Dog Days of Summer
An opportunity to rest and reflect. To see clearly. To seek truth.
“Dog Days are approaching; you must, therefore, make both hay and haste while the Sun shines, for when old Sirius takes command of the weather, he is such an unsteady, crazy dog, there is no dependence upon him.” –The Old Farmer’s Almanac, 1817
The Dog Days of Summer —It’s not a reference to a song by Florence and the Machine but a way of looking at the middle of summer. Growing up my parents would reference the dog days of summer. I always assumed it was because it was so hot that dogs just laid around. Summer here is just so hot and humid that it made sense to me. After all, I just wanted to be in the pool the whole time.
This time from July 3rd until August 11th is called the dog days because Sirius, the dog star, shines overhead and is the brightest star in the sky, not including our Sun. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Majoris—the “Greater Dog”—which is where Sirius gets its official name, Alpha Canis Majoris.
In our house, the beginning of the dog days marks the beginning of the arrival of the ants. No, that’s not a typo. Not “aunts” but, yes, “ants.” They arrive in the kitchen, and sometimes the main bathroom. They march around, and we shift the way we interact with those spaces.
For example, honey. It’s no longer dispensed in a lovely honey jar from a French potter. The honey remains in the jar. Cookies are no longer stored in the blue and white cookie jar. They’re in a mason jar. One missed step with honey or cookie, and the ants have a feast.
Ant season doesn’t last long. Sometimes its over by the end of July, but most of the time it lasts until early August. A gentle reminder that there are more ants than there are us in this space, and that they were here first.
There is a lot of folklore surrounding the dog days. It’s a time that some believe is dangerous to people and animals. Some of the wisdom I have heard or read about the dog days include:
Dogs and snakes are more likely to bite
During this time snakes are blind and will strike at anything
Dogs and men are more likely to go mad during these days
Eggs become addled or hatch crazy chickens
The morning dew is poisonous to open wounds
Don’t go fishing - fish go deep in the river during the dog days and refuse to eat
Sores and wounds won’t heal during the dog days
Stay out of the rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, and puddles during the dog days
Ghosts are more active
Wear your baseball hat backward to keep away bad fortune and ghosts.
Always put your right sock on first during dog days, or you’ll fall and break your leg
I love words of wisdom like this because they always seems to be based in experience and local knowledge. My dad always shook his shoes out before putting them on. Turns out, growing up in a place with a high prevalence of fire ants and other insects led him to always check his shoes before putting them on. He carried this practice with him for his whole life.
For the dog days, some of the wisdom is based in fact, just like my dad’s practice with his shoes. Snakes biting and being “blind” has to do with the cloudy lubricant that covers a snake’s eyes when it sheds its skin. That is a true fact. The lubricant really does affect the snake’s vision. Snakes shed throughout the year, but I don’t know if they shed more in the heat.
Some of the wisdom is based on health and safety. In the middle of summer it seems logical to gravitate towards any body of water you can find. The drive to cool off is high. But, there was believed to be a heightened risk of illness if you delved into any of those waters during the dog days. This was likely due to a combination of the heat, stagnant water, environmental conditions such as algal blooms, and pre-modern water treatment and sanitation.
There are still concerns under certain conditions about the health risk associated with enjoying the waters in streams, ponds, lakes, and rivers. Just yesterday, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) issued a warning reminding people to be cautious around freshwater algae mats. These mats are more abundant in hot weather. And, they can be a health hazard for dogs and other animals. They are less of a risk to humans, as people are not likely to ingest mats. Yet, the DNR warned adults and children to avoid contact with skin.
There are also the crazy weather systems that move through in summer. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, derechos. Even now, it’s always important to check water and weather conditions if before heading out.
Some of the wisdom seems to be based simply on being miserable, uncomfortable, and discombobulated in the hot, humid weather. Everyone: dogs, men, chickens, fish, even ghosts, as the list above suggests.
I have no idea where the wisdom about the sock and the baseball hat come from!
For me, the dog days are the corollary to the deepest and darkest of winter. We’ve just had the Summer Solstice. The days are now inching towards darkness. Yet, I feel my energy slowly moving towards an uptick. I want to start moving more. I want to start doing more. There is time for that after the dog days.
