What I Did This Summer (Blossom to Blossom)

Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream. — Jennifer Grotz

Early Summer Slideshow (beginning Memorial Day Weekend):

Middle Summer Slideshow

Halfway through a Quilt-Along for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Late Summer Slideshow

This summer I also learned how to cook mushrooms. Finally. Place washed and chopped mushrooms in a dry pan over medium heat. Toss until they are looking cooked in some places (3-4 minutes). Sprinkle over some good quality salt (kosher, or that jar you picked up from France) — about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon? Keep tossing. When they look cooked, add 1 pat of butter. Toss some more, then remove from heat. If you add some thinly sliced and cooked marinated bulgogi meat to the ramen (shown in one of the slideshows) — along with some of these mushrooms — it’s a perfect summer meal.

I also sewed two skirts and this Dukke blouse. I loved the blouse and have already ordered some more fabric to sew another.

And now with Labor Day — the end of summer — a crowning bouquet from my husband.

From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE (1986)

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward   
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.