The Squirrel's Elderberry Eye

pages from nature's book

Riot on the hedge bank with anarchic white bluebells, 6 May 2023

Last Quarter Moon in May

Hello lovely friends.

Last Michaelmas Day (29 September) I began a writing challenge, set by London Writers’ Salon. Actually the challenge had been launched on 23 September, but you were invited to jump in at any time. The idea was to set an intention - however tiny - connected with writing that you could commit to carrying out every day for 100 days, until the last day of 2022. 

The timing of the challenge had been carefully planned so that it began when there were 100 days left in the year. If you completed it you’d be left with the feeling that you’d ended 2022 strongly, whatever kind of year you’d had prior to that. And all the more so if you started on the first day and could actually tick off the whole 100. 

As ever, I was running to chase my tail at the time and it took me a few days to actually commit to an intention and make a start. But when I did, and counted 100 days from Michaelmas, I was delighted to find that my personal end point was another significant date in the ritual year: Epiphany! It was meant to be, I thought. 

The challenge I set myself was to begin a nature journal in a very simple A5 hardback notebook. Every day I would fill two pages with writing; a lined double page spread. The words were not allowed to spill over onto the next page and spoil the symmetry, so if I was struggling to fit my record for a particular day into the allotted space I would have to make my writing smaller or go around the edges.