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this summer has been invaluable. i have grown, i have stretched. i have cried, i have learned. leaving columbia felt like a fist to my stomach & it sometimes feels like that still. throughout all of those unwanted changes, i have grown a whole heck of a lot. i am proud of that.

columbia was very comfortable. i had a group of women whom i loved dearly. we had a church. we worked at an artisan bakery & coffee shop. we played in our garden & biked everywhere. i was learning in a classroom, earning my degree.

i’ve written a lot about the process of moving from comfortable columbia to the south. biking is non-existent so we were forced to buy a second vehicle. a lot of people in this town are much older, making it difficult to form friendships. we are still looking for a church & sometimes my job is pretty awful.

but throughout all of that, we are finding that we can still thrive. i work part-time (a decision luke & i made together), which allows for me to devote many hours to self-learning & experimenting. we are adding chickens to our backyard soon & harvesting most of the food we eat from the farm where luke works & the garden in our own backyard. we plan to attend a bee-keeping club next month & learn to work a hive come next season. i am adding full jars of pickles, preserves & tomatoes to our pantry daily & have the time to read books & articles of my own choosing.

i recently picked-up radical homemakers & was challenged & inspired in more ways that i can express here. although i do not subscribe to her ideology fully, i believe she has stuff worth saying. time at home can feel so routine sometimes. those dishes are never-ending & the garden never seems to look perfect. it can also feel lonely. i miss luke when he is gone & those friendships in columbia can start to feel impossibly far away.

there is something radical (& i believe that’s what shannon hayes is cluing us readers in on) in removing ourselves from the consumer lifestyle, building up community wherever we are, cultivating the home, & growing to find worth in the day-to-day.

once i figured this out, i sort of felt radical myself. this morning i found satisfaction in making honey peach preserves to be given as gifts & savored during the winter months. i watered the garden this morning & was over-joyed with the ripe tomatoes on the vine. fresh whole wheat banana bread is cooling in the kitchen & home-made butter is ready for eating.

there is just something absolutely beautiful about having time to live in the moment, use what you’re given & spend time with the ones you cherish most.

we enjoyed every minute of the swimming hole. our swimming hole. hiking the creek bed, jumping into the cool water, finding bugs, catching small fish with our hands, basking in the sun, eating hummus sandwiches on the rocks.

my favorite place to be during the summer.

what’s yours?

happy monday! we celebrated luke’s birthday with family this weekend. a trip to the farmer’s market, the library, & an independent book shop {he chose this great book}. delicious late lunch, birthday cake & homemade ice cream to top it all off. oh yes, we also cannot forget the birthday run afterward.

can you feel summer beginning to fade? we woke up this morning to a darker haze & dew on the ground. we plan to savor every moment of the sweet summer days. i just love it all so much.