May Day: A Morning Walk Through the Green Lane

May Day: The Turning of the Year

May Day – or Beltane, as it was known in the old calendar – once marked the start of summer. A festival of bonfires, blossom, maypoles and merrymaking – and though it's many years since I danced around a maypole, the countryside still feels like it’s celebrating.

This morning I've been walking the quiet lanes around the shop, soaking in the stillness before my day began (with writing this blog post!). The hedgerows are brimming now – fresh nettles, cow parsley rising like lace, and wild garlic blooming in shady corners.

The entrance road to Chesterblade Hills

Butterflies and Blooms

As I walked, I passed Speckled Wood butterflies warming themselves on sunlit leaves, and glimpsed pink campion, bluebells, and the bright white stars of wild garlic shining out from the undergrowth.

Speckled Wood

Wildflowers spilling out from the hedgerows

There’s such a sense of fullness to the land right now. Every verge spilling over – green on green, peppered with whites, pinks, purples and yellows of wildflowers. These quiet May mornings are some of my favourites, full of light and birdsong and that almost imperceptible shift from spring into summer.

Cow parsley

Wild garlic

However you spend this May Day, I hope you find a moment to pause – to walk, to notice, to breathe it all in. Or perhaps just to sit quietly with your knitting and feel the season turning – stitch by stitch.

This is the kind of morning that inspires everything I do at All About The Yarn – slow, seasonal, and stitched into the landscape.