gentle paganistic tendencies and as a kid our house was frequently decked with corn-dollies (especially the Yorkshire Spiral). There were comical customs in our village around May and Harvest time and generally speaking , this was by no means confined to my family either. Possibly passed down from our ancestors of the old Danelaw.

But most of all. It’s a good time to ease up and take it all in. It reminds me that the softer-edged months are here and that now is the time to be outside with ale and the bees trundling around the Lavender. Maybe even nibbling on a few homegrown strawb’s.