A Welcome Letter for August

9 things I want to stop and enjoy this month, and an invitation to share your own.

Welcome to Making Time. Each week, I share thoughts and ideas for making more time for yourself by building creative energy and establishing rituals and practices. This year, I’m also attempting The 2024 Slowdown, which you can do with me. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

We went for a walk the other evening after dinner. You have to wait for sunset, so that it’s cool enough to even consider the trek down to the creek and back up the hill.

The road is bordered by a huge piece of land, over 100 acres, that’s currently being logged. It’s awful to see all the trees go, hundreds of huge douglas firs that were there a week ago and now are just gone. But it’s also opened up a view across the valley. It smells of freshly cut wood and ripening blackberries and, once we get down to the creek, wet stone.

August is one of my favorite months. There’s something about that golden light of late summer that connects me back to every other summer of my life. It feels like time is looping back on itself, which in many ways is true.

Welcome to August

I’ve decided to kick off the month with a list of delightful things I’m looking forward to in August. My hope is that this will be a reminder to all of us to practice vorfreude – the anticipation of joy.

I’ve found that if I consciously think about these small things I’m looking forward to, I’m far less likely to take them for granted. My mind is primed to look for them, and remember to enjoy them in the moment.

In that spirit, I hope you’ll chime in as well with anything you’re looking forward to this month in the comments. Perhaps we can turn this into a monthly ritual – sharing the joys to come.

Here are 9 things I’m looking forward to enjoying this month:

Picking wild blackberries. They grow everywhere around here, and I pick them by the bucketful. I make blackberry ice cream, blackberry syrup, blackberry jam. This year, I’m thinking of trying a blackberry rosewater sorbet, or perhaps a blackberry shrub to add to seltzer.

Baking a cake for my sister’s birthday. We’re hosting, and nothing makes me happier than cooking and baking for people I love. The cake above is a blackberry-lemon cake (what else?) that I made last year.

Sunset walks. And sunset yoga. Just seeing the sunset each night, when I can.

Picnics by the pond. On weekend mornings, we’ll sometimes pack up some breakfast and Lucy and head over to the local fishing pond for a light hike. We spot fish and frogs and even a bald eagle.

Craft nights and fabric swaps. I sometimes meet up with a small local craft group, which is lovely and has motivated me to finally finish the crochet bag I’ve been working on (pictured above). Plus, this month we’re hosting a fabric swap for members at the studio.

Antique shopping with my mom, who will be coming to town for a couple weeks!

Dahlias blooming.

Tomatoes, finally. I wait all year just to eat a bagel with aged cheddar, a freshly sliced tomato, and salt and pepper.

Putting up some of this abundance for later. Making pickles, drying herbs, freezing berries, canning jam. Not being able to hang onto the bounty of late summer has admittedly stressed me out in the past. I’m trying to simply appreciate the abundance of it all and, like everything else in life, recognize that I can enjoy it without maximizing my effort.

What are you welcoming in August?

What is one thing you’re looking forward to enjoying this month? Share it here, and perhaps you will appreciate it all the more when it arrives.

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