Solstice Food
How we relate to what we love
Dear Kneaders,
I sent you a post meant for a different audience, namely the Design Science Studio. I do try and keep these posts and those DSS posts a little separate.
I’ll tell you it’s not because I don’t think you’ll get it, it’s that I try to make the Knead a special place where you feel good and safe, where we weave together on intimate notes like bread and spending time in the garden. Like a cozy moment, I like you to experience the Knead as a place where we nourish each other, me by writing, and you by reading. Sometimes we have coffee. We should have more coffee!
The Design Science Studio is a little more the big table picture in my life, and I love that, too. For those of you who like the big table, one where artists, engineers, and other visionary change-makers imagine a better future, you are invited to join us July 4th holiday at Mendocino Gateway in Hopland, California. It is a mini-festival for creative geeks and you are most welcome to join us! There will be dance parties July 3-5, 2026 but there will also be talks around doughnut economics, and other topics that sound well, bookish. Did I mention there are beautiful willow trees and a lake? Now, I did!
The portal to summer is open.
With that merging of two worlds clarified and maybe now merged, I want to say that it is summer solstice, or at least it was, just this weekend. And I want to say that you can still celebrate the experience if you haven’t already.
Firstly, this is a low-effort celebration model. You don’t have to wake up at sunrise to celebrate these long days. You don’t have to do anything to celebrate the cycles of life, except notice.
On noticing – Do you remember how back in winter it felt like it might not happen, like summer might never arrive? Do you remember how just this spring, June felt like years away? Notice that, how the seasons did finally pass.
Here is your chance to celebrate your persistence, and celebrate life.
Celebrate the sunshine and the plants that feed us and everything else we eat. They are also persistent.
Celebrate at the farmer’s market or in your garden. Celebrate at the small businesses in your towns and in places you visit. Celebrate their persistence by giving them business.
Embrace the days with as much excitement and tenderness as you can because summer is when we all feel a little younger, thinner, stronger, a little freer, a little more capable of mixing things up in a good way.
Celebrate the angels that got you to this season because it is a portal, and I will celebrate with you. Things are about to get hot, maybe too hot, but don’t get stuck there. This summer, let it come, whatever it is. Make sure you can access a quiet, cold little place to hide when then timing is right. Make a wish that all beings get that kind of safe place when they need it.
That’s it. Nothing big to do to welcome a season that exists all on its own, except take a moment to appreciate it for what it is. It’s all nature moving along, for cycles much bigger than our own. We call it summer, but it is a feeling, an experience, a season of fruit running juice down our mouths, a season of tender greens bending to our touch. It’s a time of long sunrises and even longer sunsets, reminding us that we are both small and part of something incredibly, universally big.
Now I’ll go back to thinking about mixed berries, mixed drinks, mixed greens, and quite naturally, mixed signals.
I’ll admit I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s good to mix things up. Even these little parts of ourselves that we thought were separate but which are just different cycles and flows of who we really are.
May this be your portal to a season of mixing it up,
Love, Mariette
That’s the theme for today’s links below:
A berry crumble for you
Julia Childs made Clafoutis and so can we
The Farmer’s Almanac has sfactoids for the Full Strawberry Moon June 29th
Want to plant Italian greens in the USA? You have options with this company.
Mojito but not? This Nojito from Sprindrift is easy to find
You know who else is a systems design nerd? Pope Leo