Exquisite endings and burnished beginnings of late summer.

leaning into the end of one year and beginning of quite another…

Aug 23, 2024

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…

“How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door.”

—Emily Dickinson.

Dearest reader

Are you longing for summer to last forever, or are you ready for the cosiness of autumn?

Can you feel the shift in the air?

I first felt a hint of it in the blanket of darkness that cloaked my garden long before I was ready, earlier this week. It was there as I turned on the light in my bathroom in the morning, for the first time in months. The realisation began to wash over me as I saw my world bathed in aged antique gold, with silk-spun spider webs glinting in the lower light. I heard it as a murmur of cool breeze wafting through my loose linen trousers as I pulled on a jumper and stepped out into the soft morning light. I was immersed in it as I felt the August rain bluster around me and we crunched the first fallen leaves on our way to nursery this morning.

As a September soul, late summer/early autumn feels exquisitely like home for me, it is more than a seasonal shift, it is the end of one year and beginning of quite another…

Late summer longing.

We are unmistakably in deepest late summer, a place of both lingering and longing — for the long, honeyed days of summer to last forever, and also for the crisp blank page of newness to begin.

It is a time when our everyday palette becomes patinated and timeworn — where an air of faded glamour suffuses the once vibrant petals. Leaves begin to curl at their edges, tarnished and rusting ahead of their kaleidoscopic transformation. Sunlight is bronze on the earth, revealing the fullness as well as the fading — the sweet peas continue to flower, climb and tumble; heavy seedheads weigh down now brittle stems; apple, pear and plum trees are laden with fruit, and the brambles are bursting with blackberries like ink blots. This combination of fading and fullness urges us to gather the bounty and take it inside — to reflect on the growth seasons, to dwell on and enjoy the season’s riches, as we draw ourselves inwards once more.

Unlike the long transition from winter to spring with its sometimes excruciating growing pains, the movement from summer to autumn feels far more gentle — often within a haze of unexpected late summer sunshine and warmth, it is like a sigh of relief or a deep exhale. The feel of the air becomes hushed, like a whisper of what is to come — and soon everything is changed.

This sense of seasonal shift and gathering in late summer puts me in a reflective mood — my thoughts turn to the season that is coming to a close, to the end of my own year as I approach my birthday in early September, and to the last vestiges of this early mothering chapter as my daughter begins school life, come September.

A summer of everyday beauty.

Summer has felt both fleeting and full, for the most part we have carried on with our everyday life as nursery continues through the summer (my last summer not to be dictated by school holidays for a long time to come!). And although we have been led by a familiar rhythm in these days, there has been a freedom and flow in our pace — the longer, warmer days have allowed us time to linger, to explore and to adventure.

The routine of park and playdates punctuated by a midsummer trip to France; a glorious train journey down to the Devon seaside to visit treasured family; some memorable art-filled trips into London; too many ice creams to count; and a cluster of day trips to spend time with dear friends that we don’t see as often as we would like.

It has been a time of reunions, of gathering and coming together after personal and collective life shifts, of marking the passing of time, whilst feeling that no time has passed at all. Everything is different and yet still very much the same.

The everything of endings.

In the last weeks of this preschool stage before school begins, I have wanted to allow space for things to find form led by how we are feeling — rather than trying to fit in too much, feeling under pressure to make the most of this admittedly precious unstructured time together.

Once again, the ending of this mothering chapter feels like everything all at once — despite knowing that big changes are afoot, it feels difficult to prepare (myself or my daughter) entirely, to really know how it is going to unfold and what is going to be required.

Instead I am leaning into what I do know — that these magical, mysteriously intense and tender preschool years are drawing to a close, that my daughter is going to begin to need me less (and yet, sometimes much more). That the desire to hold on tight to the little girl she is now, sits alongside the honour and responsibility of allowing her to find her wings to fly. That she is ready to step out beyond the familiarity of her preschool years, to experience and learn more about herself and the world, whilst knowing the world that lies beyond my embrace can be wild (and terrifying), but of course, wonderful too.

Reflecting on a year of slow emergence.

As well as the end of summer and this season of mothering, I am reflecting on this trip around the sun as I approach the final year of my 30s.

This year I have felt a slow emergence (of sorts) which has been gentle, frustrating and challenging in equal measure. There has been a continued softening, that seems to deepen as each year of mothering passes, and yet I have felt the desire to move beyond my winterspring existence of the past few years, living somewhere between emergence and retreat. A call to step into myself — not into something entirely new, but into a new way of being, with the thousands of pieces of myself past and present as a reference point. This is not to say that I could or want to fit back into the past versions of myself, but that I want to remember and celebrate them — to see them through the lens of the mother which both blurs and clarifies — to grow from them as my foundation, and to craft a way of living that supports my fullness, and that of my family.

An autumnal new year.

As always with endings, they give way to beginnings. Moving into the beautiful summer/autumn transition, I realise that this time of the year has always felt like the end of one year, and beginning of another to me.

From the September-shaped memories of a new school year, often starting on my birthday; of returning to university life in Nottingham as a student; and in professional life, arriving at my desk after a slow summer, with important dates in the design calendar and magazine issues hitting the newsstands during the month — there has always been a brisk freshness in the air and on the page in autumn.

Fittingly, I am learning that autumn is the beginning of the gardener’s year too, and although we often think of it as a time of fading, harvesting and gathering, it is also a time of sowing seeds and planning bulbs for next spring. It is not solely a time for shedding and cutting back, but also a time of quiet potential.

At home too, the dwindling light draws me back inside. Over the past (nearly) three years in our home, our small projects have traditionally taken place in the autumn. This year projects may be shaped by a recent August discovery after finally getting around to painting an old cabinet. The act of sanding, priming and painting the cabinet into something both useful and beautiful (in my opinion…), forged a new pathway in my brain, that I have the power within myself to complete many of the tasks that have been on my house to-do list for some time, as well as dreaming up new ones. And so the lazy days of late summer have given way to a sense of unhurried industriousness, where I begin to imagine, make and do all of the things I had been waiting for.

New beginnings.

It feels as though we are coming full circle as my daughter sits on the cusp of her new school life. I am reminded that everything is a continuation, each new phase building on what has come before, as we reach out finding what we need to grow.

Just like when a baby’s eyes develop enough to form a three-dimensional view of the world, they begin to see in-depth past their immediate surroundings for the first time, and when a toddler takes their first independent wobbly steps to places they couldn’t go before; my daughter’s world is about to take on new shapes that she didn’t know existed. My hope is that her first year of her school brings her more delight, awe and wonder about the world she lives in, and most importantly about herself — that she is nurtured by her teachers, classmates and the school environment into becoming more of herself, and that her home, family and ‘old’ friends always feel like soft, cosy cushioning to return to.

And as I get ready to step into the last year of my 30s, it feels as though the changes this year are marked, and it is going to feel significant. I hope that the year ahead feels potent, rich and transitional — a time that I am able to gather and consolidate all of the many learnings of my 30s, in order to draw up a design of dazzling and daring dreams, one word, one thread and one seed at a time — with plenty of space left alone for a wild and beautiful unfolding.

Over to you… I would love to hear if you too, feel like this time of year is a container filled with endings and beginnings? Are you drawn more to summer or autumn?

And with all of this talk of new chapters, I feel closer to creating something more here that nurtures my lovely, much-valued readers, on and off the page. I would love to hear which aspects of the Story & Thread. world and words you are most drawn to…

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, I always love to hear from you.