Season Shelf :: Late Summer

As the harvest comes on and the reaping begins
The farmer the fruit of the earth gathers in.
In mirth let us talk till the season be gone . . .

—From the traditional harvest song, “All of a Row”

It’s hard to believe that summer is on the wane already. The August shelf displays symbols of the year’s first harvests (Lammas / First Fruits / Feast of the Transfiguration) and some of my favorite August blooms. 

I also felt like the shelf needed to feel a little more centered on the wall, so I created a watercolor bunting for each month of the year, based on Steiner’s ideas about the colors of the month and Goethe’s color wheel.

The flower fairies are Lotte Sievers-Hahn dollhouse dolls that I purchased from Heirloom Art Co and transformed into my own creations with felt and hot glue.

The art cards are (left to right, from the top): “Sommer” by Eva-Maria Ott-Heidmann, “Oktober” by Ruth Elsässer, “Zomer-muis (Summer Mouse)” by Marjan van Zeyl, “Christ in the Wheatfield” by Johannes Raphael Wehle, and “St Anne” by Piotr Stachiewicz (the last two I printed out myself from images I found online).

August Season Shelf August Season Shelf - 2 August Season Shelf - 3 August Season Shelf - 4 August Season Shelf - 5 August Season Shelf - 6

Season Shelf :: Early Spring

Season Shelf :: Early Spring

I have two naughty (but adorable) cats, and they like to be overly involved with my season table. So I’m trying something new: A season shelf.

This beautiful shelf is from Camden Rose. I’ve designed the first two shelves to be more nature-focused, while the bottom shelf is dedicated to the liturgical year. But it all feels very cohesive, in part because the liturgical calendar is a reflection of Creation.

One thing I have learned on my seasonal- and liturgical-living journey is that it’s okay for things to change. Living seasonally isn’t static, by definition. My kids are in high school and college, so I no longer have little ones who want to interact with the season table directly. This new iteration of an old practice offers a more passive experience, but it will still ground my family in the seasons of nature and the Church year, just as it always has.

Art cards (from top shelf down): “Farmer Plowing” by Ruth Elsasser, “The White Lamb” by Dorothea Schmidt, “I Am with You Until the End of Days” by Ninetta Sombart, “Golgotha” by Leo Klein.

Spring nature shelf 1 Spring nature shelf 2 Spring nature shelf 4 Spring nature shelf 3