From Rudi’s and my bike ride down to see the cherry blossoms by the Tidal Basin and Potomac River a couple weekends ago. They were past peak, which means that there are more leaves than blossoms, so it wasn’t that ethereal pink cloud look you get during the best period. And as we were down along the river, the drizzle kicked in and the cold crept down, so we’re enjoying ourselves less and less as the ride went on, but were determined to get the most out of it that we could, since we were already going to be wet and chilled regardless.
April 24, 2018
April 23, 2018
Saturday:
I spent some time sitting outside at a coffeehouse with my reading.
I spent a little time at the garden, where my peas are now half a hand tall and where one of the strawberry plants I bought last week now has two white berries on them. My violets are flourishing and I picked a nosegay to bring home. They smelled so lovely!
I spent the evening chatting with Karen and got to say hi to both her kids who shared with me stories of their trip to the carnival.
Sunday:
Today Rudi and I went to the farmers market early, hoping to collect both asparagus and a free compost bin. We were successful at both and procured several other items, including greenhouse tomatoes, milk, soft wheat flour, and leeks.
After a leisurely breakfast, he vacuumed before heading off on a bike ride with a friend, and I did laundry prior to venturing over to the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill, where they were celebrating Billy Shakes’ 454th birthday. I’d never been to the building before, so I was particularly excited to visit, because, well … library!
The building is beautiful and is divided into long galleries, of which this is the central one. There’s a quartet performing at the far end of this room, a play reading going on in the theater, an exhibit on early books, and trivia and costume dress-up in the back reading room. Outside, there were kids’ activities and, at the end of the event, Queen Elizabeth I and the Eastern High School marching band arrived (separately) to lead us in singing “Happy Birthday” to her most loyal subject. She then cut the cake using a rapier and then staff passed out slices (of sheet cake, rather than the fancy cake that may or may not have been a prop).
Even Puck got in on the celebration! Or maybe he was really delighted to see this bird.
Rudi and I concluded the evening with risotto made with ramps and asparagus and mushrooms, strawberry ice cream, and tv. I finished my book after he went to bed, painted my toenails (I’m saving the fingernails for tomorrow night), and will soon head to bed.
It was a busy weekend.
April 22, 2018
PBS is launching a show next month about books, The Great American Read. I don’t get PBS over the air and don’t particularly care for the show’s host, Meredith Viera, but I do like to read books and to talk about books, so I suppose it’s possible.
But in the meantime, let’s look at the list. PBS says they did a phone poll asking people what their favorite novel was and that list was then narrowed down by an advisory panel. They condensed series to a single entry and limited authors to only one title. So take the list as what you will, but in the meantime, let’s look at what we’ve read from it and what we’re excited to read:
[I have bolded the titles I’ve read. I’ve used *** to mark titles I own but have not read and †to mark other titles already on my TBR list.)
I’m bolding titles I’ve read.
1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole***
3. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irvingâ€Â
4. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
6. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
8. Alex Cross Mysteries (series) by James Patterson
9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrollâ€Â
10. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieâ€Â
11. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
12. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
13. Another Country by James Baldwin
14. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
15. Beloved by Toni Morrison
16. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
17. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
18. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DÃÂazâ€Â
19. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by C.S. Lewis
24. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
25. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
26. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
27. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumasâ€Â
28. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevskyâ€Â
29. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
30. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantesâ€Â
32. Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos
33. Dune by Frank Herbert
34. Fifty Shades of Grey (series) by E.L. James
35. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
36. Foundation (series) by Isaac Asimov
37. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
38. Games of Thrones (series) by George R.R. Martin
39. Ghost by Jason Reynolds
40. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson***
41. The Giver by Lois Lowry
42. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
43. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
44. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
45. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
46. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
47. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
48. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swiftâ€Â
49. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
50. Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
51. Hatchet (series) by Gary Paulsen
52. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 53. The Help by Kathryn Stockett 54. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 55. The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins†56. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy 57. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead 58. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison†59. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 60. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan 61. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton 62. Left Behind (series) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins 63. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 64. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 65. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 66. Looking for Alaska by John Green†67. The Lord of the Rings (series) by J.R.R. Tolkien 68. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 69. The Martian by Andy Weir 70. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden*** 71. Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt 72. Moby Dick by Herman Melville†73. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 74. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcÃÂa Márquez†75. Outlander (series) by Diana Gabaldon 76. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton 77. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 78. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan 79. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 80. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 81. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 82. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 83. The Shack by William P. Young 84. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 85. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut 86. The Stand by Stephen King 87. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway†88. Swan Song by Robert McCammon 89. Tales of the City (series) by Armistead Maupin†90. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 91. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe†92. This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti 93. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 94. Twilight Saga (series) by Stephenie Meyer 95. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy†96. The Watchers by Dean Koontz 97. The Wheel of Time (series) by Robert Jordan†98. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls 99. White Teeth by Zadie Smith*** 100. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë I think that’s 39 read and another 25 on my TBR list in one form or another. Are there any I didn’t highlight you think I should?
