Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I have seen these guys playing in the park by the garden once before. They seem to have a weekly pool noodle football game. As best as we can tell, it’s a variation on flag football, but with less touching, presumably for sake of COVID-19. Either way, it amuses me greatly to see these guys running around waving their pool noodles in the air.

2. At my request, Rudi picked up Halloween-hued fairy lights from Target. We’ve only strung one of the three strands so far, but the orange, green, and purple lights make the early darkness more bearable.

3. Sarah and I refused to let the pandemic keep us from our annual fall tradition of picking apples and buying cider doughnuts.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

I realized as I was walking to the garden in rapidly fading daylight that I was not going to make it to the park to read or knit tonight, so I borrowed a treebox to stage a shot for you. The celosia was not up to the task of holding up Sal & Gabi Break the Universe, but managed my sock just fine.

I started the sock last fall and put it aside when it was clear I wasn’t going to finish it for Halloween. So it was super exciting to pull out most of a complete leg last week. As you can see, I’m already a good distance down the foot. I do not anticipate missing the holiday again this year.

Head to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and knitting.

I’m just back in from going the long way to collect the mail. Yes, it is the middle of the night. Yes, it is raining. Yes, it is in the 50s.

I threw on my winter raincoat to go out. Normally, that would be overkill, but I was wearing shorts.

After a moment’s consideration, I slipped my mask on around my wrist, rather than over my face.

And, then I headed outside, hoping to encounter no one. I made a whole loop around the block — four complete (short) blocks — before stopping at our mailbox, mask still unneeded.

It was glorious. I truly envy those of you who can just collect your mail without having to consider a face covering.

I was stymied by an ice-breaker question asked today during a meeting: What have you added to your life since the pandemic began?

I think some of this may be why I’m struggling again lately. While I settled on the answer of growing zucchini, I’m not really sure it’s true. I can point to plenty of subtractions in my life. It’s all I see right now, with the threat of more looming just over the horizon. But all my decision-making is based on knowing what I stand to lose could be so much worse if I’m cavalier with my choices.

But maybe, like with squash, I need to find the small additions in my life. They won’t balance the equation against what has been taken away. But they might be enough that I can find peace.

And so, too, it is with my long weekend. Turns out four days is really the minimum number I needed. But I’m going to schedule another one in a couple weeks, when the foliage starts to turn, so Rudi and I can take a drive up to Skyline Drive.

And I have full weeks off at Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. (Wear a mask, people, and stay away from crowds. I’d really like to be able to see my family before the end of the year.)

I didn’t get everything done this weekend that I’d hoped to do, but there was gardening (and the surprise zucchini!), a bike ride, a little shopping, the beach, knitting, apple picking, pizza, ponies, several movies (including the charming Enola Holmes on Netflix), National Book Festival sessions on YouTube, cider doughnuts, political postcard writing, fairy lights, a visit with a friend, a tomato tart, painted toenails, and ice cream, among other things. Which now that I list them out does sound like a pretty full four days.

I have a new boss starting tomorrow, a vacancy filled that I’m hopeful will eventually mean giving me a little breathing space to actually start getting work done again during business hours, rather than just managing everyone else’s work. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Today, a surprise in the garden!

We’ve spent all summer nurturing a squash plant that seemed to grow blossoms, but never actual squash. Then, last week, Rudi saw a zucchini starting to form:

Today, I discovered this growing beneath it:

We grew a surprise zucchini — our first in more than a decade of gardening!