Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Nature

Celebrate Summer

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Thursday, June 20 is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will bathe the Arctic Circle in 24 hours of daylight, and ancient monuments around the world will align with the sun.

Seasonal celebrations can be easy and fun. Here are a few simple ideas for welcoming summer this year:

Celebrate

  • Place a bouquet of roses, lilies, or daisies in your family members’ bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake to fresh summer flowers.
  • Find a special place outside to watch the sunrise and sunset. You can find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here.
  • Eat breakfast outside.
  • Trace each other’s shadows throughout the day to note the sun’s long trip across the sky.
  • Display summer decorations: seashells, flowers, sand dollars, or whatever symbolizes summer in your family.
  • Play outside games, watercolor, or decorate the sidewalks with chalk until the sun sets.

Explore, Plant, or Gather

  • Gather Saint John’s Wort. Traditionally Europeans harvested these cheerful yellow flowers on the first day of summer, dried them, and made them into a tea on the first day of winter. The tea supposedly brought the summer sunniness into the dark winter days. If you don’t have any Saint John’s Wort in your garden, you might consider planting it. It is  a useful herb, and it thrives in poor soil with little attention. Find out more about it here.
  • Visit a U-pick farm to harvest strawberries, snap peas, or whatever is in season where you live. Find a “pick your own” farm near you here.
  • Take a camping trip. Light a fire at night to celebrate the warmth of the sun. Sleep outside. Wake with the sun.
  • Go on a nature hike. Bring along guidebooks to help you identify birds, butterflies, mushrooms, or wildflowers.

Eat

  • Make a summer feast. Eat exclusively from your garden or the farmer’s market to celebrate the bounties of summer in your area.
  • Host a “locavore” potluck.

Read

  • Read aloud from The Summer Solstice by Ellen Jackson.
  • Read aloud, watch, or put on your own rendition of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. For kids, check out the book A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids by Lois Burdett or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids: 3 melodramatic plays for 3 group sizes by Brendan P. Kelso.

Wishing you a happy first day of summer!

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Need more inspiration for your summer celebration? Check out these resources:

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Redefining Wealth

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“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau

“In the new good life, the point is not to have the most toys, but the most joys.” – John Robbins

I was thumbing through a gourmet cookbook the other day, and the author recommended visiting farm stores to procure the most flavorful, just-picked ingredients.

I glanced out at my garden and felt wealthy.

Here we are harvesting fresh herbs, greens, and eggs every day just a few feet from our back door. The early spring sunshine probably deserves more credit than I do for all of this abundance. But I’ve invested plenty of sweat and love into that soil over the years, and I built something that feels very much like wealth.

When I hear the word wealth, I usually think of stock portfolios, IRAs, and 401Ks – the green stuff.

But when I think about what makes me feel wealthy, my mind jumps to other green stuff: my garden, city parks, wide open spaces, and the neighborhood fig tree that gives and gives and gives.

I also think of my close, connected neighborhood; my friends; and walking and riding my bike every day. I think of my kids and our unhurried mornings reading books, watching snails, and counting spiders’ legs.

Wealth is usually defined as an “abundance of items of economic value or material possessions.” But I wonder if it’s time for us to redefine wealth, at least in our own lives.

I’m not knocking savings accounts, retirement plans, or consumer goods. These things are important; they’re just not the whole story.

When we reflect on what makes us feel wealthy, we expand beyond our culture’s emphasis on property, assets, and commodities. We might think about good health, breathing clean air, living in a safe neighborhood, and having access to fresh produce. We might think about having more time.

And by redefining wealth for ourselves, we can ensure that we’re building the kind of lives and communities that make us feel wealthy. They might look a lot different than the ones we see on advertisements and on TV.

[clickToTweet tweet=”We can build lives and communities that make us feel wealthy. #gardens #greenspace” quote=”We can build lives and communities that make us feel wealthy.” theme=”style1″]

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What makes you feel wealthy? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section.

The Wisdom of Winter

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Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do — or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. – Stanley Crawford

Oh February. I always find this month a little challenging. Short days. Rain. Fog.

Moreover, this February, a host of coughs, sniffles, sneezes, and most recently fevers have descended on us.

Around now it’s tempting to long for May, for the first strawberries and garden-fresh greens. For throwing the windows open in the afternoons and planting the garden and walking barefoot in the grass.

But the other day, when I emerged from our fevered nest, I was greeted by a handful of yellow crocuses dotting our neighbor’s yard. And I felt a wistfulness, not for spring or summer, but for the quiet, reflective days of this season, which is so quickly departing.

These days, we seem to think we can outsmart winter. We can arm ourselves with our electric lights and flu shots and vitamin drinks and continue to go, go, go.

I’m no different. I had all sorts of plans for February. A big project. Outings. Busy, packed days.

But so often winter demands a certain amount of stillness from us.

This month has brought me lots of quiet afternoons tending to sick family members, watching movies, knitting, and reading.

As crummy as it feels to be sick or to see those you love sick, I see wisdom in all of this. Slow down, winter tells us. Be still.

