A Letter to June

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Posted at the turn of the month | From the Nicky at The Calendar Year

May was generous this year.

The blossom came and went so fast it felt like a rumour – there one week, petals on the pavement the next, and if you blinked you missed the exact moment the trees were at their most extravagant. I didn’t blink. Or at least, I tried not to. I stood under a cherry tree on an ordinary Tuesday and just looked up for a while, feeling slightly self-conscious and entirely glad I’d stopped.

That’s what this is for, really. The stopping. The looking up.

So before June arrives and I’m already two weeks in without having properly greeted it – here’s my letter.

What I’m Leaving Behind in May

May gave me the garden at its most hopeful May gardening / In the Garden – everything growing faster than I can keep up with, that particular green that only exists in spring before the sun bleaches it into something more summery and subdued. I planted things I’m not entirely confident about and I’m choosing to remain optimistic.

I ate a lot of seasonal asparagus May recipes / From the Seasonal Kitchen that was either a triumph or wildly over-seasoned, depending on who you ask. I’m going with triumph.

The bluebells were magnificent this year. Some years you have to go into the woods to see them, this year they were everywhere. May nature / Out in Nature But I walked into the local woods just to see them, which is something I’ve done almost every year since I was small and hope to keep doing for as long as my legs allow. Some things deserve to be annual pilgrimages.

Hello, June

June is the crown of the year. The month the light refuses to leave, where evenings stretch so long they seem almost argumentative about it – insisting on one more hour, then another, the sky still pale at ten o’clock as if darkness can’t quite be bothered.

It’s also, quietly, the month when summer peaks before it has properly announced itself. The solstice arrives and something tips – not dramatically, not yet, but the year turns its face very slightly and begins the long slow exhale toward autumn. I find that beautiful rather than sad. It makes June feel precious. Worth paying attention to.

Here’s what I intend to notice.

📖 Reading the Season

June calls for long books June books / Reading the Season. Or at least, it calls for books you can take outside – books that don’t mind being put down when something interesting happens in the garden, that will wait patiently on the grass beside you while you watch a bumblebee negotiate a flower.

This month I’m determined to finish a book I’ve been reading on and off since September. The latest Cororon Strike book by Robert Galbraith. I’ve read them all, and every time I feel overwhelmed by the size of them, but getting lost in a world for a long time is what I want. I want to feel transported. June is the right month for that.

I’m also keeping a slim poetry collection nearby June poetry / Poems for the Season for the evenings something to read slowly on the doorstep with something cold to drink. Poetry in June feels completely right. The long light suits it.

What’s on your June reading list? I’d love to know.

🌿 Out in Nature

June is extraordinary if you pay attention June nature / Out in Nature.

The roses are at their absolute peak – and I mean this seriously, not as a pleasantry. If you have access to roses this month, stop and smell them properly. Not a quick sniff in passing. Actually stop. They smell different in the morning than they do in the afternoon and differently again in the warm evening air, and this is worth knowing.

The meadows are full of ox-eye daisies and meadow buttercups and tall grasses going to seed in a way that looks messy and is actually magnificent. I want to find a proper wildflower meadow this month and just sit in it for a while [link: June nature journalling / The Nature Journal].

I’m also watching for June birds / Birds of the Month the return of certain summer visitors who should be well established now – swifts screaming in circles over rooftops on warm evenings, house martins busy under eaves. These are the sounds of June and I want to hear them properly, not just register them distantly while thinking about something else. I am planning a trip up into the hills so I can listen out for the beautiful, iconic sound of the cuckoo.

🌙 Looking Up

June’s night sky June night sky / Looking Up has a particular challenge and a particular reward.

The challenge: it barely gets dark. Around the solstice, true astronomical darkness lasts only a couple of hours in the UK, which means serious stargazing is limited. But this is also the reward – the noctilucent clouds. These are electric-blue, luminous clouds that form in the upper atmosphere and are only visible around midsummer, glowing at altitudes so high the sun still catches them long after it’s set below the horizon. They appear in the north after midnight, pale and strange and genuinely otherworldly.

