🌹Roses and the Right to Roam🥾

*plus my Elderflower cordial recipe

Dear you,

I hope the first week of June is going well so far. Since it’s only been 6 days since I last wrote here, let’s dive straight in!

Here are some more seasonal dates to ground you into June:

• 6 June: New Strawberry Moon in Gemini 13:37 BST

• 11-13 June: Shavuot (Jewish holiday)

• 16 June: Father’s Day (U.K)

• 17 June: June’s Ecoliteracy Community Meet Up (online)

• 21 June: Sun moves into Cancer

• 20 June: Summer Solstice (Litha) 21:51 BST

• 22 June: Full Strawberry Moon in Capricorn 02:07 BST

🌿Elderflower cordial

Despite it feeling like an awfully long winter, I’ve noticed that here in Yorkshire the Elderflowers have been blooming a week or two earlier than usual. Looking back through my photos, I typically time my annual Elderflower cordial making ritual with the Summer Solstice on 20 June, but found myself tramping around my local patch picking blooms at sunset last night. Some recipes recommend that you pick your Elderflowers when the sun is shining on them to harness their most potent fragrance (which is the key element they infuse into this cordial), but I’ve still had ample success from collecting them on a cloudy day, or indeed, at sunset. Click the button below for my ID guide for Elder plus my go-to cordial recipe.

This recipe is taken from my month-long course all about June’s plants where we explore 4 trees to spot in June (including Elder) and 4 flowering plants (including Dog Rose and Wild Strawberry who I’ll mention later). Our online community call for this month will be on 17 June. You’ll receive access to course materials as soon as you sign up. Feel free to hit reply to this newsletter with any questions.

Investment: £85

🏹Gemini New Moon

The Flower Moon became the Strawberry Moon at 13:37 BST today (6 June). Other names for June’s Moon include Rose Moon, Mead Moon, Horse Moon and Dyad’s Moon. Having picked my first homegrown strawberry last Thursday, this feels like a highly appropriate name, however I’ve also been noticing