Multinational Betas

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?
Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes.

Watermelon Feta Salad

1. Chop chunks of watermelon into bite-sized pieces, either into a serving bowl or your own bowl.


2. Add crumbled feta to taste.


3. Crack black pepper to taste over the whole thing

That's it! Flavors that shouldn't go together but absolutely do. Couldn't be more simple!

Challenge #2

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like

I was born in the summer. Summer, to me, is always about freedom. I'm sure this sense is a result of being a student for the normal amount of years, and then being a public school teacher for 18 years. Summer means no alarm clock, no schedule, eating weird foods on a whim, watching thunderstorms roll in. Summer is the deep breath before the plunge into the energetic whirlwind of autumn. Even though I'm no longer teaching, I've turned my alarm off this summer because the sun comes up early enough here in the north that I wake up in plenty of time to get my day going.

When my parents lived in the Low Country, summer meant piling the kids in the car for a two-day road trip to their little island. Laying on the dock and watching the Milky Way wheel overhead. Sitting on my parents' screen porch having late, leisurely dinners, talking for hours, killing at least a bottle of wine, while the kids lazed around on the couches, post-dinner, exhausted from hours at the beach.

Before that, my parents lived in the mountains -the old hills crowned in glory, the Appalachians. Summers then, my childhood summers, meant wading in the creeks, catching crawdads, hiking to forgotten graveyards, scaring each other around campfires. Hours at the public pool, eating ourselves sick on candy and lounging on towels, before jumping in the cold water every so often to play Marco Polo or Red Rover. Or chicken fights when we were older, getting the boys we liked to pick us up. My parents sent us to summer camp - two weeks out of the summer that felt like ultimate freedom, doing things and experiencing things that no one who wasn't there could possibly understand.

I hated summer in Texas, but moving north has reminded me how much I love this season.