Welcome Summer! Celebrating the Solstice and a New England Radio Interview about Flare, Corona

Solstice sunset, with lavender and sun flare

Welcome Summer! Celebrating the Solstice and a Radio Interview

The solstice came this year gently – a little overcast, temperatures in the 70s, and the sunset lasted til almost past 9 PM. We celebrated more simply this year, a trip to 21 Acres, a local farmer’s market, where we bought local honey, cherries, peas, and carrots, and a sunset spent at the lavender farm down the street, where the blooms have just started on the oldest lavender plants. It was lovely to feel the grass, smell the lavender, feel the sun – not too hot or punishing – and welcome in this fraught season. (Fraught because of the wildfire risk and because MS patients tend to worse in the heat.)

In the wildflowers on the solstice

But there is a lot to love about summer, even for me – the slower pace, the longer less dreary days, more time for gardening and birdwatching, and cherries (I mean until you’ve had local cherries in Washington right at the peak of the season have you ever really had cherries?) And time with friends and family. I’ll be meeting some new family members for the first time next month – my little nephews and nieces who live in Cincinnati and have never been even close to the west coast. I’m looking forward to more wine-tasting dates with my writer friends – it’s easy to entice them out this way when the flowers are in bloom, every winery has live music and the patios are all open. When we were at the lavender farm (officially, the farm is called JB Growers Family Lavender Farm) we could hear a local concert on one side, people cheering for baseball players on another and the whistles of red-winged blackbirds all around – and still there was such a sense of quiet and peace.

Radio Interview about Flare, Corona, with WICN, a New England station, and Mark Lynch

I am grateful to WICN and Mark Lynch for interviewing me for their station about my new book, Flare, Corona. It was a pleasure – we talked about a shared love of 50’s sci-fi movies, health crises, and more. We actually went on talking after we were off the air, and it was so fun, It felt like talking to a friend, which means that guy is really good at his job!

Here’s the link to listen to the whole thing: Jeannine Hall Gailey – 90.5 WICN Public Radio

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and it gives you some insight into the book, writing during a pandemic, and killer shrews.

And here are a few more pictures from the week – from our solstice visit, a literary kitten living the good life, and our summer visitor, the black-headed grosbeak. I hope your entry to summer will be as gentle and lovely as possible. (Stay away, wildfires!)