March — May
Spring
The season of rising and renewal.
Spring is not gentle — it is a force. The ground breaks open, the sap rises, the birds return before the warmth does. The body sheds winter's heaviness and wants to move, to taste bitterness again, to stand outside in inadequate clothing and feel something.
This season
- Seasonal skincare
- Curated drinks
- Books and films
- Morning ritual
- Slavic holidays
The Products
Spring formulations.
The spring formulations are being prepared. Browse the full collection.
Morning Ritual
How to begin the spring day.
Open the window before rising — let the air enter the room for five minutes while you remain horizontal, noticing the smell. Drink a large glass of cold water or fresh birch sap before anything else. Practice ten sun salutations facing east: not perfectly, not performatively, but with commitment. Apply the serum using upward, lifting strokes only — in spring, every gesture moves upward. Eat something bitter for breakfast: rocket, radish, early nettles. The liver asks for it.
To Drink
Spring in a cup.
Birch Sap
Harvested directly from the tree in early March before the leaves unfurl. Drink fresh and cold — it tastes of nothing and everything, like the forest filtered. Ferment it for kvas if you have more than you can drink.
Violet Infusion
Fresh or dried violets steeped in warm (not boiling) water with a spoon of wildflower honey. The liquid turns the color of bruised sky.
Green Tea with Lemon Balm
Loose-leaf green tea, a small handful of fresh lemon balm leaves, and a wheel of lemon. Steep for exactly three minutes. Drink outside if the weather allows.
For the Soul
Books.
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation on plants, reciprocity, and what we owe the earth.
The Overstory
Richard Powers
Nine strangers and the trees that changed them. A novel that takes root.
Spring
Ali Smith
The third in the Seasonal Quartet — urgent, strange, and somehow hopeful.
To Watch
Films.
The Tree of Life
Terrence Malick, 2011
Creation, childhood, and the question of how to live. Made to be felt.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Benh Zeitlin, 2012
Childhood as cosmology. Hushpuppy and the aurochs, forever.
My Neighbor Totoro
Hayao Miyazaki, 1988
The most accurate depiction of being alive in spring ever committed to film.
Slavic Calendar
Ancient celebrations.
The Slavic seasonal calendar is one of the oldest systems for marking the year. These holidays have been practiced in various forms for over a thousand years.
Late February or early March (seven weeks before Easter)
Maslenitsa
Масленица
The week-long farewell to winter and welcome to spring. Each day has a traditional meaning — visiting in-laws, reconciling with enemies, burning winter to ash. The central symbol is Maslenitsa herself, a straw effigy burned on Sunday.
How to celebrate
- —Make blini — thin buckwheat or wheat pancakes — every day of the week, with different toppings: butter and honey, sour cream, preserved berries, smoked fish
- —On Sunday, build or find a bonfire. Write one thing you are done with on paper and burn it before the main fire
- —Reconcile with someone you have been avoiding — Maslenitsa Sunday is traditionally a day of forgiveness
- —Eat until you cannot eat more. The week before Lent is meant to be excessive — this is not guilt, it is seasonal biology
One week before Easter
Willow Sunday
Вербное Воскресенье
The Slavic spring blessing of willow branches — the first tree to show life after winter. Willow is a threshold plant, alive before the cold is fully gone.
How to celebrate
- —Gather fresh willow branches with new catkins and bring them indoors — place them in a vase of water and watch them root
- —Gently strike family members and friends with the willow branch while saying the traditional blessing: "Be not sick, be not old, not dead — but healthy and wealthy"
- —Visit a river or stream and place a small willow cutting in the moving water as an offering to the spring
- —Plant something — seeds, a bulb, anything — to mark the season's permission to begin again
Other Seasons