April 21, 2018
My plans for this weekend are small. I need to put things in the living room back in place after the flooding rearrangement, because currently there’s nowhere to put the laundry rack and I need clean clothes.
I would like to stop by the garden to see if anything’s growing and to harvest some more violets.
I plan to knit the heel of my Posey sock.
I want to buy milk and asparagus at the farmers market, a wallet online, and beads somewhere since apparently my local bead shop doesn’t think bright pink beads in the size called for in my pattern is something they should carry.
I’d like to finish a book or two and watch a video or two, but the former is going to come down to wakefulness and the latter to Rudi’s availability.
I’d like to go to the free events happening at the Folger Shakespeare Library or at the Tudor House on Sunday, since I haven’t been to either one.
I want to paint my nails. The green is mostly gone.
I have to get some sleep and spend lots of time outside.
April 20, 2018
When I walked out of the house this morning, the redbud on the corner was practically iridescent against the storm grey sky. I didn’t do a great job of capturing its grandness (although you can see the rest of my efforts on Flickr), but this is the best of the bunch. And here are three more beautiful things I wanted to share from my past week:
1. We flooded in the torrential rains of Sunday night, but I had thought that might be the case and had prepared by moving the things I thought likeliest to be damaged. I got up at one point to check, discovered the incursion, and moved everything else (that had been inconvenient to move if we weren’t going to get wet) and by morning merely had to dispose of sodden newspaper and launder sopping wet towels.
2. Danny texted to say his writing group’s collection of short stories was available on Amazon. There really is nothing quite like seeing one of your dearest people’s name on a book cover. (I know I’ve mentioned it before. I’ll probably mention it again. If any of you publish a book, I’ll share it, too.)
3. While I did not find a wallet last weekend, I did buy jewelry — bracelets — at the boutique that’s going out of business next month. One is fun, with Art Deco-style cats, and the other pretty, with colorful glass and pounded silver made by a couple in North Carolina, according to the store’s owner.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
April 19, 2018
I am stalled on several knitting projects, having not yet bought the beads I need to move on with the hat and having found a fatal flaw in the green stripey socks that will require ripping back to before the heel flap. So here I show you the knitting project I’ve already done the ripping on that’s ready to move forward. I bought some grey yarn to make heels from, so now I can get knitting on my Posey socks once more.
I spent the weekend reading Obsidio, so that’s one 600+-page book down and now I can finish Strange the Dreamer, which will let me check off the second one on my list. Both Sing, Unburied, Sing and We Were Eight Years in Power are both overdue, so I need to wrap them both up and get them back to the library. I’ve enjoyed listening to Norse Mythology, but it’s going to expire from my Overdrive app before I finish it, so I’ll need to wait to conclude my audiobook experience, but Crocodile on the Sandbank, Flat Broke with Two Goats, and The Bear and the Nightingale are all checked out to me for faunal listening. Finally, I’m reading my friend’s book, Kidnapped! Abductions in Space, Time, and Fantasy by Danny Atwood et al, on my laptop because that’s what you do when loved ones publish ebooks. I don’t particularly love short story collections and find they work best for me if I space the stories out with a couple days in between them, so that’s what I’m doing. So far, I’m liking it and recommend it if you do like short stories, particularly in the fantasy/sci fi vein.
Head over to As Kat Knits to read what else people are reading and knitting.