Friday Flowers Club #41~The Green Man

Hello Friends.

We have just passed Beltane, celebrated on the evening before 1st May, and one of the four major Gaelic seasonal festivals alongside Samhain, Imbolc, and Lughnasadh. Translated as "bright fire," it marks the official beginning of the pastoral summer season and is traditionally the time to celebrate the return of fertility to the land and the growing power of the sun.

Beltane, like Samhain, was considered to be a liminal time, when the "veil" between the human world and the spirit realm was thinnest. But whilst Samhain is associated with the dead, Beltane is instead linked to the Faery folk and spirits of nature, and from here we derived celebrations we all recognise today centred upon the May Queen and the Green Man; symbols ofthe union of the Earth and Sun and the generation of new life.

We took a walk through the Limb Valley yesterday, and felt Beltane all around us. Heady vibrant greens and carpets of blue, the air pregnant with the prospect of Summer, a heavy Spring petrichor swirling around usand soaked into the mosses and branches. Here indeed was the kingdom of the Green Man, sitting at the gateway of human and faery, guardian of the corridor to Summer, to warmth, to fruition. He held our hands as we climbed over logs and skipped through forest, tiptoed across rivers and foraged in thickets. Guiding us forwards, moving us ever onwards.

This week’s flowers will embrace the developing shades of the forest floor these last few weeks, the vibrant purple bluebells, the whites of the wood anemones and wild garlic flowers.

This will also be the last week of tulips before we move onto the best season of them all-Peonies!

Have a lovely week and as always, “Bringing the Outdoors In”.