When strawberries rise 🍓
✨️A mother's day poem ✨️
“When the Strawberries Rise”
Mother may I
Paint the stars
Mother may I heal my scars?
Give me the Flower Moon,
May I.
Mother may I eat the Moon?
Your strawberries rise.
Come June.
Mother may I hold your hand,
Watch you work and restore the land.
When the Strawberries Rise
A Mother’s Day reflection, a Flower Moon, and the inspiration behind May’s watercolor class
There is something about May that feels unfinished in the most beautiful way.
The earth softens. Branches begin whispering green. The air smells like rain and possibility. Nothing has fully bloomed yet, but everything is reaching.
This month’s watercolor class was born from that feeling.
I found myself thinking about the names given to moons across cultures and seasons. The Flower Moon. The Strawberry Moon waiting just beyond it. Moons named for planting, shedding, melting snow, new shoots, milk, eggs, ripening fruit. Names rooted in observation and relationship. Names that remember the land is alive.
While sketching moons and flowers one evening, a poem arrived quietly:
> Mother may I
Paint the stars
Mother may I heal my scars?
Give me the Flower Moon,
May I.
Mother may I eat the Moon?
Your strawberries rise, come June.
Mother may I hold your hand,
Watch you work and restore the land.
The poem became the doorway into this class.
“When the Strawberries Rise” is not really about painting a perfect moon. It is about tenderness. Permission. Growth. The quiet healing that happens while making something with our hands.
For this class, we’ll be working with dreamy watercolor washes in indigo, lavender, and strawberry pinks, building layered moons filled with stars, flowers, stems, symbols, and personal meanings. Some paintings may become botanical moons. Some may feel abstract and emotional. Some may simply become a moment of stillness on paper.
I think that is part of why watercolor feels so connected to motherhood for me.
It asks for guidance without control. Attention without force. You learn to collaborate with water instead of mastering it.
To those celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend:
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, chosen mothers, artists, caretakers, gardeners, protectors, and gentle encouragers. To those nurturing children, communities, ideas, healing, and beauty. To those grieving mothers. Missing mothers. Becoming mothers in unexpected ways.
And to the earth itself, endlessly restoring what we forget how to hold.
May your May be soft.
May your strawberries rise. 🍓🌙
Maja
Photos & collage art by Maja Manitoba
