Advent Calendar day 5/6/7 - following the light

Sunrise - 9:02am

Sunset- 15:10pm

 Hello everybody !

the last few days have been hectic and busy here in my dwelling. The weather went from joyfully snowing to warm rainy and wet, over and over again. Days are still getting shorter and shorter, but the solstice is getting closer and so the mood is quite good. The neighbourhood, but really the whole little town, is now alight with the traditional white lights on windows, trees and barns. Walking around in the dark looks pretty much as walking in a living fairytale. So I thought you might like to see how it is like to have a stroll around here, these days.

Beautiful isn't it ? This is my favourite time of the year, even if I like every season for their own peculiarity, the feelings arising during the Solstice/Christmas time are just so primordial, in a way. I think that when people consider this time just a merely commercial or religious matter, it is because they don't have a strong enough connection with the nature, with mother earth. Here, where seasons are dramatically different, where the light, or the lack of it, caraterize every period of the year, well the return of light is celebrated as a relief, as an amazing moment, no matter your spiritual path or you holiday traditions. The reality is, that this IS a magical, incredible moment in which our spirit get new energy to face a new beginning. 

Tomorrow Finland celebrates the Indipendence day, 103 years old, if I am not wrong. So please, my dear finnish readers, accept my best wishes for your hard earned freedom <3

Mabon

 After 19 weeks I'm back. It is not easy at all, mostly because a few hours after my last post post my life has changed forever. I got the most dreaded phone call from Italy telling me my mother had suddently and tragically passed away. We left in a rush on the first plane available to find out once in Italy that she has been sick with an unknown illness for months and she basically refused to fully investigate her condition, but she commanded everybody to let me out from all this. This has been so heart breaking for me, to be kept at distance. To add some more pain, while emptiying her apartement I found old love letters and finally I have been told by some family friends that those were my father's old letters to my mother. She told me he was dead before I was born. But he was alive and much interested in my life until I was around 20 ... I feel like my mind has been shaken in a blender and my soul has been drained to the last drop. I feel a sort of 'silence' in me, like if something is switched off and I can't find the way to get my inner self started again.
Anyways after her death we have traveled Europe for two more months trying to get back to some kind of 'normality' again, but it is not easy.
Now, beside my own family, husband and children, I'm alone. I've been lied for all my life by all those who saw me growing up. I've been kept at distance by my own mother, not worth of her last goodbye. I need to find out now, who I want to be from now on.
We came back in the north one week ago, just in time for Mabon season. I'm trying to find comfort in the nature, but even the outdoors can't really heal my soul. I hope this dark season will help letting me go of the grief, and blame and sadness to shine again when to solstice will come.

Beauty

I see lately I have only been pointing out how beautiful is the nature out there, and what a great amazement Mother Earth ways ignite in me; but I can't help that. Nature in this moment of my life is a balm, a companion, a meditation and a prayer alltogether and I can't help bowing in front of her as she is really keeping me sane in a moment of great confusion. Here a few pictures of some wild flowers in my yard, taken just a couple of days apart. At the moment the situation is again at 'square one' since after the snow the sun has been shining for three days now and the temperatures have risen to the 'warm' point.

 

... same flowers same place ...

Beltane, Vappu, Walpurgis Night : six weeks

Today is a rather special day as most part of europe are celebrating 'something'. It is kinda sad in my opinion, how much the ancient traditions have been litterally wiped away and most of us are totally unaware of what we're actually doing or celebrating, but hopefully this is the time of a paradigm shift and the ancient knowledge will be known again without fears or prejudices, giving us the chance to track a new path made of connection and not of distruction. Today is Beltane, an ancient Celtic festival which marked the beginning of the 'light half of the year', when the darkness of winter months is now just a memory, the Pleiades descend to the lowest point in the sky where they're no longer visible and the earth and animals are ready for re-birth, for a new cycle to start, half way between the Equinox and the Solstice. It has ever be so true here like this year, as on the 29th of april we have been hit by a snow storm, yesterday it has been cold and rainy all day just to have a sunset on fire ( a true bonfire set up in the sky by the Highiest Powers ) and today it's warm and the sun is shining. Metaphorical and metaphysical I'd say. Here in Finland today it is called Vappu, and the name brings  back to the Walpurgis Night of german tradition, where the night between the 30th of april and the first of may was considered the ''Witches Night''. So it is indeed a special day. And it's the day in which I keep track of Father Sun and the gift of light.