I’ve seen them twice and both times felt briefly astonished by the planet I live on.

Worth staying up for.

🍳 From the Seasonal Kitchen

June is the month I try to cook as simply as possible and let the ingredients do everything June recipes / From the Seasonal Kitchen.

Strawberries are the obvious headline – and rightly so. I intend to eat them in as many forms as possible: fresh with cream, folded into a fool, macerated with a little sugar and balsamic and served on good bread with ricotta which sounds strange and is spectacular.

I also want to make something with elderflower before the season ends completely June drinks / Something to Sip a cordial, a cake, a posset. Elderflower has a window of about three weeks and then it’s gone for another year, and I always feel I haven’t made enough of it.

For baking June baking / The Seasonal Oven, I’m thinking a proper Victoria sponge — not because it’s complicated, because it absolutely isn’t, but because it’s the most perfectly June cake I can think of. Cream and strawberry jam and something made with butter and summer optimism.

✂️ Make Something

This month’s craft June crafts / Make Something is going to involve flowers, because June makes that almost unavoidable.

I want to try making a proper flower crown – not a complicated one, not a professional florist’s construction, just something made from what’s growing that celebrates the fact that the garden is currently rioting with colour and I should probably engage with that rather than just walking past it with a cup of tea.

I’m also considering a simple nature mandala – arranging petals and leaves and found things into a pattern on the garden table, photographing it, and then leaving it for the wind. This is the kind of thing that sounds slightly eccentric and turns out to be quietly wonderful.

📓 Words & Wondering

June’s journalling prompts June prompts / Words & Wondering include one that stopped me:

What does this season ask of you that you keep refusing?

I’ve been sitting with that. For me, June asks me to slow down in a specific way — to eat outside, to stay up later than is sensible, to let the evening happen to me rather than scheduling it. I’m not always very good at this.

The solstice June monthly events / Mark the Calendar falls on the 21st this year, and I want to mark it somehow. Not ceremonially. Just consciously. Maybe just going outside at sunrise, or at sunset, and noting what I see. The year is at its hinge point and that seems worth acknowledging.

What does June ask of you? Tell me in the comments.

✨ The Stars This Month

June brings us the shift into Cancer season around the 21st June star signs / The Stars This Month – a move from the restless, curious energy of Gemini into something more inward, more feeling-led, more connected to home and memory and the private life. Whether or not you follow astrology closely, there’s something seasonally fitting about that shift happening at midsummer – when the long evenings invite exactly that kind of quiet, internal warmth.

🌱 Tend to Yourself

One wellness intention for June June wellness / Tend to Yourself: I want to eat at least some meals outside this month, even if outside just means the doorstep.

There’s something about eating in natural light that resets something. The food tastes different. You notice when you’re full. You look up between bites. It’s the cheapest and most effective wellness practice I know and I consistently fail to do it often enough.

The other intention: an actual digital sunset. Not a full detox – I’m not idealistic about that. But one evening a week where the screens go away before the actual sun does. Just to see what’s still there when the noise stops.

📸 Capture the Season

June is worth photographing June photography / Capture the Season – not just the obvious set pieces, but the small things. The light through net curtains at seven in the morning. A bee on a poppy. The particular slant of afternoon shadow on an old wall. The table after people have been sitting around it.

My June photography intention is to take one photograph each day of something I would normally walk past. Just one. Just to practise looking.

An Invitation

This is my June. Long evenings, roses, noctilucent clouds, a novel by water, a Victoria sponge I may or may not execute successfully.

I’d love to know what you’re planning to notice this month – what you’re cooking, reading, making, or simply hoping for. Leave a comment below, or reply to the newsletter if that’s how you found your way here.

This is the crown of the year. Let’s not sleepwalk through it.

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