Inspiration for Block Twelve
Alison Owens
May is a special month for our family with five of our family having a birthday so there are lots of celebrations and lots of cake. Amazingly, my daughter has never ever had a wet birthday party so fingers crossed for this year with our strange weather patterns and need to be outside.
I came across the old photos of Maypole dancers in our town and Andee, one of Dandelion Designs team remembered being crowned the May Queen attendant and had her first pair of tights bought for her for that occasion. They were bought form the hairdresser! Those were the days! We don’t see lots of fetes and carnivals like we used to, all down to heavy insurance costs but here in Sussex we have Morris Men and ‘Jack in the Green’ pagan festivals marking the beginnings of summer. This year all is curtailed by Covid but in just a couple more weeks we will be able to start to enjoy life like we used to and even hug!
May brings out the best in our garden with fresh lush growth and my favourite wild flower of all, Cow Parsley, is in every hedge row, also called Queen Ann’s Lace and Mothers Die (not so nice) but out there they are all the same. I pick bundles of it for the hall and my kitchen table and every year my husband moans about the mess it makes. Moan on Phil, nothing is going to change!
May is also the month of bluebells and our wonderful blue bell wood in Arlington have a charitable event and my, have their funds suffered. I try and get there as often as possible as no photographs capture the beauty or smell. We did an evening walk with the grandchildren where we lay down on the ground, looking up at the trees and just listened to the wild wood. Bliss.