The story of a home — through the seasons.
inviting you in for a warm drink and a cosy chat — part three.
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?"
—E.M. Forster.
Hello everyone
I hope you are all doing well and finding your bearings in April…
It is a month that can feel anything but gentle with its wild moment-to-moment unpredictability but there is sweetness in noticing the buds of tulips getting ready to open in the garden and the beginnings of bluebells unpeeling in the woods.
Perhaps strangely, it is this noticing of the unfolding changes that provides me with an anchor — there is a coexisting truth of both longing and comfort in the transience of the seasons and I have been thinking about how this plays out at home.
I hope you will be able to find a spot in the spring light with a cup of something that warms you, to join me for an exploration of living seasonally at home.
This letter is based on the INSIDER series which explores the inside stories of our homes as a foundation for nurture, creativity and as an anchor to our surroundings.
The first chapter in this Story of a Home series included a re-introduction and thoughts about creating meaning at home and the second instalment explored home as a foundation for creativity. Today I am exploring home as an anchor to our surroundings and the seasons unfolding around us — with more to come soon on home as a place of nurture, followed by my aspirations and sources of inspiration.
I hope this allows you to get to know me a bit better through the (very slowly evolving) story of a home…
A seasonal home.
Since the hazy early days of mothering (in the first months of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic), I have found that paying attention to the familiarity of the seasonal shifts and rhythms to be a way to orient myself. Living closely attuned to the seasons allows me to grasp fragments of certain memories. In the blur of days that are filled with a million things, (a lot of the same things), the seasons are an anchor for me. We are not separate from nature — noticing the way the light falls, what is growing in the garden and the feel in the air have become my compass.
At the same time, I am within a chapter of my life where the time and space for my practices has been squeezed, and so rituals need to be easeful and intuitive, but at the same time root me into the rhythm of the season. Rituals are found within the things we do each day, the feeling conjured by a season and the natural emergence of traditions. They are not imposed externally but come from the inside out, an inner wisdom woven into life.
My favourite ritual is the practice of observing, noticing and witnessing — that way I believe that everyone can live seasonally.
The windows from our living room/playroom at the back of the house reveal the changes in the garden which allows me to feel connected to the changing season — it is like a moving picture that shapeshifts in colour and form throughout the year.
Our console table in the entrance (a lucky eBay find) acts as a kind of altar table — I try to bring seasonal flowers into the large charity shop vase I found throughout the year (it is currently host to a large branch of wild cherry blossom, more on this later), it is home to pumpkins and cobwebs in autumn, a glittered pine cone garland in winter, pots of flowering bulbs in spring, sunflowers in the summer and dahlias as we move back towards autumn.
My creative space is also very much tied to the seasons, both in terms of the things I surround myself with including seasonal scents and fresh flowers (as well as being the home of our overwintering pelargoniums) and the books and materials I am inspired by —
’s The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2024 is a constant companion, as is Nature’s Calendar: The British Year in 72 Seasons. I am also reading ’ beautiful memoir Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky which unfolds over the course of a year following the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon. My desk looks out onto the balcony and I am eagerly anticipating the bare woven branches overflowing with wisteria blooms come May.
At home in spring.
Writing this post about the simple ways to live seasonally at home has led me to think about a series of posts over the year ahead where I explore our home throughout the seasons — let me know what you think…
The word April is thought to have come from the Latin Aprilis. Some Roman authors thought that Aprilis was related to the Latin verb aperire meaning ‘to open’, relating to the opening of buds, leaves, flowers (and perhaps even windows…)
Fresh air | I feel drawn to opening the windows at this time of year (whilst keeping a warm drink, blanket, jumper and socks to hand). Inviting the breeze in and letting stagnant air out even on colder days brings an almost daily refresh of our living spaces.
