The slow green of midsummer

There is a particular lightness to summer. Even here in the city, even in a busy week, you can feel it – a holiday energy, a loosening. And let's be honest: in summer the longing for green, for a slower rhythm, only grows stronger.

My son's school holidays help. When he is free, it feels a little as though I am on summer break too. And so the pull toward the countryside, toward the land, grows and grows.

My dearest friend and I walk more and more often now, in the woods near home, dreaming aloud of our own houses in nature – a little cottage somewhere green. But for now: forest wanderings, the country house, and soon, a herbalism camp waiting just ahead.

We took our last walk down to the sea. The most beautiful sunny weather happened to find us. The Estonian sea is cold and the wind still strong – but oh, how lovely it was to walk barefoot in that crisp, fresh water, talking about everything and nothing. We gathered the last of the wild rose blooms, already on the edge of falling, and afterwards, at home, the whole room filled with their soft sweet scent.

The cowslips are gathered for this year. We experimented with making a scent from lilac blossoms. And some plants passed us by entirely – we simply didn't get to them in time.

But it's meant to be like that. Softly, not perfectly. Nature lives in its own rhythm and does not wait for us to have the time or the room. Again and again, I am learning to slow down myself – to take the time, to go into the forest, to notice. Meadowsweet, fireweed, and yarrow are waiting ahead. And under the trees, the first wild strawberries are already there to be found.

This is the season the Summer Lifebook was made for – though not only this season, of course. Wild, abundant, sun-soaked: warm greens, sunlight, gentle wildflowers in bloom; or the colours of the sea, sun yellow and open sky. A book for gathering a summer the way you gather flowers – the walks, the scents, the small adventures, the things that passed you by and the things that stayed.

Because that, in the end, is what summer teaches. Not to hold it all. Only to notice what you can, while it's here.