La Vie En Rose

I always associate June with the colour pink. I instinctively notice it around me or deliberately gravitate to it at this time of year.

Pink wild roses in the hedgerows...

Deep pink, English strawberries, sold, within hours of picking, from the farm shop, to be eaten just as they are...

or turned into the first batch of this season's strawberry jam to be sampled while still warm ...

or in pale pink, homemade strawberry ice cream eaten, (of course!), in a bright pink bowl with a pink spoon...

Tiny pink granny squares for a little hooky experiment ...

A frivolous, pink, wrap-around skirt to be worn (with pink sandals, naturally!) when the day's work is over...

This skirt is evidence of my lack of self-control as I am supposed to be thinning my fabric stash not adding to it! But I just couldn't resist it's happy holiday mood when I saw the print in my local fabric shop a few weeks ago. It cost under £10 for a metre and a half, which was all I needed to turn into a little wrap-around, holiday-mood number, modelled on my old school games-skirt. This is no longer in the land of the living but I remember it very clearly and with the help of good old Sew What Skirts! I drew out a very simple pattern for a passing imitation of same. It's a bit longer than my old games skirt - on the knee rather than above it - but it has the same swingy freedom of movement about it. Very quick, very easy, very cheap - I like!

It's perfect for popping out in the evening sunshine for a walk along the hay meadows and the wild-rose-filled hedges, before cooking supper accompanied by a glass of chilled, Provençal wine - rosé of course! Feels happy and holiday-ish.

The rose in the pic is a Louise Odier from the garden - she is finally flowering and smells divine!

I am not on holiday; in fact, for work-related reasons, it is rather difficult for me to take proper holiday-time, but where opportunity presents itself, I shall seize those moments that epitomise some of that summery, care-free, holiday spirit and insert them into everyday existence as best I can and count myself "quids in".

This may be looking at life through rose-tinted lenses; in fact take out the "may be", it is looking at life through rose-tinted lenses. Quite deliberately so.

I've recently noticed a number of references in blogland to the fact that people sometimes feel uncomfortable when blogs apparently portray a too rosy version of existence, that seems to have the drab or darker bits of life edited out - the unreality can sometimes jar rather discordantly. Life is not all rosy. No life is perfect; no life-style is perfect; mine is certainly not and I hope, by focusing on good things, I haven't made anyone think it is; if I have, then I must apologise, because that's wrong, and I do; but one of the wonderful things about both writing in this space here and reading the blogs of other like-minded souls, is an opportunity to be mindful of what is rosy and to celebrate it, and that, I do try to do, without apology...

... for all sorts of reasons - because life is for living and I don't know what's around the corner; because I cope better and more patiently with the negative stuff, when it hits the fan, when it's balanced with feeling there's still plenty to appreciate; because viewing life as a glass half-empty all the time can become a bad habit, that's difficult to shift, and I want to set H an example of positive thinking not whingeing; because at the end of the day I believe we are responsible for choosing the colour of our own destiny and often, we find ourselves in macro-contexts that cannot always be transformed just how we would like them to be, but we can transform, how we approach them, on a micro-level; because I think happiness is not a goal that lies beyond us, that we must spend our lives striving after and waiting for, but is often within us and around us, and choosing deliberately to focus on what is rosy, in however small a way, gives that oxygen and helps it to grow, rather than the opposite.

So you won't find me writing stuff here through storm-coloured lenses (I hope) but I don't want anyone to feel that because I write about positive things, the negative or the dull don't happen in my neck of the woods - they do, frequently! And like everyone else, I have down days and weeks when everything just seems a bit (or a lot) too much. But I only have one life to live and I am getting to an age when I feel there is not infinite time to waste, so if there's a choice between dwelling on the rosy positives or the grey negatives, I am going for the rosy option. It's pink, for a start, and, as you may have gathered, I love pink!

Vive la Vie en Rose!

E x