Arctic starflowers & everyday magic: Discovering joy in tiny moments

Let nature's smallest details transform your mood and brighten your day.

I record these voiceovers outdoors so you get to feel this place.

Greetings from the moss,

April stole a march on May. Leaves arrived early; the cuckoo too. Yet here we are on the cusp of June.

Here is a week of fragments, moments snatched between interruptions and nested to share with you, punctuated by new photographs of arctic starflowers which I know you loved last week (thank you).

Arctic starflower - chickweed wintergreen (Lysimachia europaea)

1.

Some memories stay with you, tucked quietly in a corner. Waiting. Listening to Margaret Atwood read ‘The Plums’ brings back a memory of a house we didn’t, ultimately, buy. In the garden a tree, dripping with plums, oozing sticky wasps. Sweet fruit—I tasted one—yellow, variety unknown. I think I wanted that tree more than the house.

2.

Rain waits

As if shy

Until we have retired to bed

Undresses in the dark

Trips noisily before tiptoeing on through the night

3.

I now know what exhaustion looks like; I see it every 15 seconds:

A cadence of movement

A catenary of flight

As we idly spoon cereal the blue tits fly out and back, out and back. From the nest box on the wall we are party to, to the fat block hanging from the red elder, or the birch tree, or the crab apple. Quick, efficient, movements; the obligatory detour before returning to the clamour of hunger.

Do the parents rest at all? The day is long: 04.30h to 21.48h. 17hrs 18minutes or 62,280 seconds = 4,152 times. Even if you assume a slower average of 30 seconds, it could mean 2,078 return flights—in a single day.

This surely is exhaustion. And instinct. We might call it love, but I doubt blue tits have time to consider that.

For now we are semi-detached neighbours. Outside, gardening, I hear cheeping, and glancing over see an almost perfect face looking out. What a view of the world, what first impressions, does this fledging have?

Two days later, they are gone.

4.

Perhaps I spun a thread, a lure, from the wood? Fairyland called me back last Friday, even as I knew the pollen still lay thickly. And now, as I look through these new images for you, I know it will do the same again.

The same place, yet never the same twice. A little like water…

5.

A blackbird and I startle each other at the bird bath. I retreat; it returns. Ten feet away I watch a young male revel in the water. Minutes slip by. Eventually he flies up to a branch; shakes feathers repeatedly, uses feet to scratch and bill to preen. Things are not quite in order. He turns into the breeze, settles for a blow dry. I feel like I have been party to something so ordinary that it is exquisite.

I hope that you too will have found joy in these tiny moments of observation as the month draws to a close.

Until next week,

If you enjoy what I share, a lovely way to say ‘thank you’ is to make a small donation here. To those of you who have, my heartfelt gratitude.

PostScript

A grab shot, cropped, a lovely reminder that I am not the only one enjoying the stars of the wood. I think it is a green-veined white butterfly (Pieris napi) — please correct me if I am wrong.

Words and images copyright © Michela Griffith 2025 except where otherwise credited