June 2025 Pages

thunderstorm hangovers, honeysuckle, general pottering.

I got the ick a bit in June. The final push through to the end of term was tiring – navigating some tricky things; the emotions of firsts and lasts – and with a backdrop of extremely grim on the news. That extraordinary thunderstorm on the night of the solstice was needed to release the tension and the weight. I’ve never seen lightning like it. It went on for two hours, splitting the sky and shooting light round our curtains. The earth bowed and trembled. Piglet woke, Trix somehow slept through it. The next morning I felt like I had a hangover.

As always, I’ve been grounded by the world around me. Sitting on flat stones by the river watching sand martins dip in and out of their nests, with Trix on my knee and Piglet beside me. Walking through lanes packed full of comfrey and cow parsley and brambles and wild roses and honeysuckle. Nipping out onto the patio in the morning to look for newts in the pond, to check on the greenhouse. The flitting in and out of the little bird nesting in the honeysuckle at our back door. Seeing a flower on a foxglove wiggle and knowing that, deep inside, there’s a very happy bumblebee. Collecting tiny white snail shells on the sand dunes. These are June things that fill my senses and soothe my worries. What a privilege to potter peacefully. What a privilege to be rooted and comfortable in my own little world.

Other June things:

– a welly full of wee; plump peonies full of ants; the world’s greatest bean bag toss at Sports Day; the Borders Book Festival (I saw Stacey Dooley – she’s tiny and much funnier than I expected); counting our snail shell collection (183) by lining them all up in a row (an unexpectedly satisfying sight); escaping the heatwave to the coast; sea mist; an ice cream van came to Drygrange; oak gall ink; proofing the 2026 calendar; Bin Shed Toad; our first time taking part in the Melrose Fancy Dress Parade; launching the new wooden decorations for summer.

And that’s us into the school summer holidays. Piglet has finished primary one! His very first year of school done and dusted. He has done so brilliantly, exceeding our expectations in every way (we always knew he was brilliant, we just didn’t know if school would suit him). I’m so excited to have him home for eight weeks. School feels like an awful lot for little people to cope with. I must try not to be short-tempered with him if it takes a little time for him to adjust to not being in school. And I must take a minute to be grateful every day that he has the opportunity to go to school, and a safe place to come home to, and snacks galore. The children of Gaza are not so lucky.

Here’s all my June sketchbook pages:

Above: both a goldcrest and a male bullfinch have flown into our windows and dropped dead in the past few weeks. Torturing myself imaging nests full of waiting chicks. What beautiful birds. Honouring them by drawing them.
Below:

1. grasshoppers and butterflies on a walk with my sister in the Lammermuirs; Trix’s ballet shoes that Little Hannah would have been wildly jealous of (but that Trix is refusing to wear to her dance class); milkshakes and drawing in cafes

2. almost a whole year of no-school Fridays complete – this one was spent by the river at Newstead amongst the comfrey and the clover, watching sand martins and a heron and mallard ducklings. Lanes full of wild roses and brambles and honeysuckle and ox eyes and cow parsley.
3. experiments with the oak gall ink that Rich sent me and my dip pens. They did rust, he was right. And frantic notes from an article by the late Melz Owusu about ancestors and access to the countryside. Whacked with my own privilege once again.
4. coffee and drawing in the garden – it’s so hard to get the colour of foxgloves right.
5. escaped the heat wave with a trip to the seaside on the solstice – the sea mist was in but it was still warm enough for bare bottoms in the sea and drying off without a towel.

6. quick sketches at the Haining during a very joyful afternoon with Trix following the Souter Stormer’s amazing trail of knitted public art. An afternoon that left me with bubbles of joy in my tummy for the rest of the day.