Right now, it’s a time for respite and peace. Taking it a bit more gently than last month. The garden is at a point where it is growing and requires little from me except watering and harvesting. So its a good time for me to take a pause and reflect and reevaluate.
In the midst of summer, the opportunity arises to see clearly, to see truth.
Winter Solstice brings a time of inner contemplation. A time of rest, reflection, reconnecting, relearning, and renewal with our deep inner self and our place in the web of life.
Summer Solstice is a time for celebration. A time to gather and share the longest time of daylight in our year. A time to celebrate warmth and life. To celebrate the sun. To take joy in all the growing things of the world. To explore our fullest potential.
Summer embodies the element of fire. This is a perfect time to balance the fire with rest and reflection. In the midst of summer, is the opportunity to see clearly, to see truth.
There are two questions driving my reflections:
Where am I now compared to where I was in the deepest darkest of winter?
What has been my experience writing about the lessons learned from my grandmothers?
The more interesting question is the second one. When I decided to write about one grandmother each month in 2025 I wasn’t sure what would unfold. I only had ideas for three grandmother’s stories and I wasn’t sure I would have enough to say.
As has been the pattern with so much of the process of uncovering my family’s history and stories, once I started looking deeper into the lives of each grandmother, the information just came out of the woodwork - like it wanted to be found. The identification of each successive grandmother has been intuitive, too. At some point in the preceding month, a name emerges, and with it a topic. And so, I write.
As I write and research each grandmother’s story I find myself moving from looking at dates and people to really asking questions about her life. I strive to create an image of the full person. To reach out, touch her story, and discover how it fits into the larger landscape of her world.
To do that, I use historical resources such as journals, diaries, newspapers, maps, statistics, court cases, town histories, state histories, general histories that align with the time period. For every piece of information I find, I ask “why,” “how,” and “what” in an effort to push the answer a bit deeper. Why did she take that step? How did that fit into life in her place? What was happening in the country in which she lived? And, on until her lived experience begins to materialize.
The most important outcome has been an acknowledgement that they lived. Have you ever seen the movie Ever After starring Drew Barrymore and Angelica Huston? It’s based upon the Cinderella story and, so, the expected conclusion is “They lived happily ever after.” However, the conclusion in the movie is, “And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point….is that they lived.” That’s how I feel about each of the grandmothers: they lived.
I have written about a total of seven grandmothers so far:
Elizabeth — navigating her fluid legal status as a woman in the 19th century.
Nancy — sustaining her family’s well-being in times of multiple challenges.
Phoebe — continually confronting new beginnings in the late 18th century.
Hilda — finding her way in a world that seemed to be unraveling in the mid-20th century.
Maria — a 1695 marriage contract in Germany.
Elizabetha — a 17 year old immigrant from Mramorak to Baltimore in 1901.
+ 1 additional — Letitia. Letitia’s story was told within her daughter Nancy’s story. A farmer in her own right, she faced multiple challenges while taking care of her family.
Each of these grandmothers walked on this Earth. They lived every day lives. They were impacted by the cultural traditions, the religious traditions, the legal traditions that swirled around their lives. They dealt with wars, conflicts, migration, economic instability, epidemics, environmental changes, social movements, and death. They dealt with it all, in the best way they could. They were courageous. They weren’t perfect. They were flawed. They were human.
They lived.
I have been able to unveil their stories. Stories that were silenced. Stories that were seen as “less than” and unimportant. Stories that I will never fully know because they have, in some cases, been suppressed and wiped from the historical record.
Stories now known, influence the way I think about the grandmother’s lived experience. Some I’ve had to take in, confront, and, as one of my teacher’s teachers says: “Compost that **it.” Some I’ve just been able to sit with the recognition that there is so much to learn from them.
I do wonder about their relationships with other women. In only one of the stories (Hilda in the mid-20th century) did I find my grandmother, her sisters, and their mother relying on each other, even when their husbands were around. Supporting each other through the depression, war, divorces, and deaths. This feels like a modern story, one that I know only because it’s so close to the present. It’s easier to access the personal and historical memory necessary to see that interaction.
The preponderance of the stories have been about the women in relation to the men — fathers, husbands, brothers — in their lives. Did they find strength with other women? Sisters? Aunts? Sisters-in-Law? Cousins? Neighbors? Did they turn to each other for support? Did they spin and weave together? Did the cook together? Did they share stories and songs? I wish I knew. May be those answers will emerge in the second half of the year.
