and the solstice

Happy solstice! 

Yesterday was my family's first solstice celebration. During breakfast earlier in the week, I mentioned to Curly Sue that I was excited for the solstice. She became sullen and asked why we were celebrating it, anyway? After all, we've never celebrated it before. I said we were celebrating it because I wanted to. My response wasn't fair because I was intentionally dodging the pagan issue. I will discuss this with Curly Sue in a few years when I'm certain this isn't some passing thing I'm doing right now.

Still, I think the entire family enjoyed the celebration. We started earlier this week by making many food plans. We thought there should be strawberry shortcake, lemonade, sun tea, grapefruit soda made with juice from our grapefruit tree, some kind of rosemary parmesan bread, salad with raspberry vinaigrette and vegetable shish kabobs. 

In the afternoon we had "solstice bowling". This was Ms. Red Hair's idea. We live within walking distance of a bowling alley. 

the shortcakes were made by Curly Sue. We used a sun-shaped cookie cutter. 

The bread was made by me. I'll post the recipe some other time. It was good but I'm going to try a different recipe next year. We grilled slices of this bread with olive oil and garlic.

Curly Sue decorated the patio area around the table with chalk suns. We live in LA so practically our entire backyard is concrete. I'm a midwestern girl and my parents' backyard consists of a half acre and a creek, so the concrete is really appalling to me. But I love our home and I love where we live so this is something I'm learning to deal with. 

There were four lit candles on the table. The candles were symbolic of the earth and sun simultaneously (fire for the sun, and one each symbolizing an element and a direction). 

We had a fire in the fire pit, which is not a pit at all but a bowl on legs. 

After the dinner, we lit the fire and got back into the pool. By 8:30 we were sitting in the pool by the fire pit, eating strawberry shortcake. The backyard was lit by the fire and by the white lights under the patio umbrella, so in my memories everything was orange and blue, and we were visible only in silhouette. 

The meal started around 6:30 and went into the night. In the dinner I incorporated peppers and blueberries from our garden. As I mentioned previously, our backyard is concrete, but there's a substantial flower bed lining the walls of the yard. And we have a plethora of container plants. We are growing tomatoes, pumpkins, basil, zucchini, peppers, blueberries, strawberries, corn and a variety of flowers. We're new home owners, and until now have always lived in apartments, so gardening is new to us. Neither Ms. Red Hair nor I have any idea how to care for most of our plants. Some of them are faring better than others. So far we've had the most success with the blueberries and some of the pepper plants. Our tomatoes are spindly. The zucchini refuses to grow. 

This makes me feel like an inadequate witch. I should have a blooming garden with lush, healthy plants. But I am still learning.