In the Mountain Rose Herbs blog this week, acupuncturist Dylan Stein advises, “Let’s take these last few weeks of winter as an opportunity to rest, to meditate quietly and to prepare our bodies for the bursting energy of spring.”

He recommends ingesting nourishing foods like beans, root vegetables, seaweeds, dark leafy greens, and walnuts, and gentle warming spices like cinnamon and ginger.

Likely, that’s where you’ll find me this week: resting, sipping on spice tea, and reflecting on the wisdom of these seasonal cycles of stillness and vigor.

My favorite spice tea:

1.5 quarts of water

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Combine and boil for 10 to 20 minutes. Strain.

Add honey to taste, if you wish.

Enjoy!

What’s your favorite winter food or drink? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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5 Ways to Rev Up Your Creativity

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“I’m going to make something every day this year,” I announced in December.

When I saw my friends’ responses, I thought perhaps this might be too ambitious an undertaking. However, I’ve really just decided to turn more of my attention to creativity this year.

Why? Well, when I peek back through the years and squint at the more unhappy periods of my life, I detect a common thread: I wasn’t creating much of anything. Maybe I was working overtime at a day job. Maybe I was in a season of editing instead of writing. Maybe I was just uninspired. But a dearth of creativity and a general malaise seem to go together. Which causes which? I’m not sure. But I know that when I’m working on a creative project, I feel more alive.

I know I’m not alone. Matthew Crawford, author of The Case for Working With Your Hands traded his job in a Washington think tank for a career fixing motorcycles, because “knowledge work” made him feel tired and useless. “Seeing a motorcycle about to leave my shop under its own power, several days after arriving in the back of a pickup truck, I don’t feel tired even though I’ve been standing on a concrete floor all day,” Crawford writes. I think we can all relate to that thrill of making or fixing something with our own hands.

In her book Lifting Depression, Dr. Kelly Lambert explains what might cause the burst of happiness creating gives us: “When we knit a sweater, prepare a meal, or simply repair a lamp, we’re actually bathing our brain in ‘feel-good’ chemicals.”

So this year I’m making things.

I’m off to a great start. In the last month, I’ve knitted half of a scarf out of bamboo silk, made kombucha and St. John’s Wort oil for the first time, wrote a handful of poems, brainstormed a new novel, and churned out quite a few drawings. Mostly I’ve had a lot of fun. But I’ve also remembered what makes creativity hard: there’s often a lot of groping around, stumbling, and failing involved.

But I’m going to do it anyway.

5 Ways to Rev Up Your Creativity

Perhaps you’d like to join me in paying more attention to creativity this year? If so, here are five things experts say can help stoke our creative fires:

  • Spend time in nature

A University of Kansas study of a team of hikers found that a four-day backpacking trip boosted the participants’ creativity by 50 percent. You might need to leave your electronic devices in your backpack to reap the benefits. Ruth Ann Atchley, the researcher who conducted the study, suggested the results may have been due to turning off the distractions of modern life as much as the natural setting.

  • Embrace boredom

Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire in Great Britain found that boring jobs encourage creativity. It turns out performing dull tasks lets us to detach from our surroundings and daydream. So committing to creativity might mean committing to some mental downtime.

  • Focus on the process instead of the results (or just dance)

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free,” the poet Rumi wrote. In an interview, artist Dana Lynne Andersen said that one of the biggest mistakes beginners make when sitting down to paint is focusing on the end product. To get her students focused instead on the process of being creative, she encourages them to dance. That makes sense, since dancing is a creative process with no real end product. It may be worth a try, and as Rumi points out, there’s really no reason not to dance.

  •   Learn from kids

One afternoon I watched a soccer coach force a group of elementary-aged kids to run laps around the track. They looked like deflated balloons as they trudged along, and it occurred to me that kids should really be coaching us on joyful, exuberant outdoor play. Similarly, young kids are experts in creativity. In a famous 1968 study, George Land found that 98 percent of three- to five-year-olds showed genius levels of creativity on a test developed by NASA. By the time the kids were 15, only 12 percent exhibited divergent thinking. And when the test was given to thousands of 25-year-olds, only two percent showed divergent thinking. So what makes kids such creative geniuses? They ask lots of questions. They marvel at things. They find any excuse to play. It’s a model worth studying.

  • Commit to practicing

All humans are creative. But a lot of us don’t commit to creative work, and perhaps the biggest reason  is that it forces us to confront our own mediocrity. We likely will never compare to the best artists, musicians, novelists, designers, and even home-brewers of the world. Of course, the one way we’ll get better is practice, and Ira Glass offers some wise words about recognizing your creative work sucks and doing it anyway:

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. … You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

Here’s to creativity!

If you liked this post, check out more of my popular posts about creativity:

What are you creating? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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Celebrate the First Day of Winter

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“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” ― John Steinbeck

It’s hard to find words after the tragic shooting in Connecticut last Friday. I am grieving with the families and the community there. As we, as a nation, reflect on darkness, this Friday in the Northern Hemisphere, we will observe the winter solstice — the darkest day of the year. We also welcome back the light and try to remember that brighter days will surely follow this season of darkness.

