Summer Greetings Everyone

We hope you have all had a wonderful spring despite the extremely wet weather in our region! We have been very pleased with the progress of our family’s garden, photographed above. If you’ve been following along with our newsletters, you can see the garlic and kale we’ve discussed, thriving next to Morty’s goofy, loving presence. The kale has been producing very well for us, check out the pile on our cedar log seat!, and will be ready for seed saving once the hot summer temperatures arrive soon. The rains and busyness of the spring have prevented us from getting a big garden planted as we hoped, but we’re starting one this weekend for fall and winter harvests! More details on this to come…

Announcing some slight changes for OMB consultation services! We have simplified and streamlined Our Services, so please take a minute to review them and share with anyone you know who may be interested. We’re primarily using word of mouth for marketing, so your help would mean the world to us.

Now let’s dive into this season’s issue! We discuss the Summer Solstice from the 3 traditions we honor- plus some timely inspirational wisdom, botanical/herbal spotlights, and our Healthy Homes Consultations! We hope you enjoy :)

Summer Solstice

June 20, 2025 at 10:42 p.m. EDT

The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere and the shortest for those in the southern hemisphere. No matter where you call home, the exact time of the solstice is the same all over the globe, joining us all together in celebration.

The term “solstice” comes from the Latin words sol (Sun) and sistere (to stand still), and this celestial phenomenon has been celebrated since at least the Neolithic era.

For eons, Indigenous/Original people across North America celebrated the summer solstice with ceremonies and prayer. Many Native communities celebrated the first day of summer as a time of renewal. However, many, if not all, of these traditions were prohibited and sometimes lost through the forced assimilation into Christianity and European culture through tragic boarding schools and federal officer occupation on reservations. Fortunately, in 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was enacted, celestial traditions began their return. Since then, Original People have been reclaiming their ceremonies and reconnecting with their ancestral ways, although some are still more connected to Christian traditions. For those reconnecting with their nature-based spirituality, celebrating the solstice is a radical act of remembrance. Sacred fires, dances, commemorative walks to sacred mound sites, prayers in their native languages, and many other rituals are all ways Original People are honoring the longest day of the year.

In a similar vein, before the Christianization of Europe, there were a plethora of Celtic/ Native European solstice traditions. However, some of them, particularly in Nordic countries, never ceased, and others are reigniting. For example, during the Neolithic era, the summer solstice may have been related to the timings of crop cycles. It was typically marked by Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic people by lighting bonfires, intended to boost the sun’s strength for the remainder of the crop season and ensure a healthy harvest. Stone circles, like the famous Stonehenge, were created during this time and have been used as a calendar, marking this important celestial event. One of the largest global solstice events to this day is at the site of Stonehenge, where people camp overnight to watch the sunrise illuminate the perfect spot between the rocks.

For American traditions, there are not many solstice-specific traditions in modern U.S. culture outside of summer gardening and typical summer events like bonfires, cookouts, and music festivals. These themes ironically (or maybe not so ironically) are pretty identical to global solstice events, even though it has not been emphasized as such in our culture. However, there is a new prevalence of Americans reconnecting with their ancestors from all over the world and their earth-based traditions by intentionally incorporating solstice rituals into their summer activities. An important emphasis that has also come about is that one does not have to choose between their religion and celestial celebrations. In fact, honoring and celebrating the beauty and nourishment of nature can be a great way to deepen your religious or spiritual practice.

Have you made the connection that our typical American summer traditions reflect a conglomeration of our ancestors’ solstice rituals? Are you intentionally celebrating the solstice or hope to start doing so in the future?

Summer Solstice

With the solstice’s arrival and the long, hot days of summer surrounding us, we feel that speaking on sacrifice and service to others is an important topic for this celestial time. Having more hours in the day and the expanded energy that comes along with it, we each have more capacity to surrender our egos and personal pursuits for a higher calling.

Sacrifice is a natural aspect of being human, in whatever form it may take. This concept has evolved in cultures globally over thousands of years. In humans’ more ancestral stages of evolution, we leaned more towards physical sacrifices of animals and items. As we’ve evolved socially, these physical sacrifices have turned into metaphysical ones. However, their utility has the same psychological effect.

