Taking Note: Mindfulness During Summer

Taking note of a tree branch in the foreground, puffy white clouds, blue sky, a dock, boats and canoes in the Charles River in Boston, with buildings in the background. On the right, two small pictures, the top is a square piece of cherry and pistachio tart on a napkin and minted lemondade in a plastic cup with the word "Tatte" printed vertically, the bottom picture shows the moon rising in a bluish grey sky over the tops of trees.

Summer is precious when the weather isn’t always beautiful. And by beautiful I mean, lots of sunshine and temperatures in the 80s. Having daylight past 8pm is an added bonus. For those of us in New England, we only get this perfect combination in July in August. So I’m taking note. Paying attention to how I spend my time.

Time is our most valuable currency. We can’t get it back. No exchanges or refunds. Plus, we don’t know how much we have. So we need to budget accordingly.

Enjoy what we have now and be able to look back at how we spent it and revel in the memories. For this first weekend in July, I met up with a friend on Saturday. We walked and talked. Strolling along the Charles and then went to Tatte Bakery for a snack. I had a pistachio and cherry tart and minted lemonade. So good!

Every Sunday I have dinner with my family. When I brought my mother home, we noticed the moon rising. At 8:30pm, the sky was still light. The beauty of July!

My mom’s lavender plants are blooming. Tomorrow, I’m going to get some to bring home and dry. She also has a lot of very tall mint plants that are ready to take over the place.

I’ll do her a favor and take some of that too! The minted lemonade that I had at Tatte was really delicious, so I plan to make my own. Of course I’ll be taking note and hope to blog these too!

There are so many things that I’d like to do this summer, but besides time, money is always a factor, so I will have to improvise. Good thing that there are so many free events around the city!

At the very least, like I say every year, I’d like to go to the beach (on the Cape, maybe the North Shore, or somewhere far away) at least a couple of times. Also, I hope to enjoy some outdoor music. Of course, I like eating outdoors whenever possible.

Hopefully I’ll also be able to attend a few of the free outdoor yoga classes as well. Maybe even just take my home practice outdoors. There’s a nice park nearby. I should use it!

By the way, I’m working on the new 2017 summer list of free yoga classes. Hopefully it will be up within a couple of weeks!

What about you? What are your summer plans?

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