Finding beauty in the ordinary

I love the view from my house, sometimes we can see for miles, sometimes, often at this time of year, it is hazy with fog.  A sunny early morning in Autumn will often give us a few special minutes, the near hills bathed in a beautiful light which makes them look golden.  I happened to look out the window at just the right time this morning, minutes later and everything looks less saturated, the contrast gone.

So many things in life can be fleeting, moments that we notice and take into our memories.  Special because they are fleeting.  They are a balance to all that is happening in the world right now, does anyone else feel like they are in a world where things don't feel real?  My decision to stop reading the news has rather backfired in the last few weeks as I have no idea what the rules are where I live, they seem to be changing every day.  I have friends who live in a different county who seem to have different rules.  The home educating community seemed to have fallen through a big hole until someone found a reference to us hidden deep in a government document which may now be out of date, who knows?

An evening swim at a local lake followed by tea on the shore with the sun setting, bathing the lake and hills in a beautiful golden light was a perfect way to end a long and anxiety filling day.  I am slowly filling our days, making sure that we have a balance of time at home and time out and about each week.  When I read my diary for the beginning of this year I can feel a rising of panic.  How on earth I managed to fit in all that we used to do, I have no idea, I know that I absolutely cannot go back to that life.  This pause we have had to take in our lives has been good for me, it has made me reflect on what is really important to me and how we shape our days and weeks.

The start of Autumn means we changed our seasonal table this week, we keep the pieces for the other seasons in shoe boxes, I love to get these down and be reunited with them again.  They are all homemade either by us or gifted to us by friends over the years.  I spent a lovely hour with Alice tidying away all the summer bits, giving the table a really good clean and then arranging all the autumnal bits.  We are going to make a few autumn inspired fairies over the next few weeks, the table is already pretty full but I love to make something each year.

We have been welcoming Autumn into our house for the past few weeks with Autumn stories during our daily morning gathering when we also read poems and sing together.  We have started lighting our candle too, I love this gentle light.  I have been doing a morning gathering with the children for years, it has changed over that time, I love the constancy it has threaded through our lives.  It brings us together to start the day, although these days it is more usually at around 10am and some of us have been awake and busy for a few hours.  It marks a change in intention, more focused, a time to think about the day ahead and maybe the next few days.  On a Monday we use this time to talk through the week, the plans that are already in place and things that the children want to do.

We had an autumn equinox ceremony in a local wood this week.  We chose the day based on the weather forecast at the beginning of the week, when the day came round the forecast had change somewhat.  We still went out and I am so glad that we did, it has been a long time since we visited these woods.  When the children were really small it is a place we went to often, we spent a least one year visiting every month to observe the changes in the seasons.  It used to take all day to walk around, short legs getting tired and needing to stop often.  So much to look at, feel and smell, mud to squelch through.  We picked elderberries this time.  We had not planned to do that, they were carefully placed in a rucksack pocket and survived the journey.  They have been brewed into a large quantity of elderberry syrup, the family are calling it the daily elixir, we are hoping it will keep coughs and sneezes at bay through the coming months.

Now it is the weekend, that time of breathing out and having a pause.  This one is stretching out ahead of us completely empty, our plans to go and visit relatives, were quietly shelved.  In the current circumstances we felt travelling so far was not wise.  I love weekends like this, particularly as my next two are really full.  I am hoping that we will be able to do a swim somewhere, the weather forecast is currently making that a possibility.  

I finally chose a pattern for a hat.  I had forgotten how much l love to knit fair isle, I am sure my technique is clunky and not very efficient, but it works for me.  I have managed to get the perfect tension this time, it has become instinctive which is important when we want to master something isn't it?  I know that knitting is not something that we are all able to master but doing the things we love and enjoy has never been so important to have in our lives than this current time.  I do hope that you are able to make the time for those things in you life too.  So a weekend of swimming and knitting what more could I ask for, I hope your weekend is filled with lovely things too.