Still Blooming (Even the Weeds)

Last night I sat on the porch until it got too dark to see my own hands, just to listen. The frogs started first, then the crickets joined in underneath them, and somewhere in there I realized I hadn't checked the time in almost an hour. That hasn't happened in months.

Today is the solstice. Summer is officially, technically here, and so, finally, am I.

I said it out loud to myself yesterday morning, twice, just to believe it: I'm on summer break. There's no school rhythm for me to follow, no bell that rings to let me know the year is over, but my body keeps the calendar anyway, and right now it's telling me to slow all the way down. So I'm doing it. Badly, at first. I kept reaching for my phone to find something to be productive about... but I'm getting better at just sitting there. Barefoot. Doing nothing useful. Letting the evening be the whole point instead of a thing I'm trying to get through.

It feels like a good week to talk about dandelions.

I hand-painted one a few months ago on a jumbo card. The kind I don't make very often, because they take me a whole afternoon and most of my heart to finish. It sold almost right away, and I love picturing it on someone's wall right now: a weed, framed and hung up like it mattered. (It did. It does. I still have a few other floral jumbo originals if one of them is calling to you. They're all one of a kind, the same way that one was.)

Here's the thing about dandelions. Nobody plants them on purpose. They show up in sidewalk cracks, in the gravel by the mailbox, in the one patch of lawn you've given up trying to control. They get called a weed because they're persistent, because they don't ask permission, because they're everywhere whether you wanted them or not. But they're also one of the first things to turn that bright, stubborn yellow when summer's really on its way. Before anything else has caught up, the dandelions are already there, blooming like nobody told them they weren't supposed to.

I think about that a lot, actually. About how being unplanted and a little wild isn't the same as being unwanted. About how something can be common and still be the first sign of something good.

I loved this dandelion enough to keep going with it. There's a sticker now, and a "Still Blooming" enamel pin, the gold arched one with the little dandelion bouquet pressed into it. If you want to hold one in your hands, it's here. And then last night, instead of resting like I was supposed to (old habits), I started sketching out a new summery pattern using this same flower. It's not finished. I'm sharing it anyway, because I'm trying to let myself share things before they're perfect this season, and this felt like a good place to practice that.

A line I found a while back and never let go of: "The dandelion doesn't ask if it's wanted before it grows." I don't know who said it first, but I think about it every time I see one. And there's a piece of Anaïs Nin I come back to every June, like clockwork: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

So here's what I'm letting myself believe this week, and what I hope you'll let yourself believe too. You're allowed to call this summer rest, not a to-do list with better weather. You're allowed to be a little wild and unplanted, like a dandelion that showed up somewhere nobody asked it to. And you're allowed to do nothing useful on a porch tonight and call the whole evening enough, because it is.

If you've got a minute today, I'd sit with this: What would it look like to let yourself be a dandelion this summer? Unplanned and a little wild. Still blooming anyway, just because it's your nature to.

Keep blooming,

Julie @ glad you're here co.