Many foods are in season in the summertime, so enjoy the fresh and vibrant farmer’s markets bounty as much as you can. Summer is a great season to practice buying local: you might challenge yourself to a local food week and buy exclusively local, in season produce, meats and eggs. With heat in full blast, many of the fresh foods of summer are sour and cooling; they help your body regulate temperature. Think: okra, all berries, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces.

For gardeners, the heat of the season ignites decomposition, which can enrich your soil. The combination of heat, moisture, air and abundant green matter – think grass, beanstalks you’ve picked clean, or weeds – offer just the right conditions for organic matter to break down into soil. Compost piles will “cook” faster, so this can be an optimal time to build your first compost pile. As spring comes to a close, or if you’re planning to let your garden bed rest after summer’s harvests, covering your garden bed in a blanket of mulch, straw or a cover crop will protect the biology hard at work in the soil, helping it replete for the season to come.

In this abundant season, think ahead to darker days. What can you create and preserve to capture the energy of summer, and the nourishment it offers? Can your tomatoes for sauce in the winter; peppers and alliums can infuse vinegar for Fire Cider (you’ll thank yourself come cold season). Berries and stone fruits might become jam. Olive oil infused with fresh herbs like rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme and peppers will keep you warm, and protected against infections in cooler months. Along the way bitter lettuces and greens like dandelion can create some internal movement where stagnancy from late summer kicks in.

Nourished from the rains of spring, indeed this is a season of abundance. Abundant light, abundant gardens and earth. The brightness of this season infuses our days, brings joy and lightness to our routines. Progressing into July we feel the heat in our bodies, we give in to rest, slowing down to seek shade under trees or water to cool down in. Along the South, the humidity is heavy and the waterbanks low, out West, the forests are thirsty and we must take care and tend to fires to prevent them growing. With the energy of June and July still ringing, the heat calls us to slow down in August. We might reflect on our travels of the season and what they meant to us.

Summer is also a time to honor liberation. Historically, the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains region held the Sun Dance during the summer. Existing in variations according to tribal communities and ceremony keepers, the Sun Dance was one of many ritual reciprocity ceremonies of native peoples that affirmed the kinship of all relatives: human, animal, plant, earth, and cosmic. The Indian Act of 1895 banned this ceremony, amongst countless others until 1951, when the Act was reversed.

Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people, and for some Black communities, Black August is a time that honors the sacrifices made by a long legacy of freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement; inviting in community rituals, political education, and reflection on one’s political purpose.

The brightness of summer months are a beautiful backdrop to cultivate a gratitude practice that might serve you in the fall. What are you grateful to the earth for in this sunny season? Where do you wish to see more light in your ecosystem? Write it down daily, maybe weekly, to revisit in darker days.