pretty little things from 06.08.25

summer is (finalllyyy) in the air

Jun 09, 2025

It’s been a wild, wild week! Consider this your “stop and smell the roses” of the internet. A couple poems, songs, things I enjoyed, and other summery (lover-y) aesthetics I collected last week—I hope you enjoy them as much as I did 🍊

First, some lovely things I discovered on Substack this week:

This beautiful 1950s reading light *swooon* —

This wonderful oil painting by Erika Lee Sears —

These incredible NYC subway drawings —

Lastly, some pretty little budget meals just in time for summer —

A coupla poems ツ

Walt Whitman was on my mind this week thanks to a thrifted 1950’s copy of Leaves of Grass I picked up. This is one of my favorites:

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This is the hour, O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best:
Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

A Clear Midnight, Walt Whitman (1881)

If You Were Coming In the Fall, Emily Dickenson (1890)

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If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls---
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse---

If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, til my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman's Land,

If certain, when this life was out---
That yours and mine, should be
I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity---

But, now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee---
That will not state--- its sting.

This may contain: an orange and white photo with the words being alive is the special occasion on it

I kept revisiting this piece all week. It ended up making an appearance in my latest piece, “flirting with the world,” but thought I’d share it here too. It’s just soooo pretty.

free dopamine :)

Currently on repeat —

Some thoughts on the economics of flowers —

Why do flowers exist? I mean, really—why did evolution bother with beauty? The practical answer involves pollination and reproduction, but that doesn't explain why my chest flutters when I see a field of wild poppies (that’s the California girl in me). Somewhere in the long history of life on Earth, beauty became a survival strategy, and now here we are, descendants of creatures who were successfully seduced by color and fragrance and form. We are the inheritors of billions of years of aesthetic decisions made by bees and butterflies and wind.