A Note on Evolution
Showing up in the mundane and beautiful times even if lacking eloquence.
A little note for Summer here: I have been a little quieter with my weekly newsletter. Summer and this season are busy for me with work. I find plenty of writing inspiration but little room to do the writing time as a mom and business owner this season. Your support for this space and patience don’t go unnoticed. The Summer Guide is live for all paying subscribers. I appreciate your support. Autumn will find me at a different place with this space, I have no doubt.
The land is beginning to go gold and it’s been a while since I was here to write about all I have noticed in this rapidly fast season of abundance in life. I watch as the milkweed pods swell now and the Monarchs lay their eggs. The season is coming ripe now and in that comes a moment in summer where we stand between what feels like we have just begun and that we are nearly to the end.
I feel like in some way I need to just sit here and fill you in on life a bit. Maybe in a less eloquent way than I normally do, but I think sometimes when we are in a wild season of evolving we must just go with what feels necessary.
Most of the last month has been a balance between being a present and available parent to an 8 and 4-year-old who are at the best ages, being able to enjoy the season, being social, and then running a brand new thriving business. It is all exciting but I bet you notice a word missing in there. I never mentioned the garden.
The garden has hit a stroke of independence and I wish I could say differently. As I have been evolving in my life, the garden still feels important. I love growing things. I always have and always will, but maybe some things need time to go wild too. I have been asking why I am growing it and for who I am doing it. There is a lot of that lately as I evolve from Megan Gilger of Fresh Exchange (my previous Lifestyle blog career) to just me as Megan Gilger. I sometimes realize how much I am still undoing the life of being a blogger as I begin to open myself to this new version of myself.
I have loved our kitchen garden this year. I have loved wandering through the unkept nature of it and finding the gems I planted there and I have struggled to find anything but challenge with the lower garden for me. To me, that is worthy of my attention. I think like I needed time to step back from teaching gardening, I need to do the same with the size garden I keep right now.
I am instead looking to work on the slow growth of our food forest establishment I have been dreaming of from my Permaculture Design work, but not with any specific end date for it in mind. Currently, I love the flowers and the while herbs and perennial things growing all around us in our kitchen walled garden.
The hotter the years become the less the garden is enticing to me up here and at times I wonder about shifting where we grow our food anyway. Maybe this is just part of my grand evolution and the chickens win out by getting a great spot to peck around.
It sounds weird for me maybe to say how little time I have spent with the garden, but it really has been lacking a draw to me this year and more of a burden and if I have learned anything, it is to listen to that.
The rest of the summer has been filled with the right summery things. The things where I just want to be present. The things where I want to toss my phone away for weeks on end and disappear into the lake sort of thing. The truth is in all the fullness of life and the moments I wonder, how am I going to make this work? I am finding some of the most high and beautiful times of life too. I have thought many times, how thankful I am to be 37 and here in this life. How much I love living in our home, this place, this land, and in Leelanau. Maybe it sounds cheesy, and at the risk of that, I sit there honestly.
In some way, I think my lack of writing has been that I am currently working through my evolution. I am finding there are many places I can be during this time and other places I cannot be. My energy is different in this current chapter. I noticed it the week my partner took the kids with him to visit family in Texas and I was alone all week. I thought I would call friends or go out more, but I didn’t. I spent time just drinking wine and watching the sunset after making dinner alone. I felt completely content enjoying the silence and sunsets because I felt I could hear myself. There is a lot of clutter in my mind at this chapter of life that as a deep feeler and thinker doesn’t always receive the attention it needs. Life is full right now. Full stop. As my partner gently reminded me, you are running at 130% right now and you can choose to get back to 90% or your body will. The ache to get back to writing I know is an ache to silence the chatter in my head too.
So as disjointed as this piece may be today and how little I have been sending these newsletters out this summer, I also deeply desire to get back here to notice things more intimately in my life, connecting the seasons to the seasons in me, and getting back to hearing the random layers of words in my mind that have felt quieted since February or so when we lost our golden. I am beginning to see where I can find that space again as summer begins to close, the kids head back to school (both full-time…what?!) and I can once again find that time I so longingly ache for as I continue to work through this evolution I am in right now.
I have sat down to write here many times in the last month, but I disqualified it as boring, mundane, journally, and then I realized, that is life, and that is what it is to shift…it is boring, one step at a time, and then one day seeing how much far you have come. I think social media has shifted us to not allow us to just write out our random thoughts and mundane realities of what it is to grow. That we can just write and share and discuss the realities of growth in the modern age of humanity. I struggle with all of it in many ways, but one is that I always feel what I put out into the world always has to be worthy of something or amazing. The truth is it can just be something. In creating we have to just begin creating. Eventually, it becomes and so here I am breaking back in little by little to find my footing again and stop disqualifying that the mundane life things of growing may not just be what I need to write, but maybe you all need reminding of too. As I am just over here as a mom of 2 kids, getting back into working for myself full time (loving it), and also trying to figure out how to keep the house a level below a disaster while embracing the wild nature of my current garden that once was my identity in some way and now is just a place I can just be.
Thank you for your patience as I meander my way back here this month. I know it will come and I know something beautiful will come from the time I am taking to get back to it as well.
On my mind this week
Been one hella busy week around here, but life is full and good in the best ways:
Funny Story: I started reading this book while I was in a doc apt on my phone as a sample to avoid scrolling social media and had no idea it was set here in Traverse City! It is a great story to beach read right now. I honestly (hot take) liked this more than Tom Lake. I think the story is less forced and commodified feeling when it comes to location, but yah know we can all disagree too.
Little Cabins: Tell me you want a quiet life without telling you want a quiet life. Ha. I don’t mean in a second-home kind of way, but I always fantasize about a smaller life. It isn’t the phase of life but it one day will be, but I keep a Pinterest board for it.
Tuscany: Yes I am still thinking about this. It is a carrot at the end of the season right now for me. It feels like such an exciting thing ahead of us as a family. We loved being in England and traveling. We are also beginning to strategize our Spring Break trip too.
Basement: This fall/winter or so we will be doing some updates to our basement. It always has been just finished enough. We focused on the bathroom and a guest space, but now we want to have a more designated living space to this area. So I am beginning to think about it as we want to paint some of the rooms and things. It is a smaller project, but still sort of exciting to daydream about colors that inspired me in England.
Lake Michigan: I live for the woods and fields here in Michigan, but in the summer, the lake is everything! The water calms all things. When I think about why I do the landscape design work I do, I think about the lake. Many of the properties I am working on are connected to water. Planting things to preserve the water is essential many landscapes contribute to harming it in various ways. Being in it this time of year reminds me every time of why I do the work I do.
Sailor Workwear Styles: My partner, Mike calls this my English Gardener Old Man vibe, but I think it is technically sailor wear. Anyway, I nabbed a great shirt like this one during Toast’s sale they had around the 4th. I am obsessed and just waiting for the temps to cool for it. It’s classic, sturdy and great pockets for working in the garden.
Millinium Alliums: I think they are one of my favorite flowers to grow. They are a great mound till they then become a spike in the design and the colors are outstanding. All of mine are nearly ready for dividing and it brings me a lot of joy to think about.
Tomatoes: The season has arrived. I LIVE for it. Like there is absolutely nothing better is there?! Maybe that slide and glide on skis or a nice hot soup during a blizzard, but I think mater season is where it is at. Personally I am a simple girl…Sliced with olive oil, basil, and great sea salt and a little pepper. If you feel fancy make a basil-infused oil.
What are some things that have been swirling in your brain this week?
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