Hygge Highlights #13

Seasons and Reasons to Celebrate

Small pockets of colour are returning to the garden - All photos my own

Kia ora! Welcome to this super lucky thirteenth edition of “Hygge Highlights” - where together we share moments of our week that felt especially wonderful, cosy or magical. Perhaps it was a call with a loved one or connecting with a dear friend. Perhaps it was catching sight of something typically seasonal, a fleeting experience that only happens in this small window of the very beginnings of Spring or Autumn.

These moments of hygge (hoo-gah) are for everyone. Hygge is in our connections; with ourselves; with our love ones; in nature; in sustenance; in spirituality and in our everyday lived experience. Moments of hygge could perhaps be considered the fruit, born from our hidden mycelium network in the week’s hum-drum.

As always I’ll start with the highlights you shared with me through comments and chats this week…

“I’m delighted that I found so many sunflowers in people’s gardens and out in the fields on my drive this weekend.”

“I really love watching your Spring come into being as our Autumn begins. It feels so expansive to be able to share the turning of the wheel this way.”

“Watching the swallows return and large dormant trees burst into leaf, lets me know spring is here.”

“Summer isn’t going down without a fight here in New England. And somehow this set the scene for a RARE mole sighting!! Our neighbors have a couple of moles living under their shed in their backyard. I think they’re married. 😌”

“We are having the last hooray of Summer....or maybe the first of it. Anyway, it's boiling in Salisbury, UK after a very wet July and August! The days are getting darker so despite the heat we can see autumn arriving 🍂”

I really do look forward to hearing about your hygge moments and the special seasonal delights you notice each week. I am thrilled and forever grateful when you contribute and join in the conversation. Thank you!

If you have been here a while it possibly won’t come as a surprise that it is important to me to acknowledge, notice and celebrate each unique season. By which I mean our true and current Southern Hemisphere season. This may seem obvious and you might say how can we not?

Indeed this is a large part of why I was / am inspired to write and share here on Substack. I think perhaps this where it is slightly more difficult for my Northern Hemisphere readers to understand fully. Many great and famous literary works we all know and love coincide with the NH months and seasons. Illustrations, calendars and the ever present consumerism push of (mostly Christian) festivities, mean chocolate eggs are available in Spring, Pumpkin Spice lattes in Autumn in the NH. December’s playlist and carols are welcoming frosts and snow. Films and television series are toasting the NH season. Therefore here downunder we are told over and over again to celebrate the opposite season.

I despair when I see Halloween decorations in Spring, and folks on social media locally getting excited about Starbucks unseasonal and alien to me offerings. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

I’m full of joy for Spring. I’ve been researching and planning for Ostara, collecting inspiration and ideas for painting and decorating eggs. I spent time today tidying and mulching our strawberry patch, super excited for the sun ripened harvests to come. I’m eagerly awaiting the cherry blossoms on Harper Avenue, in Ōtautahi. I’m smitten with the divine glory of the giant flowering magnolias and hoping to gather some petals to try out pickling. I’m all goo-goo for the baby peepers (ducklings) and can’t help but smile at the lambs frolicking on the local green pastures.

There’s so much to celebrate each real true local season… we don’t need to import an out of season one.

Another reason to celebrate locally this week is Māori language week which starts tomorrow. Observed in September since 1975, regretfully however (in my opinion) Te Reo Māori has only been identified as an official language in Aotearoa, New Zealand since 1987. I am personally truly inspired to expand my vocabulary and knowledge of Te Reo. I love how increasingly our places and cities are referred to by their Māori names and seeing (if only a token number and brief limited editions of) bilingual packaging is exciting too. My hope is that it becomes the norm, standard issue and we see Te Reo year round in far more places, on far more goods and services.

Last week I mentioned the Japanese observation of 72 microseasons in the year, each lasting only about 5 days. This week of September is our equivalent to the Northern Hemisphere’s March 6–10 蟄虫啓戸 Sugomori mushito o hiraku or the season when “Hibernating insects surface.” For those of you on top, September 8–12 草露白 Kusa no tsuyu shiroshi welcomes the “Dew glistening white on grass.”

Here are some moments that felt special for me…

• I had an enchanting and somewhat lengthy phone call with a friend, whom I’ve only known and messaged online previously. It was very special to connect further this way.

• Another dear friend shared a truly touching idea which flattered me and made me (and of what I have to say) feel extremely valued. Soon after I pulled an oracle card that reiterated and encouraged me to think about the idea some more. I think I need a new note book.

• My J and I have managed to squeeze in a few beautiful walks together this week, with the warmer and lengthening days, we are both feeling an up-rise in energy and perhaps some Spring fueled romance.

• Watching the tauhou / waxeyes feeding in the plum blossom, the delicate petals floating down like snow as they hop between each branch, while listening to their sweet happy chirping, is such a balm to my heart - I could watch them for hours.

I will be back on Friday, the 15th along with the New Moon at 13:40 local time to share my ideas and prompts for celebrating Ostara, Eostre or the Spring / Vernal Equinox Sabbat.

In the meantime if this week’s "Hygge Highlights" reminded you of some highlights you, yourself have recently experienced, or a moment of magic, please consider sharing them with us. I’m always super pleased to hear from you and delighted to hear about the things that have inspired or moved you. Whether (weather?) an especially seasonal observation, something fun you have seen, foraged, grown, cooked or tasted. Finally a teeny request if you will, as I struggle to extend my reach I would be immensely appreciative if you felt happy to share my posts with others or restack this post to help grow our hygge community, inspiring, sharing more of the essence of what is good in our everyday. Ngā mihi maioha.

Ngā manaakitanga / Seasons Blessings 💫

Bron