How I spent the Summer Solstice 2011

This year I had decided to stay up and watch the sun rise. I stayed up, and the morning was beautiful. I walked around my little garden and picked a few flowers at exactly the time of sunrise. The birds were  breaking into song and the big tree across the road rustled  in the breeze. I didn't see the sun rise, my garden is in completely the wrong place, I would need to walk to the sea to actually see the sun rise, but at least I know I was awake and in my garden at the right time (4.15). Maybe one day when I don’t have to go to work I can go to a place where you can actually see the sun rise.  I had a couple of hours sleep and went to work. It was ok because I don’t start work until 11.00.
When I woke up, about 10.00am, it was raining. It rained all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, and all day today (Thursday). It finally stopped raining at about 9.00pm this evening.  
On Tuesday not only did I want to see the sun rise, I also wanted to see it set, so I stayed up and waited for sunset. Officially that was 10.05pm, but it stayed light much later than that, in fact it never actually gets dark at this time of year.  I was awake, and I was looking out of my window, but by that time it was far too wet to go out into the garden. I saw the sun drop below the rooftops through the pouring rain.
I am very slowly, weather permitting, revamping my garden this year. I decided a while ago that I wanted a ‘green man’ to hang around my old apple tree in the corner. I looked around but couldn’t see any thing I liked. Then one day while visiting my daughter I saw her huge pile of wood ready to be chopped for the fire. She had what looked like whole trees that had come down in the winds. I saw one tree trunk that had the shape of a face, it had a little chin and cheekbones. So I asked her partner to slice me off a bit with his chain saw, which he did.

While I sat indoors, watching the rain, waiting for the sun to set on the longest day, I started to draw the rough outline of my Green Man onto my specially chosen slice of wood.
I had previously bought some ‘dark’ plants. My intention was to plant them out into their own small space on the evening of the solstice.
The rain was far too heavy to plant any thing out that evening and all I could do was look at them on the kitchen table and imagine what my ‘dark’ garden will look like when eventually planted.

And that was how I spent the solstice…………….