Hey Reader. We've reached the height of summer, and yet Gŵyl Awst carries within it the first whisper of change. Celebrated on the 1st of August, Gŵyl Awst is the Welsh festival of the first harvest; a day to give thanks for what the land has produced, to acknowledge the abundance around us, and to sit with the quiet knowledge that the wheel is already turning. The sun is at its strongest, the fields are golden and heavy, and still the days are shortening. Gŵyl Awst holds both of those truths...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. July arrived the way it always did, warm and unhurried, with the hedgerows heavy and the evenings stretching long past supper. This was the month of Ceridwen's cauldron, when the old stories about transformation and quiet endurance felt closest to the surface. It's a good month for slow magic and for finishing what had been started in spring. Anyway, what else has happened since last we spoke, and...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader. Midsummer has always felt like a held breath. The sun reaches its highest point and the world seems to pause for just a moment, long and golden and full of possibility, before the slow turn back begins. In Wales, this time of year carries old names and older stories; bonfires lit on the hillsides, flowers laid at doorways, intentions spoken quietly into the warm night air. It's a season made for folklore, and I couldn't let it pass without a story to go with it. This month's short...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. A Midsummer Welcome June arrived the way it always does in the old stories, not with a knock, but with a slow, golden seep of light that stretched the evenings long and turned the hedgerows heavy with bloom. The ancients called this time Alban Hefin, the Light of the Shore, and marked the Solstice as a hinge between worlds, when the veil thinned just enough for magic to slip through the cracks....
2 months ago • 3 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. May has arrived in a soft rush of green hills, brighter evenings, and that sense of the year quietly shifting gears. It always feels like a month of movement as things are waking up properly, ideas stretching out into the light, and everywhere is a beautiful verdant green. 🌷 May Day has already been and gone, but I hope you had a wonderful day. Anyway, what else has happened since last we spoke,...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader. Today is Calan Mai, the first day of May, and one of those old seasonal thresholds that still seems to hum faintly beneath the modern calendar if one listens for it. In Wales, it marked the opening of the bright half of the year, the crossing out of winter’s lean grip and into the green, blossom-heavy months of warmth, growth, and abundance. It was a festival of fire and dew, of cattle driven between cleansing smoke, of yellow flowers hung above doorways for luck and protection,...
4 months ago • 10 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. April is a month that moves. Tides shift, seasons turn, and the world leans fully into the warmth it has been promising since February. In old folk traditions, this was a time of threshold crossings and fresh starts, when anything planted, whether in soil or in the heart, had the best chance of taking root. And this April, I have some very exciting turning points of my own to share! 🌷 🐣 Easter...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader. Today is the spring equinox, and in Welsh it carries a name that feels like the thing itself: Cyhydnos y Gwanwyn, which translates roughly as the equal night of spring, that particular turning point in the year when the hours of light and dark finally balance before the long slow tipping towards summer. There is something in that equilibrium that has always felt significant to me, a held breath before the world rushes forward. The equinox carries a second Welsh name alongside...
5 months ago • 6 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. Firstly, my apologies for the late arrival of this month's newsletter. I was under the weather last week and completely out of action! Thank you for your patience. On a brighter note, spring is very much in the air here in my little corner of Germany. The dark mornings are finally giving way to light, and I have a feeling the worst of winter is behind us (though I'm whispering that, just in case I...
5 months ago • 4 min read