May

I'm almost too late to post this, but since it's still May, I'm going to do it!  I guess everyone knows that the month of May is dedicated to the Blessed Mother.  A few years ago I found a beautiful brown toned statue of Mary at a garden store.  It has since turned almost white.  I placed it on a slab of rock that was in our forest and we cleared out a little place in the woods to make a small shrine.

This year we had a few extra petunias leftover from our window box and I let the kids plant them in pots for Mary.

I can see this statue from all of the back windows of my house, which means I see her as I close my bedroom window at night and as I open the back living room shades in the morning.  In the moonlight, in the early morning sun, she looks so beautiful.

While I don't have an "official" "Mary garden", because the forest is so shaded and it is hard to grow flowers, we do have a huge swath of "Lily-of-the-Valley" that just happen to grow wild in our forest.  I planted "Marigolds" around our garden this year.  We have a couple "Bleeding hearts" along a border of our home.  I try to use these plants named in honor of Mary to help foster a love and devotion to her in myself and my children. 

I love May.  I love the end of the school year and the promise of summer.  There really is a great sense of peace that comes at the end of a long year of hard work and effort to teach and learn together.  Now our tasks will turn elsewhere.   As my kids turn to the outdoors to play, I start making lists to attend to all of those details put on hold while school was in session.

We start a new rhythm to our days where many hours of schoolwork are now open and free.  I need this free space.  I need the peace of having nothing, really, to do.  And I want to keep this peace throughout the summer.  So, in May, we turn to Mary, Queen of Peace, and receive the gifts of grace that we need from her loving and Immaculate heart.