June Bucket List: Gather, Grow & Explore Outdoors
Summer is officially starting! June invites us outdoors to forage, garden, bike, hike, hiking and enjoy the abundance of flowers and fresh herbs. This month’s natural living bucket list is filled with simple natural ways to enjoy the first true month of summer.
I have gathered for you natural lifestyle inspiration in seasonal bucket lists that I am publishing monthly. You can join the email list below to get them in your inbox every month:
Natural Bucket Lists For Every Month
- January: Ground Yourself and Set the Intentions
- February: Embrace the season
- March: Natural Awakening
- April: Welcome the Gentle Growth
- May: Living in the Early Summer Light
- June:
- July: Natural Living Bucket List
- August: How to Live More Naturally This Month
- September: Natural Ways to Welcome Autumn
- October: The Simple Joys of Autumn
- November: Tune into Darkness and Learning Habits
- December: Gentle Preparation For Natural Christmas
Spend Time in Nature
June is the official first summer month. The freshness of nature, blooming flowers, and the scent of the deep forest are most grounding this time. Tune in with the natural world and spend time in nature as much as you possibly can.
Foraging, fishing, collecting seashells, pine cones, or other fauna for nature crafts like natural wreaths, gathering wild flowers into a vase, or just to enjoy identifying plants (or bugs like we are into this year 🤭) with children.
Collect leaves and dry them between a book, to create beautiful natural decorations or your own herbarium book.
Refresh with Homemade Iced Teas
Summer brings a need for some natural coolers. Making iced teas from scratch, you’ll skip all the additives, colorants, excess sugar, and other bad stuff, and you can focus on using the real ingredients like lemon balm, hibiscus, mint, lime juice, and honey.
Try These Iced Tea Recipes
Grow and Use Your Herbs
If you have already started your tea garden and are shaping it, remember to water your herbs often to see the growth. Use the herbs fresh for both hot teas and iced teas as much as you can.
Later in the summer, I will be sharing some tips on harvesting and drying the herbs. Subscribe to Natural Lifestyle Letters to receive it directly to your inbox!
Dive Deep into Foraging
When nature is blooming, it is more than easy to forage plants that are growing happily and freely in the forest without any effort to actually grow them for harvest.
Grab a basket with scissors and gloves if you need and head for a walk to find some fireweeds that grow throughout the summer.
Young stems of fireweed can be used like asparagus. Toss them in a pan and fry with butter, and grate some Parmigiano cheese on top.
Flowers of fireweed can be sprinkled on salads or frozen into decorative ice cubes for iced teas.
Leaves of fireweed can be used to make some fermented fireweed tea called Ivan Chai. I have been testing the oxidation process for Ivan Chai for a while and will be sharing the recipe for it later with you.
Use Pedals Instead of Petrol
Travel sustainably this summer and choose a bike over a car whenever you can. If you have a small child, explore nearby with bikes and a child bike trailer attached to your bike!
It is a simple way to move around to the forest or fish at a lake, and the child can even nap on the road.
Slow Living in the Garden
Use thrifted pots and repurpose wooden wine crates into a planter to maximise the growth of your kitchen garden. Grow potatoes in a bucket, use the cooled water from preparing nettles for stinging nettle pancakes to water tomatoes and bell peppers.
Sip your morning tea next to your plants and let yourself enjoy the work you have made, and get energy from the growth around you.
Use the moment of watering the plants in the evening as a wind-down ritual to calm yourself down mentally.
Celebrate Summer in Bloom
Enjoy the growth season and the abundance of flowers. Gather wild flower bouquets, make juice from the lilac flowers, honey from dandelions, or create some simple flower wreaths.
For the summer solstice, make some Midsummer charms by gathering seven different flowers under the pillow to predict your future husband, as we Nordics do.
True story.
I have done that and other fun Nordic Midsummer traditions several times!
