A Slow Start to Summer.
Weekend Reads v. 12.7.2025
You know those dreams where you want to run and yet no matter how hard you try your legs just won’t carry you? Maybe you’re being chased or maybe there is an on-coming car, and you are stumbling through the streets willing your legs to just go. This is how I have entered this summer.
Everything feels a bit off. The basil, tomato plants, and cucumber vine are all thriving, but unexpected travel means that fresh taste of summer is wilting under the summer sun. I’ve worn flip flops maybe once. And I’ve eaten outside exactly zero times. I’m not usually a person who makes a list of things to enjoy during a season, but if I don’t take some drastic action, it’ll be 2026 before I enjoy my usual hallmarks of summer!
A recent post from Joy the Baker got me thinking: What are my summer essentials? What can I do to ensure I enjoy this season?
For starters, meals eaten outside atop my beloved Amanda Lindroth tablecloths. Enjoying an ice-cold glass of this surprisingly good non-alcoholic sparking rosé on my deck is a summer treat for me. Ice cream sandwiches. Peaches. Enduring 5 full minutes of the intense heat of a car parked in the sun. Trips to the neighborhood pool with a homemade grapefruit crush smuggled in a thermos. BLT sandwiches on repeat. DIY jewelry. Blockbuster movies in the theater. Long car rides with the windows down. Paperback novels. Seeing friends who live far away. A trip back to South Carolina. Trying a new sunscreen.
What about you? Have you gotten into the rhythm of summer yet, or are you stumbling into this part of the calendar like me? What are your summer staples?
Somewhere out there, a publicist is doing an exceptionally good job. I have heard about this hotel and it’s tres cute shop from at least a half dozen sources.
I’m noticing a lot of people are trying to give their kids a “1990’s summer” void of screens and whatever toxic technology removes the ability for 2025 to have her own summer. This has me thinking about all sorts of gadgets we used to use and now no longer use, like embossed label makers. I sorta feel like bringing these back into my life. Random, I know! I was reminded of them when I read this fun Substack post from The Perfect:
“You run your fingers along the glossy lettering and are reminded of a more thoughtful time. There are few machines that have survived seven decades and remained better than ever, but DYMO’S EMBOSSED LABEL MAKER is as useful as it has ever been. Invented in 1958, this handheld gadget creates raised plastic tape labels that can be stuck on anything from adult camp trunks and tennis racquets to water bottles, coolers and clothing drawers. They’re great for monogramming your iPhone case, too (or anything else you lose with frequency). They’ll long outlast 2D printed labels, come in cool colors, are weather and waterproof and will lend anything you affix them to a good ole days vibe.” (Source)
Here's a good shop offering perfect coastal New England vibes.
Jacke O’s vacation uniform might give you inspiration for what to pack for your upcoming summer travel.
This thoughtful essay offers a call to lean into the hard things of life.
“As I've said before, the real astonishment of life isn't that things are hard, it’s that anything is good at all. Most of us have a ridiculous amount of blessings with which to be thankful, an embarrassment of riches, each of them a captivating blessing to make our journey of a virtuous life more palatably sweet. What gifts they are.
Let’s be a people that doesn't shy away from hard things. Let’s let hard things have their way with us so that we emerge from those hard seasons as people more aligned with our true selves: loved by God, called for greatness and not comfort, and commissioned to be lights to the world. Our world, broken and seemingly becoming ever more broken by the day, needs us to be whole and human so others remember that they, too, and called to be whole and human.” (Source)
I’m going to try and convince my sewing coach to make one of these flags with me.
Making the case for a “Frazzled English Woman” summer.
Now, go tick off an item on your summer bucket list!
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