Sunrise has been at 5:14

Sunset will be at 21:16

Lenght of the day 16h 1min

( + 3h 45min of daylight in six weeks, + 31 min since last monday )

 

Here you can check on the Equinox and Here last week.

And now a couple of pictures from yesterday's evening sky's bonfire ...

April Snowstorm

I have been quite sick all the week long (hence the total silence here), now it seems I'm getting back to my normal self even if I'm still a bit under the weather. Also my feelings have been quite upset lately so it's no wonder that my body reacted with an illness. I'm trying to figure a way out from this, and of course I look solace, inspiration and peace of mind in our Mother Earth, watching the Highiest Spirit express their power through her. Yesterday it has been amazing, I really felt like bowing to the nature as we have been hit by a snow storm that lasted several hours. As usually I should have understood that something was coming from the odd behaviour of the wild birds dwelling in my yard and sharing their daily living with me, but as often happens to us humans, I was too blind to see the obvious. Looking outside it is hardly possible to think we're about to celebrate Beltane.

Five weeks, back to life

When observing the nature and trying to tune in with Mama Earth, every new week means extraordinary things happening and filling your days with beauty and awe. Even if this season is much more colder than any other in the last (at least) five years - I have been living here that long- many signs of the nature waking up and enjoying the warmer sun and the longer ( and longer and longer ! ) days keeps showing up. Trees are still bare, even if the buds are swollen and seems just on the verge of bursting in the greenest leaves you can think of, but the first brave flowers are blossoming in the fields and in the forest.
But let's track the light right now ...

Sunrise has been at 5:30

Sunset will be at 21:00

Lenght of the day 15h 30min

( + 3h 14 min of daylight in five weeks, + 39 min since last monday )

 

To see the situation of the past weeks you can check here, here, here, here, here. And now please, follow me in a walk in the forest ...

Textures

Since I have started taking pictures as a form of art, around ten years ago, I have been always attracted to the different textures that I could find in the nature. During my wanderings I often get lost watching the ground unfolding in front of me and under my feet, so basically I either walk with my nose up to the sky or my eyes glued to the earth. Not the most social being probably ... but there's so much to see, to dive into, to savour and tresure and be grateful for.

Four Weeks, Back to life

Already four weeks since the equinox and so many changes in light. This year the spring is showing itself extremely cold ( temperatures in the night drop to -6 and during the day hardly go over +2 ) and even if the sun is shining most of the days most of day, it's enough to have some wind and running clouds to have a fine and frozen snow to start falling. It's an impressive phenomenon indeed, many times there is still sun but we have real snowstorms that lasts from few minutes to few hours but that hardly leaves any sign after they stop, since the ground is too warm for the snow to keep. All this is making the nature more slow than usual, trees are still totally bare and in the garden we had the first crocuses  blooming, but most of them show the damages of the frost. Anyway, here is the light situation today :

Sunrise has been at 5:51

Sunset will be at 20:42

Lenght of the day 14h 51 min

( + 2h 35 min of daylight more in four weeks, + 39 min since last monday )

To see the situation of the past weeks you can check
 here
here, here, here .

 The grass is still dry

 The frost has damaged most of them

Love the close-ups
 

 Hoping for more flowers soon.

Unpredictable North

Yesterday morning I woke up to a beautiful blue sky and amazing golden sun, the temperature, even in the wee hours of the morning was way over 0C (+4C). I wrote on my nature journal 'I feel this gonna be the first real day of spring'. I was kinda wrong I think ...

... During the night we got snow ...

All hail to the power of nature.