Light candles | even as the days lengthen, the slow transition in spring requires the cosiness of candles in my opinion. I am currently choosing a blend of balsam, oakmoss and bergamot which feels fresh and uplifting but soothing too. I also love the natural soy wax candles with essential oils by Join, my favourite of all-time is Hedgerow.
Seasonal art | our Growing through the seasons calendar by Isla Middleton includes hand carved linocut prints to illustrate each month (which I hope to frame one day) and is a celebration of everything seasonal with practical growing tips. It was a joy to turn the calendar in April this week, to find peonies adorning the page.
Seasonal blooms | I love to bring seasonal flowers into the house when I can, the past weeks have been tinged with the pastel palette of narcissi, tulips and blossom.
We found a fallen branch of a wild cherry tree (prunus avium) on the way back from park a couple of weeks ago. It had fallen from a huge cloud-like tree of abundant white flowers — we placed the flowering branch in a large glass jar vase of water on the console table in the entrance, draping it in painted eggs for Easter. The blossom petals are fading now, as they do — a reminder of the precious fleeting beauty and ephemeral nature of all things.
Songs for spring | I have the following playlists on repeat, Slow Spring Days by Emma Ross, Springtide by
and Sweet Spring Renewal by , as created for our ceremony of soft emergence spring ritual.Creative awakening | it can be enough to surround yourself with things that feel beautiful and seasonal as an anchor and visual reminder of where we are (and how far we have come) in the year. As I approach one year here on Substack, I feel as though I am both looking back to notice a quiet transformation that has been taking place as I commit myself to the words, to this space and to myself, whilst sowing seeds too and feeling the call to gather in springtime (more on an opportunity to join me in this below).
Go outside | spring draws me back into the garden. It is becoming customary for me to spend the Easter long weekend getting out as much as I can. This year more than ever, I spent a glorious couple of hours in actual spring warmth in the garden cutting back old fern fronds and discovering new ones curled tightly ready to unfurl beneath. Scraping away at the surface, my treasure became ivy leaves, brown leaves, sticks, stones and snail shells. I turned the earth to invite newness, uncovering the beginnings of bluebells and burgeoning fringecups springing up from the earth.
Find a place to sit | through the act of simply observing, we can notice where the light touches at different points in the year. I know that in spring, the light dances differently on the walls than when it is lower in the sky during winter. There is a more transient and glistening watery quality to it than in summer as the sky changes from moment to moment. It feels important to find a place to feel into the season, whether it be a place to bask in light or to find shade. Last spring I found a haven on the wisteria-woven balcony in May and am already looking forward to when it arrives again next month — a place to be still without forgetting the truth of transience.
I would love to hear what you notice about turning of the seasons where you live and if you bring any totems of the season into your home…
How does your home and its surroundings look in spring?
Thank you so much for reading — I hope we can chat more in the comments or of course feel free to send me an email with your thoughts.
Lyndsay xx
P.S. if you are in the UK,
and I are crafting our first creative seasonal gathering in London on Saturday 20th April. We hope to bring both nourishment and inspiration for your own creative unfolding in the seasons ahead. We would love you to join us - you can read more here.A warm hello to anyone new here, I’m Lyndsay, mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR. Story & Thread. is a weekly letter exploring the intersection of creativity, mothering and the living world, with a home and a garden at the heart...
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home is such a hub with young children i think - never before do we spend so much time there! currently 8 weeks postpartum and really enjoying the slow days and watching the seasons turn. lovely words thank you for crafting - i will go back and read the rest of the series! 😊
I love the simple ways you have brought the seasons inside. Since moving to the tropics it has been so much harder to live by the seasons in the way that I’m used to. I don’t have a veggie or a flower garden to remind me and the seasonal shifts are so subtle but at the same time so impactful of day to day life. I love noticing the different greens of the jungle outside our window or the growth of the cassava trees our neighbour has planted. Sitting on the veranda and watching the rain beat down as hard as you’ve ever seen while wearing a thicker T shirt is about as cosy as it gets!