Midsummer's first song

You probably already know
all about the garden folk who help the garden grow.
The gnomes who nourish the roots,
The fiery faeries who guide the sunbeams to ripen rosy fruits,
Those swift small sylphs bearing up in the air,
Dandelion wishes to grow here and there.

But I wonder if you might have heard

Of the wee ones who help the birds,

Carrying twigs to furnish nests

and helping find berries that taste the best.

 

At this magical time of year,

When midsummer festivities are drawing near,

The birds all sing with happy din,
Enjoining festivities to begin.

Dear robin has a lot to do
Delivering mail all fairyland through,
So these little ones give a helping hand
Carrying letters across the land.

Here’s a tender request from the wind to the rose,
to share her petals as a carpet for tiny dancing toes.

There’s a letter from the moonbeam fays to sweet slow snail,
Arranging for reflection of silvery sheen around this mysterious veil.

 

And a precious request from the fairy queen,
bearing a special stamp not often seen.
A letter to dear Robin himself,
Carried with great care by this kind helping elf
‘Honourable Robin, it is the wish of wee folk all,
That you should sing the first note of midsummer’s procession call.'

Filled with all this preparation
the whole garden is full of elation.

If you were to wake
At first day break,
And tiptoe to peep
While many still sleep,
You are sure to find
Magic beings of all kind,
Dancing midsummer blessings for the ground
To the trill of the birds first joyfully sung sounds.

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This story was first published as a tiny booklet insert in the bird-zine 'Perched' by The Knothole Tree, you can subscribe here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/617525287/perched-a-bird-zine-issue-5-junejuly

If you would like your own wee fairy robin helpers please request them from the Magic Fairy Lady here: Dear Robin's fairy helpers 

The Apprentice Puppeteer

There is an ancient winding trail that gleams o’re fairyland. It is not laid in stone or tar or even from long trodden earth and leaves. This way is made of wisps of mist, layered think and thin enough to forget journey’s toil and drift within.

For almost all of each hour and day and for nearly the full turning of the year, a cart and unicorn travel this wayward road. Sometimes a faint or louder hoof fall can be heart and sometimes it may simply be imagined that the travelers glide.

It would be foolish to hope to see them as you went about your busy day ordinarily, but if you gaze for long moments through the shimmer around the sun-kissed petals of a rose, or breath the morning dew blessed air with your eyes half closed….then, who knows.

Children of fairykin or human kind, and older folk who know how to stretch still seconds, are often lucky enough to see the pathway in the distance. And to remember that, there, to the rhythm of clippety clop, and turning wheels, is where wishes dance and tangle with story and what might be.

Perched high upon the cart’s hollowed bark seat, from which wild sweet strawberries tumble and climb, and looking out over and past the horizon where the unicorn’s horn pricks new stars into the sky, rests the Apprentice Puppeteer.

This ageless being is not apprentice by the usual human understanding of the word, but apprentice in all humility to the stories of worlds, never presuming to know what will unfold.

Once in a while, at times that are not most times, or when a story needs to be told, or when a being needs to be held and rocked by marvel, the cart pulls into a clearing, into a pause, or a bubble of glistening air. And all around little announcements and invitations can suddenly be found.

And whispers fill the air…. The Puppeteer is here, the theater cart has come, stories of tenderness and glory will be shown and told, gather gather young and old!

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Once upon a time the puppeteer wove a story for the little pussycat blue who had no home in a busy dark town and who weary and hungry one long night had slipped and dipped his paw hopefully into milky mist, and there found the answering longing of a flowering fairy girl in need a galavanting furry friend.

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Once upon a time the puppeteer lent her hand to the wind who was unknotting a mother’s wash basket of worries, teasing each care free and tossing it up to float away in the arms of the dancing trees.                
This story when it was told, began at dawn with the twitter of early rising birds and babes...

....and continued all day,

 moving through the magic cart's theater windows as evening came and settled into night.

And then that story went to sleep with the Apprentice Puppeteer and hummed and danced with the other stories that were sighing themselves into her dreams.

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Often it is the children who bring stories that want to be told

and they delight in sharing the telling of these stories

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And always the puppet show is brought to a close with the story or the young girl, who was born in fairyland, but gave her wings to an old lady who needed them where she was going, and received in thanks from the stars, the possibility to hear and tell stories, and guardianship of the gleaming pathway,

The story tells of the unicorn who heard her loneliness one day, when she felt sad that she could no longer fly, and helped her and kept her company...

and of this story tells of the heart that grew on her back, just gently where her wings had once been.

Blessed by Nettles

In her beautiful book, The Sense of Wonder, alongside the reflective photography of Nick Kelsh, Rachel Carson writes of the importance of those adults who hold space, cherish, and nurture children's relationship with nature. In stories that centre around moments spent with her young nephew, Carson wonder-fully expresses this truth, which I have also experienced in my children's lives. While children are born with a natural belonging and familiar awe for their world, the adult who notices and appreciates alongside them, who values the pictures in clouds and the faint scent of blossom, found things on walks, the minute moss forests; is confirming the connectivity that the child feels. My children's Granny, my mother, has perhaps offered the greatest cradling of such awe. They have also both been blessed with amazing experiences of 'forest school', and this nourishing, for my youngest, is an ongoing weekly celebratory adventure.

One day my hands became suffused with gratitude for these adults, who are in their spirit, mothering the child and the earth at once, as one. So, first in soft movements in the air between my palms and fingers, and then with stitches and cloth, I began to respond to a being, an earth mother who became the world itself, of fields and flowers and oceans and sky, and who, at the same time, encircled this world in her arms, with her cloak, and carried wee beings in her skirt. Her form reminded me of those spirits who spin the creation into being, and of womenkind, its our most tender nature. Her structure suggested the possibility of puppetry and story telling....

And then she called for a blessing crown

And I recalled the delicate pattern of the nettle string that both my daughters have learnt to make at their forest schools and so I asked my youngest to teach me

Here is how she showed me

Find some nice long nettles

pick one, as long as possible,  being careful not to get stung 

hold the nettle firmly at the top with your protected hand and cut off the leaves with a downward stoke of the knife, make sure that you do not peel away the skin of the stalk, as you will need that fibre 

bash the stalk to loosen the skin fibre

gently peel away a brown green length of the outside of the stalk, this is the part you will need

fold it in half and give a little twist to the middle 

twist the underneath fibre away from you

and without letting go, so that it doesn't untwist, bring it down over the front fibre,

the front and the back threads will now have swapped places, and you can twist the back one away from you again and repeat 

In this way a string starts to form 

It is important to hold the end of the string where you are twisting, to keep it tight

Soon your fingers will get used to this pattern of 'twist away, bring down' and you will have a nettle string, the thickness and length will depend on the stalk fibre with which you began 

the fibres of the string will curl apart a little as they dry, this makes the string very beautiful 

And so this earth mother was blessed by a crown, fitting in its nature

And she played 

Dancing love around the world