Peach Season 2023
“Birdsong at dawn is a poet’s muse. It’s the momentary tickling of your senses at daybreak before the sun has even tipped her honey-like light through the sleepy bedroom window.”
-Jade Miles, Futuresteading: Live Like Tomorrow Matters
After watching a Hamimommy YouTube video last week, I was reminded of just how much I use our garden as a sign of the seasons progressing. While the calendar doesn't recognize summer as beginning until June 21, the songs of summer insects like cicadas and katydids in our yard beg to differ. Lightning bugs are lighting up the skies, and mosquitoes are annoyingly abundant.
Luckily, the sweltering heat we usually experience this time of year has held off a little longer than usual. The sunny days, however, have the ‘Pro Cut Plum’ sunflowers growing taller than our fence, reminding us that the days are becoming longer and the summer season has arrived. ‘Chocolate Cherry’ sunflowers, ‘Rubenza’ cosmos, ‘Gloriosa’ rudbeckia, ‘Queen Lime’ zinnias, ‘Queen Orange’ zinnias, and lavender-hued passionflower and hibiscus are filling the garden with colorful vibrancy and inviting butterflies to land on their elaborate petals.
Our magnolia tree is bursting with creamy white petaled cups filled with buzzing bees drawn in by their sweet aroma. Our native elderberry plant is blooming for the first time after we planted it two years ago. The garden feels lively at dawn and dusk and offers sleepy squirrels a place to lounge in the trees or take a cool drink in the mid-day heat. We even have a lizard who tucks herself into the mesh of our raised garden bed cover at night for protection.
Summer ushers in a slightly new rhythm, even if my daily rituals don’t change very much. The pace is slower, causing me to linger, wander, be curious, and want even more simplicity in my schedule. Just as I was contemplating the change in rhythm this season, I found an invitation to a “Rhythms Retreat” from Brooke McClary, author of Care and Slow Living for a Frantic World, waiting in my inbox. I welcomed the pause to consider what my summer rhythms might feel like this year so that I could focus on slow living and feeling in tune with the seasons.
When I begin harvesting fresh basil and cherry tomatoes from the garden, it signals the shift in seasons and a more leisurely approach to our meals as we tend to eat lighter meals in summer. Glasses of hibiscus or yaupon tea, iced chai, or coffee bookmark our summer afternoons. Juice from sticky peaches (like my favorite early variety, June Gold) drips down my fingers, and perfectly sweet and crisp fresh corn, okra, and zucchini appear on our plates as summer days slowly unwind. Hot summer days invite us to dip into rivers, streams, pools, and lakes to submerge ourselves fully into the season.
I hope you’re enjoying the beginning of summer and find inspiration and a little sunshine in your day after watching this season’s video.
The music featured in the video is Summer Feelings by Onda Norte on Epidemic Sound.
WEEKEND READING
I’m cozying up for a weekend full of reading. In case they spark a few ideas for your summer TBR list, I’m sharing the list of books I’m thinking about reading this weekend. What are you reading this summer? I’d love for you to share your favorite summer reads or what you’re looking forward to reading this summer in the comments below this post.
In honor of AANHPI month in May and Pride Month in June, I encourage you to check out the extensive collection of audiobooks by AANHPI authors and narrators and LGBTQIA+ authors and narrators on Libro.fm
Be sure to check out the Identity Collections page on Libro.fm for more titles to add to your audiobook wishlist!
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND
American Born Chinese on Disney (NPR article about this outstanding coming-of-age show)
Growing Floret - Season 2 - This season, Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers ponders what it means to leave a legacy
What’s my simple joy this week? A weekend filled with reading and self-care and shifting into a slower summer rhythm
Where will you be for the solar eclipse in 2024?
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52 Seasons Libro.fm Audiobook List
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Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate and supporter of education, nature, basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.
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