We are approaching the summer solstice again, the official beginning of summer and the longest day here in the north.  If it wasn’t for our planet’s tilt and all the variations of day length and sunshine and temperature, we wouldn’t have the winds, weather systems and ocean currents that bring change and movement and life.  My old Professor of geology used to say ‘Perfection is death’.

Interestingly, for the first time ever, true north, magnetic north and grid north aligned in November last year in Dorset at the small village of Langton Matravers where we often go in our camper.  They then stay converged as they slowly travel up the country for the next three and a half years.

How do you respond to changes in the seasons?  At the moment it is long days, sunshine and a profusion of green leaves and roses.  For we too are part of Gaia and will be influenced as much as the plants in our garden and the birds that have flown in.  Some of us luxuriate and unwind and blossom in the summer, some in the winter.  Let us honour our seasons, and expect times of new life and growth in our own lives and our institutions as well as in the natural world.

Fullness

This is it,
the fullness has come.

We have climbed the hill
of the lengthening days
and the quickening pulse,
and now we are tipping over the top
into summer. 

All year, the garden
has been preparing for this,
unfurling leaves,
flourishing flowers.

Now it is laid back
in its largesse,
letting the rain fill it,
letting the sun feed it,
offering itself to both
and to us
in all its green majesty.