sunlight diaries
summer reads, summer movies, summer love
Hello! I follow a number of substacks now and often forget why I follow people here until I’m halfway through their note. So just to recap…this is a substack primarily about homeschooling. We use of a mix of curriculum, Classical Conversations, and relaxation. Our family of seven lives in Vermont in the United States.
I absolutely adore summer as a mom. I love the small pivots our day can make, switch directions on the road and go to get ice cream, or visit the farmers market, or swim? Stop for french fries. Walk down the road and end up caught in a rainstorm. Compete with the birds for garden raspberries. Watch your kids fall in love with biking and say to you, “I just loove biking.” Saying yes to sleepovers and playdates and a quick show before bed and brushing our teeth together before turning on lamps for books under a cool blanket at night. Vacuuming up grass because it’s all over the floor from bare feet. Occasionally getting sparkling clean from a bath.
I know I’ve said this here before—summer is when homeschoolers and the rest of the world sync up. Single-focused, passion-based arts camp? Yes please. Sleeping in and meandering afternoon at the library? Check. New hobby becomes full fledged pastime? Sounds great. I’m unwilling to talk a kid into going to school every morning, but I am willing to persuade them to join a camp I think they’ll love, even if it sounds scary. I’m willing to sign them up for two weeks of away camp if they ask to do that. I’m willing to drive every morning to a drop off twenty minutes away for three weeks straight if it ends in a full scale musical production at the end.
Recognizing this always makes me muse on parenting decisions in general. The things we think are “worth it,” so we’ll push our children to do them. The things we don’t think matter so we let them fall away. Priorities made as a parenting couple and alone, alongside a hearty dose of reflecting on your own childhood—and how they end up affecting…everything?
I just cut up the last cloves from last year’s garlic which means we went a full year without buying any garlic, a full year of grabbing a new head of garlic out of the paper bag stashed under the sink when I needed one, a full year of using our own. Pretty cool feeling; I recommend it! (You plant garlic in the fall so if you want to order cloves to plant, there is still plenty of time. )
When done well, instagram is still the best medium for meandering posts about enjoying life; please click through and read this wonderful post from Chatterbox press.
Watching 📺
Recent family movie night wins from the movie jar:
The Croods 1 & 2: Bizarrely fun, even I was laughing out loud. It follows a caveman family through various survival adventures. There is an emphasis on family and collaboration, and it’s very sweet.
The Martian: we hadn’t watched this for a few years and we wanted to watch it again. The 7yr old was the only skeptic and even she loved it by the first quarter.
After dinner dishes last night we tried the new Little House on the Prairie (Netflix) and I’m not sure what to think! Have you tried it yet? It was fun to watch it with the kids who remember the books better than I do at this point. I was a torn over the fact that the younger kids in our family haven’t read the books yet and here we were, watching a movie edition. In Episode One I appreciated the nod to Pa’s willful optimism in the face of some poor strategic choices (“just wait!” readers of The Long Winter will moan), as well as the clarity in the storyline around the fact that settlers were openly taking Native American land.
I think we’ll try a few more episodes, not so much in pursuit of a movie edition of the book, more because it’s fun to enjoy a family series set in that time period. Of course it is the case that anything seen on a screen will never match the written version, and here I think of the sugar cookies I longed for as a kid…
They unwrapped them, and each found a little heart-shaped cake. Over their delicate brown tops was sprinkled white sugar. The sparkling grains lay like tiny drifts of snow.
The cakes were too pretty to eat. Mary and Laura just looked at them. But at last Laura turned hers over, and she nibbled a tiny nibble from underneath, where it wouldn’t show. And the inside of that little cake was white!
It had been made of pure white flour, and sweetened with white sugar.
Joe and a few of the older kids are looking forward to seeing The Odyssey on the IMAX one of these weekends. I was taken aback to learn that apparently most IMAX showings are sold out nationwide!? We’ll see if they get a seat. As for me, all the discussion around the movie has me pulling out my beloved copy of Circe for a summer re-read.
Ok now, watch this sweet six minute film by Stella Blackman set in the Ozarks, in August. Turning 13. The glory of girls doing their hair, a drive in the back of a pickup, a family swim.
Reading
Emily St. John Mandel has a new book coming out this fall, so of course I’m re-reading one of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels of all time: Station Eleven. I love how she weaves thoughtful observations of modern life into a world bereft of ease or convenience, where the slightest kindness stands out like a daisy in a green field. I love how she cherishes the present, but reminds us how fragile it is.
The two teens have discovered the twilight series. I never directly brought it to their attention, thinking it would show up at some point, and it looks like it will be the series of their summer. So fun to have a new series to love together.
Cooking 🍳
At some point I will write at length about my recent tumble into cavernous world of grinding my own flour. The quick story is that we bought a flour grinder and now I have two 25lbs bags of wheat berries on top of my fridge that I am making my way through, one experiment at a time. Calling something an experiment forces me to be kind about the results, and not mind too much when the focaccia didn’t come out anything like what I (or the kids) were expecting. Regardless of the results, I’m absolutely loving working with wheat berries because they have this essence of life to them that all purpose flour does not have. You know how when you’re making a salad or working with a particular vegetable you get this feeling of—I should do this more often, I love this? Like the vegetable is reciprocating your energy? It’s not thanking you, exactly, but it feels like it’s happy to be eaten? I feel that way when grinding and baking with the wheat berries.
Also making: tons of raspberry yogurt popsicles (recipe). The kids eat 12 of these every other day, so the quick prep of making them is on a regular cycle for us.
And a poem for you—
Be sure to use AI when making
your next, I don’t know, meal plan,
for example. Definitely do not call
your friend who loves to cook and ask her
for her favorite recipes or tips or ways
to save time making meals,
because you will end
up talking for longer than you had hoped,
hearing, perhaps, about her father’s cancer
diagnosis or how lonely she’s been or even
what she’s planted in her spring
garden and then lost with the early frost.
And be sure to use AI when planning that next
camping trip, the last one you will take
with this particular child. Definitely do
not text your friend who has fly-fished every
river in Pennsylvania and biked every
backwoods trail, because you might end
up texting back and forth for the rest of the day
or even meeting up late for a beer and hearing
how he has ended each recent night black-out
drunk, or perhaps you’ll hear how his
cousin is an idiot on Facebook or maybe just
that he repaired his own washing machine
and is pretty damn proud of that.
… Read the rest at Shawn Smucker’s substack. I’m curious about the uses of AI but I also loved this poem musing on the things not to use it for. A both-and situation, you know?
with affection,
Rachael
Hi Rachael, thank you for this post! I have also started grinding my own flour recently and I love it so much. My husband had been gluten free for nearly three years due to chronic inflammation however he can eat the freshly-milled flour, which is wonderful! I’m in Australia and I haven’t heard the term “wheat berries” before - I was going to Google it but the poem you shared inspired me; could you explain?
Thanks so much!
Jess