June arrived quietly, spring blending softly into early summer.
At a blink of an eye
all my favorite footpaths got colored in shades of green
with specks of white and pink dotted
amongst the lush foliage.
The air is filled with a sweet scent of elderflower
and the remains of hawthorn blossom.
Through the many voices of birds
and a sleepy hum of bumblebees
I can make out the quiet, chirping sounds of crickets
hiding in the tall grass.
To me, that's the ultimate sign that the summer is already
on our doorstep.
This will be my second summer living in the countryside.
I came here almost two years ago
and I still marvel at the sights
and seasonal changes developing right before my eyes.
How quickly life changed
from winter to spring, from spring to summer.
From eerie stillness to possibilities of life.
From life to a quiet nostalgia.
When June comes, a forgotten part of me awakens
a part of me that ran barefoot
through a small, grassy
backyard between the tall, high rise buildings in the city
where I was born,
a part of me which spent
an entire summer building forts
amongst the sweetly perfumed jasmine bushes,
reading, hiding from the world, creating a new one,
and the bliss experienced from going outside and staring at
the endless deep blue sky
after a morning piano lesson.
I remember a lot of my childhood.
The memories and emotions are as vivid as day.
I envision these moments as if they happened yesterday.
Strangely,
these moments are not connected to a place,
but rather to feelings.
It was a different world from the one I'm living today.
Sometimes I forget that these memories
are something I lived through.
They all seem like a long forgotten, hazy summer daydream.
Today I foraged for some elderflower
on a long walk around my village.
It grows in abundance here in the hedges
near the fields and on the roadside.
It's a bush native to the UK,
but I know that it grows in some other countries as well,
so you may be able to find it.
The tiny white flowers hang in clusters
and bloom from the end of May to mid-June.
Later, developing into purple berries
This year they appeared later than usual in my area,
and I collected the first few from around
eight different bushes,
taking only two at a time.
The stems and later the berries are mildly toxic
and shouldn't be consumed raw.
To prepare the cordial,
you have to separate flowers from stems
as much as possible.
But it's not an issue if a little bit
of tiny stems remain.
I grew to love a lot of traditional British food
and drinks,
elderflower cordial
being one of my favorite seasonal treats.
Its floral sweetness
has now imprinted in my memory
as much as the scent of jasmine from my childhood.
The associative memory,
the moment,
the taste, the smell
all intricately painted on the canvas of my subconscious,
causing most unexpected emotions on a long summer day.
As written in the book I am reading at this moment.
“The brain appears to possess a special area,
which we might call poetic memory,
which records everything that charms or touches us
that makes our lives beautiful.
I grew to know this life I’m living right now
through many senses
and perhaps sometime in the future,
when life again takes me somewhere unexpected
I will look back at it with nostalgia
in the early days of summer.
Do let me know what your
favorite summer treats and memories are.
I would love to know your experience.
Thank you so much for watching this
video and I will see you again next time.