The frenzy of the holidays may seem like the wrong time to add yet another tradition to your to-do list. The key is making seasonal celebrations simple and relaxing. They can be the perfect opportunity to pause, appreciate nature’s cyclical changes, the lessons each season imparts, and to celebrate the natural beauty all around us.

Here are a few easy ideas for saying farewell to fall and hello to winter on Friday:

Observe

Watch the sun rise and set. Take a walk, hike, or ski trip and notice all of the things you appreciate about winter. For me, it’s the branches outlined against the sky and the thrushes, sparrows, seagulls, starlings, blue birds, and wrens that make this part of the world their home during the winter.

Read

What better time of the year to curl up and share books? A few of my family’s favorite winter-themed picture books are:

  • The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
  • Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
  • Stella, Queen of the Snow by Mary-Louise Gay
  • The Big Snow by Berta Hader
  • A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann
  • Snow by Cynthia Rylant
  • Winter is the Warmest Season by Lauren Stringer

It’s also fun to read aloud from The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson. And if you’re in the mood for adult reads, check out this list of Good Books to Read in the Winter or the Independent’s 50 Best Winter Reads.

Eat

Make a seasonal feast, with foods like beets, winter squash, potatoes, onions, kale, cabbage, or parsnips. Prepare your favorite winter dessert or hot beverages. And don’t forget to light candles while you eat, a sure hit for kids and adults alike.

Reflect

When the sun sets, let your house dance with candlelight. Then after dinner, blow the candles out and sit together quietly in the darkness for a few minutes. Reflect on darkness and on how long and cold winter must have felt before we had electric lights and heat.

Other things you can reflect on together:

  • One thing you’ve lost this year and one thing you’ve gained.
  • One thing you want to say goodbye to in the new year and one thing you’d like to welcome back into your life.
  • Some of your best and worst holiday memories.

Wish

Bring an evergreen bough inside and make it into a wishing tree. Secure the bough in a bucket with rocks. Cut leaves out of construction paper. Have each person write down a wish for the coming year on each leaf. Hang the leaves on the tree using a hole punch and yarn or ribbon.

Hoping you have a happy first day of winter.

Do you have your own winter solstice traditions? I’d love to hear about them.

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17 Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Summer

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Tuesday, June 21 is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will bathe the Arctic Circle in 24 hours of daylight, and ancient monuments around the world will align with the sun. Historically Europeans celebrated the summer solstice by gathering plants and holding bonfires and festivals. Native American plains tribes held sun dances.

The first day of summer is a great time to start new family traditions. Seasonal celebrations are a fun way to connect with nature and they can be as easy or elaborate as you want them to be. Here are a few ideas:

1.  Take a trip to the library a few days before your celebration and pick out books about summer. Some of my family’s favorite summer picture books include:

  • Before the Storm by Jan Yolen
  • Summertime Waltz by Nina Payne
  • Canoe Days by Gary Paulsen
  • Sun Dance Water Dance by Jonathan London
  • Summer is Summer by Phillis and David Gershator
  • Under Alaska’s Midnight Sun by Deb Venasse.

For adult reading, check out these lists of 2011 summer must-reads compiled by NPR, Newsweek, and Oprah.

2.  Place a bouquet of roses, lilies, or daisies in your family members’ bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake to fresh summer flowers.

3.  Find a special place outside to watch the sunrise and sunset. You can find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here.

4.  Eat breakfast outside.

5.  Trace each other’s shadows throughout the day to note the sun’s long trip across the sky.

6.  Take a camping trip. Light a fire at night to celebrate the warmth of the sun. Sleep outside. Wake with the sun.

7.  Go on a nature hike. Bring along guidebooks to help you identify birds, butterflies, mushrooms, or wildflowers.

8.  Make flower chains or a summer solstice wreath.

9.  Display summer decorations: seashells, flowers, sand dollars, or whatever symbolizes summer in your family.

10.  Gather or plant Saint John’s Wort. Traditionally Europeans harvested the plant’s cheerful yellow flowers on the first day of summer, dried them, and made them into a tea on the first day of winter. The tea supposedly brought the summer sunniness into the dark winter days. If you don’t have any Saint John’s Wort in your garden, consider planting it. It is  an incredibly useful herb, and it thrives in poor soil with little attention. Find out more about it here.

11.  Visit a U-pick farm to harvest strawberries, snap peas, or whatever is in season where you live. Find a “pick your own” farm near you here.

12.  Make a summer feast. Eat exclusively from your garden or the farmer’s market to celebrate the bounties of summer in your area.

13.  Host a “locavore” potluck.

14.  Turn off all the indoor lights, light candles, and eat dinner outside.

15.  Play outside games, watercolor, or decorate the sidewalks with chalk until the sun sets.

16.  Read aloud from The Summer Solstice by Ellen Jackson.

17.  Read aloud, watch, or put on your own rendition of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. For kids, check out the book A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids by Lois Burdett or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids: 3 melodramatic plays for 3 group sizes by Brendan P. Kelso.

Need more inspiration? Check out these resources: