Blog
June is the month of joy
Monday 8th June 2026
Mike Mullins
It's June and nature reaches an exuberant fullness. It's overflowing. Can we receive the gift rather than own it? Bumblebees dive head first into the purple bell heads of campanula in our garden and circle the five, white -petalled love in the mist, to find nectar. Wild strawberries appear for the first time. The fig tree gently sways in the breeze. Two young fresh figs hanging from its branches. It won’t be long before the squirrels have those.
A wren trills from a nearby lime tree. Bees are already hard at work on the raspberry flowers. Others land on the fleabane, the stalk bends with their weight, almost touching the ground. Yellow poppies are fully out. Little apples are appearing on the apple tree that Paula planted two years ago.
The rising morning sun clips the wall of our flat and illuminates a wisteria branch jutting out across and over into our neighbour's garden. White laundry bed sheets wave gently in the warm breeze. Suddenly a startled wood pigeon flies just inches over me. I can feel and hear the power of its wings in the vortices of disturbed air.
In the night a snail has scaled the heights of our wild kale and he’s facing head down on a stalk after a hearty meal. He’s clearly got a head for heights. Four swifts fly high above me, sweeping this way and that. Screaming as they scoop up insects. Meanwhile ants and woodlouse emerge from under the old rotting log I’m using as a foot rest. This may be south London but its full of fecund life.
Coming down one early morning I caught a glimpse of red fur at the gate. Following the lead, I found a young fox cub in our alley. It leapt athletically over the fence into a neighbours garden as I peered round the gate then gone. Libby, our cat, drinks nonchalantly from the makeshift pond Paula created a few weeks back.
Like the enchanted isles that disappear, youth that fades and summer lands that can’t be held in Irish myth, all of this beauty is transient, momentary, precious, not with us long. Can we learn to love the beauty without needing to cling? The flowers will wilt, the fox cub grow old, the swifts depart.
I woke at 6am and went to sit out amongst my friends, the ancient oaks upon the common. The low slung morning sun threw long, winter like shadows, across the grass. The oaks welcomed me with a loving embrace. Yggdrasill, the ash, stood higher than any other tree, stretching up to support the heavens, bathing in the light of brother sun. A squirrel foraged before me. A blue and green dabbed, dragonfly shot across the common, darting this way, then that.
An old dead oak stands next to me. What must he have seen in his majesty? What a crown he must have had? Was he the king of the nation of oaks? No leaves, no apparent life but I was still drawn to him.
“Hello dear brother. You are so strong so beautiful. Your bark rough like elephant’s hide. What is that great gaping wound in your side? Who or what hurt your dear brother? Is that what caused your death? Tell me your story dear friend. What happened to you that the life drained from you in middle age? Did your siblings mourn for you? Were you the father oak, the protector?”
And now that brother sun is higher above the horizon the shadows are shortening. A light blue sky fades to a glaring white corona around our brother. Thank you brother for your light and warmth. Another day begins as the earth spirals on her skewed axis round brother sun and in turn the solar system circles our great galaxy at 500,000 mph. Each circling galactic year taking 250 million years. Since humanity has been on earth we've only travelled 0.1% of the way round our galaxy.
I am small but I belong, nested in circles of garden, common, woodland, earth, solar system, galaxy and cosmos.
And back on the common dogs play joyfully with each other.
A few days later I’m listening to a song thrush throw its heart out upon the world in the early morning, as I lie on my camp bed in our tent. The Dorset field is edged by old oaks. The hunting ground of crows, the ancient Irish goddess Morrigan, goddess of war and transformation. Songbirds are all in the hedgerows and woods, robin, chiff-chaff, blackbird, black cap and wren.
As I walk across a meadow, sown with buttercup and purple flowers, a house martin sweeps in low, no more than 2-3 feet above the grass, circling round me in great bow-bends, like a skater on ice. My heart sings.
The following day Paula spotted a leveret bedside a track on the wrong side of a wire fence. We stopped transfixed to watch the young, wild life, its huge hind legs and large erect ears. Then slowly through fence and heather down into a dip then up again onto a hummock it crawled.
Were we the first humans it had seen?
Its 7.20am and I sit in a Dorset field a lone goose, neck outstretched, great wings lifting her up, as she glides diagonally and low across the meadow, no more than fifty foot up. Honking to its tribe and then gliding over oak woods to disappear.
June is the month of joy, not achievement, not productivity, not self improvement. Let joy be enough. June invites us to live like the goose, grateful for the gift of life. Rooted in the earth, aware that we pass through a beautiful, mysterious and ephemeral world.