The ultimate goal of any sacrifice is to aim for the highest good possible, which is something humans have been trying to parse out for thousands of years. Psychologists and many of the major world religions have both noted that self-sacrifice aims to hit that goal quite precisely. Whether you volunteer regularly in your community, take extra time out of your personal life to help family and friends, or give up a piece of yourself to make your life and the lives of your family members healthier or better in the long run, prioritizing a higher calling or needs of others is a perfect example of self sacrifice. There are many examples of this same archetype in new stories as well as those that have transcended time, like Jesus, Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Socrates, Oden, Mulan, Frodo, Krishna, etc. This signals to all of us how important self-sacrifice is to the collective experience, which brings a well-rounded life and meaningful existence.

With this in mind, we encourage you to determine what that higher calling is for your life and what part of yourself is holding you back from answering that call. Whether it’s a vice, a habit, or maybe just not giving it any thought or attention before now, it may be helpful to take some time to sit quietly and consider these concepts. It’s well worth it to go through the short-term suffering to get to the long-term happiness and fulfillment that self-sacrifice will bring. Just as the heat and humidity can be unbearable during the summer, it’s ultimately what creates the right conditions for the bounty and nourishment that flow from the garden. Nature always illustrates the lessons we need at exactly the right time.

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl (Holocaust Survivor & Psychiatrist), Man's Search for Meaning

Unique Native Plants: Flowers of East Tennessee

Do you recognize this eye-catching native flower?

We recently found this beauty along the woodline of our new property just outside of Tellico Plains, TN. We have since learned their name by using the Seek and iNaturalist Apps, which are user-friendly apps we highly recommend for plant ID as well as ID for all the beings in the natural world.

This jaw-dropping plant is actually a type of milkweed!

Redring Milkweed or Asclepias variegata

You may have noticed we referred to this plant as “they” rather than “it”… that’s because we recognize all beings in our collective ecosystem as conscious and sentient, so we try our best to adapt our language accordingly. As our Cherokee neighbors and Robin Wall Kimmerer have taught us, everything in nature is our relative, not a commodity or an inanimate object.

Do you have any cool native plants or flowers growing around you? Have you used Seek and/or iNaturalist before?

Midsummer Seed Starting

Many of the summer crops can be succession planted or started now if you haven’t grown them yet this season. We’re directly sowing seeds to start our garden this weekend, so please feel free to join along!

These include: curcubits like cucumbers, melons, and squashes, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers, peppers, okra, nasturtium, basil, marigolds, borage, dill, parsley, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, lavender, cilantro, mints, yarrow, and it’s a great time to plant pumpkins for an October harvest!

Don’t forget to check out the UT Home Fruit & Vegetable Garden Calendar if you haven’t already.

The photo above is of a small raised bed we made for a family member a few years ago to grow herbs and wild flowers! As you can see, it’s thriving this year, and the pine boards are still holding up pretty well.

If you’d like personalized help with starting a garden or installing a raised garden bed, check out our Raised Garden Bed Consultations through the button below.

Healthy Homes Consultations

There’s so much discussion in the news lately about the Make America Healthy Again movement and the impacts of food additives, toxic chemicals, and artificial ingredients in our daily lives, which includes a lot of people talking about this who don’t necessarily have the best credentials or experience.

This is where our Healthy Homes Consultations come into play! Amanda has spent over a decade studying and working in nutrition and food science, including food law and regulatory affairs in the U.S. and Europe, and she is passionate about helping American families see through the fog created by influencers and the contradictory information in mainstream media.

Visit this page of our website to learn more and to schedule your obligation-free, 15-minute phone call to find out if our Healthy Homes Consultation is right for you!

Remember, all of our services are offered on a sliding scale to fit your budget and can be tailored to fit your specific needs. If payment is hindering you from signing up, please send us a message anyway! We have plenty of options to cover the cost so you can get the help you need.

Thank you so much for your support!

Thanks so much for reading and supporting our work! We have almost reached our first 100 subscribers, so if you haven’t received your free eco-sticker yet, please reply to this message with your address so we can send it your way!

We are so grateful for each and every one of you and would love to keep the conversation going. Please send us your thoughts or feedback! Are you celebrating the Summer Solstice this year? Which traditions or rituals are you doing? Are you growing a garden this year? Are you interested in a Healthy Homes Consultation?

In our work and daily lives, we seek to strike a balance between Science and Spirit, and we hope that flows through this issue.

Amanda & Derik <3

Guiding Growth with Nature’s Wisdom