*Slow life in July

{Music: Warming Light – Jonny Easton}

July has been super hot and therefor everything had to be done in a slower pace. Rain was rare, I enjoyed every drop that decided to leave the skies. I started to work with clay again and made a walk in a forest full of wild flowers and butterflies. The first zinnia opened its flower and since many more followed. It was a month of growth & abundance. In- and outside.

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*Island Pag

In June we spent a few days at the seaside on the Croatian island Pag. Due to the sad circumstances I mentioned earlier this month, I did not film and took only a few pictures. So this is all I can show you. I love this island. Most parts look like a moon landscape with all the stones and sparse vegetation. I hope we can return in the future with lighter hearts and stay a little longer.

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*through the heat wave

Good morning dear readers, we already hit the 35 degree mark last week and the heat wave is continuing. The tomato plants love it, for the rest of us, we have to do everything a little slower and with more deliberation. My first dahlias are about to bloom, I'm observing the progress every day with lots of anticipation! Nature walks are hardly possible, the humid heat is just too extreme, but every now and then, when my physical state allows it, I leave the house in the very early morning hours to visit a little sunflower field not far from our home and once a mild summer rain surprised me and I walked barefoot back home, wading through the just accrued puddles, feeling relieved from the burden of the heat for a moment. When I enter the garden, I feel the most imaginable gentle embrace. While I water the thirsty birches, I sit on the well and enjoy the shadow play of the leaves on the mossy ground before my feet. I preserved the first zucchinis and made some more jam and I fill little paper sachets with seeds for the coming year. All has its order and rhythm. Soon I have enough new clay pieces to fill the kiln. They just have to dry some more. Hopefully you enjoy the heart of July and you are absorbing summer with every pore of your being.

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*The wind, the warmth & the swallows

{Music: Je te laisserai des mots – Patrick Watson}

Just a little getaway for the mind,

with the swallows in the warm summer winds.

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*summer musings

Even though I caught myself already daydreaming of autumn, I'm embracing summer with all its benefits. How comfortable it is to wear loose summer dresses again and to feel the gentle strokes by the warm winds on my skin. The swallows follow me where ever I go and the herb garden is exploding in an abundance of scents. After a break of many months I finally worked with clay again. I want to enlarge my set of tableware with fennel flower imprints and it's only possible when the fennel is blooming which is now! I know that it would be easier to make a mold of a fennel flower that I can use over and over,  but I prefer to use for each peace an unique flower.

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*the sides of life

June is coming to an end and I have been silent here for a while. There have been quite upsetting happenings in my family which made our hearts tremble, our minds occupied and our nights sleepless.

Apart from all the worries, we were able to harvest our first cucumbers, peppers and zucchinis and I'm happy to be able to work in the garden again even though we are in the middle of a heat wave. We are having a big variety of butterflies this year and lots of mosquitos!

The whole summer lies ahead of us and honestly all I wish for is to fill it with simple joys, like reading, swimming, feeling the warm winds on my bare skin, listening to the nightingale's song and sinking into soothing self-forgetfulness whenever possible.

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*Into June with butterflies, snails & bees

{Music: Leaf – Matteo de Grandis}

June has started and it reveals a world in itself, a world of humming and buzzing and diligently business in the smallest areas of nature. The warmths activates everything in us. It is a soft expanding in all directions of life.

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*what is given

It is possible, I suppose that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display

the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't

mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;

for example -- I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch --

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

{Mary Oliver}

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*Welcome June – A happy list

A tower of the beautiful castle Raabs.

• dew drops on grass tops

• the scent of sun-dried laundry

• picking cherries & mulberries

• pink flower meadows

• watching "Where the crawdads sing"

• making fresh raspberry jam

(they got ripe so early this year!)

• planting a new blueberry plant

• my white oriental poppy is blooming for the first time

(I waited so long for this!)

• the return of the swallows

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*A poppy month

{Music: Repeal the Union – The Gloaming + The Lobster – The Gloaming}

May is coming to an end,

it was a month full of poppies,

snail visits and other nature blessings.

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