I can’t remember the last time I woke up and there wasn’t a heat advisory warning on my home screen. The National Weather Service says the current consecutive stretch here in Oklahoma started on July 18th, and August month-to-date has been the 2nd warmest average high on record (of 136 years; 🫠 👈 me literally).
Basically, nothing is growing out there right now. Leaves are already turning yellow and crunching under my feet when I walk the dogs. The large English rose bush in my backyard attempted a few blooms earlier this month but didn’t make it very far before abandoning ship.
I grew up in an area with heavy water conservation mandates, so my interaction with foliage and landscaping consisted of lots of cacti, palm trees, and rock. I didn’t realize that rose bushes went through more than one cycle of bloom and dormant rest periods throughout the year. It was during the fall of 2018 when I saw it blooming strong…
This is actually where I took a pause to go look up an old, archived Instagram post I made about this rose bush back in 2018, and inevitably ended up scrolling for 20 minutes instead. Until I ran into this post (there’s 3 slides total):
Which was just comical. I ran into the productivity culture version of landscaping and growth while trying to write an issue about productivity culture and growth. lol
It feels like we were always taught to be lawns. Grow, excel, but controlled, disciplined, don’t deviate. Yet every system that ever failed me was built like a mowing schedule.
And believe me, every actual mowing schedule I’ve had has failed me too—either because of the weather, my energy, work schedule, or some other uncontrollable life circumstance that didn’t fit the confines.
But I’ve never thrived more as a person than when I acted like a weed. When I felt like I didn’t belong, but I found a way to support myself anyway.
One of my favorite views where I live is in the spring when we go too long without mowing the orchard and we end up with a tiny field of damned yellow composites (affectionately called DYCs aka I dunno but they’re yellow and pretty) that follow the sun like adoring fans.
They’re second only to the English rose bush. Though not a weed, the rose bush also grows to the beat of its own drum. Typically blooming in spring and late fall, sometimes even a warm January as well. Choosing to rest in August when the temperatures become untenable.
Sure, you could throw the rose bush into a landscaping schedule. You could trim it, water it and feed it specifically. The roses may be bigger, more consistent, or show up more often. But they wouldn’t be seven feet tall and bring as big of a smile to my face when I walk out back in the morning and unexpectedly smell the wall of blooms.
It’s a good reminder that dormant is not dead.
Whether we’re talking about landscaping, creativity, or productivity, the cycles include the rest.
And one way or the other October always comes, whether August believes it or not.
As you gear up for the fall and the inevitable busy season that leads up to the holidays, add this prompt to your summer reflections:
TO SIT WITH:
Where in life right now are you watering the lawn, and what’s the weed you keep ripping out?
Currently Obsessed
Orchestra Improvisation: Lately we’ve been turning on a tiny desk concert to play during bedtime routines. This led us to Jacob Collier and his improvising with orchestras. I’m not in tears, you are… I’d blame the perimenopause hormones, but I’ve always been this way. It hits you right in the feels. Also, the bit he builds starting at 2:11 hits the brain fuzzies just right. I actually ended up listening to it on repeat while I was writing today’s issue. Music is magic.✨
Belated Birthday Cake: My word of the year for 2026 has been unfold. After 2025’s integration, it’s been an interesting lesson in consistently doing while keeping myself squarely in the being phase (ie. not white-knuckling the outcome). Celebrating my 37th birthday on the 15th felt like the perfect picture of how this has been going. I started baking my cake on the 14th and then snacked on frosting and cake cuttings the 15th-19th (I leaned into the guilty pleasure and bought frosting from the grocery store bakery to decorate my gf cake with, yummmm). In years past, my skin would have been crawling the whole week, but without the pressure, even five days “late” that feeling was nowhere to be found. Here’s one of only two snapshots I grabbed, and it was after I’d already cut out the first slice once I finished on the 20th.
You’ve Got Mail: While not the hit 1990s romcom, if you’ve made it this far, you’ll get a sneak peek at something I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting to arrive in the mail over the last few weeks. It’s for a years-long, semi-quiet project I’m finally wrapping up production on this fall. Now it’s time to wait for round 2 to arrive so I can start shouting it from the rooftops in September!
*This issue was updated to correct “semi-quit” to “semi-quiet”
