Finding home in the fleeting days of summer.

softening boundaries and finding an anchor at home in summer.

Hello, I am so glad you have found your way here… I’m Lyndsay — mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR.

Step inside Story & Thread., a cosy, layered home where the threads of creativity, interiors and mothering meet. Here, we unearth the stories from the seasons of our lives, with a house & a garden at the heart, and everyday beauty as our guide…

Sunflowers in our entrance.

“The English word for summer comes from Old English sumor, from the proto-indo-european root sam, meaning both one and together”
― Ali Smith, Summer.

Dearest reader

How is summer feeling to you?

We have had a glorious few days here in London, where everything is illuminated and we have been out and about, both on exciting adventures into the city and to spend time with friends amongst the towering trees and wildflowers near home.

A few months ago I wrote about creating a seasonal home — that in a blur of days that are filled with a million micro-moments (varying from wild and unpredictable, to repetitive and mundane), living attuned to the seasons allows me to grasp fragments of memories, and to orient my inner compass in alignment with the outside world.

At the same time, despite the long days, I have much less time, space energy (?) for ritual and ceremony, and so my practices are deeply rooted in what is happening in our lives as we notice, observe and witness the world around us. Rituals are found within the things we do each day, they are the feeling conjured by a season, and are traditions that naturally emerge over time — they are guided by the outside world, and are honoured and internalised by paying close attention.

Despite spending more time out and about in summer, I am realising that home plays a more important part in my experience of the season than I had imagined…

Liminal living in summer.

Unlike in autumn and winter where I feel called into the bones of my home, summer takes me outdoors — to explore, to spend time bathed in light, to feel the warmer air soften my skin and to seek out the summer shadows. There is a liminality to the way we live in summer, the boundary between indoor and outdoor is thin — we peel open the curtains earlier as morning light creeps in at the edges and a sense of the day floods the room; we throw open windows and doors to feel the exchange of air move through us; our houseplants stretch enthusiastically towards the sunlight; we bring summer herbs and flowers indoors, and we take our food and drinks outside into the garden. We linger longer, inhabiting a space that is both and between.

Mornings of tea and sweet peas.

Softening boundaries.

The time that would be spent tending to and simply being within the walls of my home in the cooler months, is given over to the garden, there is an expansion beyond walls — to the caring, cultivating and cutting back; as well as the act of sitting, immersed in the undulations of the bloom and the fade, and the sense of both reaching and tumbling in wild freedom. It is an opportunity to deepen into fullness, to become more of ourselves, led by our surroundings — our senses enriched, summer seeps into our supple, permeable skin, dissolving the boundary between the outside world and our own interior landscape.

As well as spending time outside, we bring the outdoors in — to me, sunflowers in a vase means summer at home. Last year, we cut sunflowers from the ‘pick your own’ farm, and this year I planted the sunflower seedlings into the garden (which the slugs have thoroughly enjoyed!). After being inspired by a trip to an urban flower farm last summer, I sowed seeds this spring for the first time. With a mix of trust, hope and nurture, various varieties of cosmos, larkspur, calendula, nigella, corncockle, gypsophila, and of course, sweet peas, have made the pilgrimage from their seed trays indoors, into the ground and (mostly) into flower. Although there are plenty of lessons to learn from my first attempt at growing flowers from seed, there is little that is more satisfying than an early wander around the garden in order to gather another yield of frilled ombré sweet peas for a posy to bring indoors. I am already looking forward to the fading, jewelled days of summer in the dahlia cutting patch.

Sweet peas from the garden.

We live in liminality between indoor/outdoor from the comfort of our back ‘garden’ room. When our south-facing garden feels too hot, rendering once-luscious petals into brown parcel paper, we retreat inside, (my winter babies also in danger of wilting in the heat). By opening the back doors and sash windows, air flows, bringing the feel of the garden to us, even when lounging about on the sofa.

Our back ‘garden’ room in summer.

I love to live with the doors wide open so I can potter between the two, sometimes taking refuge and a precious few moments to myself outside on the bench under the climbing rose (which still has a few promising buds dotted amongst it). The day itself is lengthened by the proliferation of light. My favourite times to be outside are in the early morning and at dusk, the in-between when the corners and edges of summer, are tinged with magic and longing.

Home as a harbour.

Due to the shape-shifting state we inhabit in summer, home becomes a harbour. We tend to spend most of the day outside — either on a day trip or in the local park and ancient woods close by, only making our way home for dinner before the bath/bedtime routine begins. Home tends to our basic needs whilst we are living life in our summer skin — we come home to shelter, to nourish and to rest. Harnessing the earthy, grounding aspects of our home allows us to find a sense of stability and rootedness in the wild and free days of summer. It is a place to gather ourselves — to exist inwardly, to recharge, it is the ‘still point’, facilitating an integration and a deepening of our outward experiences of summer.

Dreaming in wildflowers.

Wildflower love indoors.

Returning home, plunged into the darkness of our north-facing entrance with ceramic tiled floor, feels like crossing a welcome threshold that brings quiet relief after the stickiness of ice cream afternoons in the park. According to Celtic (and other) ancient traditions, summer is related to the cardinal direction of south and the stirring element of fire, and so it makes sense that the earthiness of the north feels like a cooling balm.

As well as considering direction, strong, durable materials underfoot help to bring us a much-needed connection with the earth in summer. Stone, wood (that was of course once rooted into the earth), and grass provide a weightiness and constancy in the fleeting, flighty days of summer. Our bare feet like prayers on the ground, the contact allows us to draw up support and nourishment — enduring foundations can literally earth us amidst the whirlwind summer days.

Our north-facing entrance (buggies/bikes/scooters just out of shot!).

Beyond flooring, I reach for natural materials and colours to soothe in summer — linen, cotton and wool calm and restore in our north-facing bedroom, painted in Cotta by Atelier Ellis, “a hazy, pale, hand-made colour of pottery bisque”. A simple grounding palette of wild, earthy colours both wed us to our surroundings, and provide a contrast to much of the kaleidoscopic vibrancy of summer. Most of the paint colours in our home seem to be underpinned with earthiness — the murky green chalk paint in our north-facing living room provides stillness, Cotta in our bedroom cocoons, and Setting Plaster where I write reminds me of the stories held in these walls.

A bedroom cocoon.

The history of my home tethers me to this space too. By poring over the original tiles in our entrance, I get a sense of the place it was when it was built in the early 1900s, and we chose to extend the colours of the tiles to the walls and doors to emphasise their presence. I also don’t think that I am imagining the previous owners’ telling me that there was once a potters’ wheel in our front room when the house belonged to a ceramic artist, which feels like a beautiful expression of the entwined relationship between human and earth through making. I hope to trace more of this story and the other roles our house has played in the lifetimes of those who have lived here, and its relationship to the world beyond its walls.

In a season that can pull us out of ourselves into a dazzling world of light and movement, and with so much of our energy being expended outwards, I am coming to realise that home in some ways plays an even more important role in summer. It is there to ground and anchor us, it is somewhere we can rest and digest our days, a chance to hold memories bleached by light-filled days, a place to reorient ourselves.

A house in summer is both a passage out into the world and our pathway home. It is both cosy and bright. It contains our summer stories and is a place of remembering and returning — somewhere to soften with homely comfort, where the sun’s rays drape the walls in molten gold.

I would love to hear how home feels to you in summer…

Thank you so much for reading — I hope we can chat more in the comments or of course feel free to send me an email with your thoughts.

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