There is something easy about a meal eaten outdoors in June.
A blanket rests across the grass. A basket is set down beside it while fruit is passed from hand to hand, and the wind moves gently through the trees.
It rarely takes much. Bread wrapped in cloth. Something cold to drink. Finger foods are carried carefully from the kitchen while someone holds the door open behind you.
And somehow, these simple gatherings stay with us.
Not because everything was planned perfectly, and the spread was absolutely beautiful, but because everyone stayed a little longer than expected. The children wandered on and off the blanket while someone reached for another piece before the plates were packed away.
Some gatherings stay with us for years afterward. We remember the grass pressed flat beneath the blanket, the smell of the outdoors, the shapes of the clouds overhead, and the last piece of lemon pie being passed around before everything was packed away and carried back inside.
By June, summer has begun settling into the day this way, slowly enough that we hardly notice it at first, until one afternoon we realize we are already living inside it.
Tori Nicole
Graceful Living, One Day at a Time.