I’m thankful to the dog days of summer. I may be a sweaty mess, with my hair piled high on top of my head, most of the time. But, this season of fire, deep heat and humidity, brings with it an opportunity for slowness. Just as the time after the Winter Solstice, the dog days provides an opportunity to rest and reflect. To see clearly. To seek truth.
What is nourishing you during the dog days of summer?
5 Notes
Five final notes on how I’m keeping cool, and what I’m doing, making, reading, and practicing in yoga.
Keeping Cool: Living seasonally means knowing the qualities of each season and adjusting one’s food and lifestyle accordingly. For July this means, integrating cooling practices. Going slower and more gently during the hottest part of the day, cooling breathing practices, and cooling foods and beverages. Here are some of my ways:
Restorative foot soaks — This is my absolute favorite! My feet take a beating in summer. Walking and hiking. Gardening. Going barefoot. In turn, I do my best to take care of them with a restorative and cooling foot soak. Fill a foot basin or tub with lukewarm water (this is important — lukewarm instead of hot water); add rose petals, a few drops of sandalwood, rose, or vetiver essential oil, and a pinch of Epsom salt. Dry feet and then oil feet with cooling oils like jojoba, coconut, or sunflower.
Misting my face and neck with rose hydrosol throughout the day.
Lots of linen clothes and lightweight, flowy cotton yoga pants.
Lots of water with cooling and hydrating fruits and veggies like berries and cucumbers. Sometimes I change it up and use coconut water as the base.
Eating foods that cool the body such as leafy greens, cucumbers, watermelons, basmati rice.
Enjoying herbal tea blends that include cooling herbs like hibiscus, lemon balm, peppermint, rose.
Other refreshing beverages (see recipe below).
Fruit Popsicles (see recipe below).
Doing: This year I created a five day summer camp experience for our oldest. Our oldest misses the summer rituals of been a little kid, especially summer camp. To help her feel that summer camp magic again, I decided to make a grown up summer camp for her this year. The experience is structured around the energy of the week. For example, Monday is Moon Day. It’s a day to take it slow, tap into intuition, meditation. On this day she will be setting the stage for the rest of the week. There’s lots of time built in to go slow and relax. Sankalpa writing, journaling, popsicle making, and yoga. Tuesday is Mars Day. This is a more intense weekday: empowerment, bravery, strength, follow your passion, create. Morning pages, working on the three generations blanket we’re making, making and playing with bubble wands and bubble solution, and yoga. Each day of camp adapts to the day of the week. Lots of time to rest, reflect, create, and move is built into each day. I’m so excited for her to get started! Did I mention I love having a 20 year old child that still loves the idea of summer camp?
Making: The fresh strawberry season has become so short where I live. When I was a kid, we’d get plats of strawberries and make jam. Enough jam to get us through the winter. I was able to continue this tradition up through the first years of the 2000s. Now, strawberry season seems to be over before it begins.
During the dog days we love having refreshing beverages available, especially ones made with local fruits and berries and homegrown herbs. We add herbs such as peppermint, spearmint, sage, thyme, red raspberry leaves to room temperature and sun teas.
Strawberry Lemonade:
Place four or five handfuls of fresh strawberries in a gallon container. Crush berries using a wooden spoon and then cover with one gallon of cool water. Swirl the berries around for a few minutes. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth or fine mesh strain. Be mindful of straining to remove the fine hairs of the berries. Sweeten with honey and add to lemonade. Chill before serving.
Popsicles are a favorite, too, and are so simple:
3.5 cups coconut water
3.5 cups sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons honey
Place ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. Pour into popsicle molds and place in freezer for 4 hours or overnight.
Reading: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt It’s the story of a woman’s relationship with a giant Pacific octopus. Need I say more?
Practicing in Yoga: In the morning, while everyone is still asleep and the morning sunlight is emerging so it is not too hot yet, I do a few rounds of sun salutations to greet the day. My main practice occurs later in the day since it is linked with our summer camp experience. By this point, the day is hot and sticky. I crave gentle practices that will relax my nervous system, create spaciousness, and even cool me down a bit. My practice right now, looks like this:
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