I discovered this mural on Hughes Mews, a little dead-end alleyway in Foggy Bottom, while Rudi and I were out for a late afternoon/evening constitutional.

Mum made the mask, which matches an apron she made me for my birthday several years back. She also sent one made from the same material as the curtains in my brother’s and my childhood bedroom, plus one more in a navy material that I didn’t recognize (but that I would guess came from a suit she made herself).

When you live in the middle of the city, there is no going out of the house without a mask on. Or, at least, this is true if you are us. Cases in D.C. are on the rise and critical care beds in Montgomery County, Maryland, directly to the north of us, are full. Other people may feel cavalier about this information, but I’m not. Our sidewalks aren’t wide enough to give people the suggested six-foot berth they suggest is minimally acceptable, which pushes someone out into the street, and that’s if both of us are wearing masks. If you’re not wearing a mask, I assume you are disregarding other health recommendations and try to get even more space.

So, I’m grateful to Mum for the masks, because that stretches a little further how long we can go between loads of laundry. We are nearly out of quarters, so Rudi is going to see if he can find a bank that’s open where we can get a couple rolls on Monday morning. We had more than three rolls at the start of quarantine, because I suspected we’d need them; now I wish I’d gotten two more, since the closest bank to us has suspended its operations for the time being. And since everyone wants you to use a credit card right now, it’s not like I can just use the change I’ve gotten during the week. Although if we can’t find a bank, maybe Rudi could start paying for our weekly day-old bagels with a $10 and asking for a couple bucks in quarters with our change. They and the egg people at the market are the only people I know who still prefer cash.

Okay, I’ve rambled on enough. Time to wash the day’s dishes and go to bed!

I fell asleep while photos were uploading last night, so we’re getting my post this morning instead…

The garden doesn’t know the world is falling apart. It just knows that rain has been falling and the temperatures have been pleasant for stretching a little taller each day. So each time we show up at the plot, it looks like this:

The violets are done for the season, so Rudi and I yank out the leaves. Because they grow by rhizome, they will be fine and will bloom again next spring (or, even, in the right conditions, in the fall). But without this step, there will be no strawberries, because the violets have dwarfed them for the most part.

The dahlia and gerbera daisy that I planted a couple weeks ago are bright spots in the garden, and it’s obvious from looking that the slugs think they look nice, too:

The tallest of my peas have reached the top of the supports I could give them once it was obvious I might have to work with what I had, rather than being able to acquire more garden stakes. I threw the tomato cages in to pinch hit last month and the peas thought they made a great addition to my more traditional trellising:

And they showed their pleasure with this:

There will be peas within the month!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The first loaf of bread I made from our sourdough was decidedly … meh. But the next time I decided to try the bread machine recipe from King Arthur’s Flour, which as you might expect, was a winner. It has made excellent breakfasts this week.

2. Our bucket of strawberries lasted us until yesterday, when we used up both the last of them and the slightly soured heavy cream I had in the fridge in a fool. Before that, they graced ice cream and yogurt. I’ve ordered another bucket from this week’s farmers market and expect to finally get around to baking that shortcake.

3. This week’s tv watching brought a series finale for God Friended Me and a season finale for Star Trek: Picard. Both were fine, hitting their emotional marks and wrapping up loose storylines, and I was glad to have spent the time getting to know their characters.

How about you? What beautiful things are you finding as you make your way through this new landscape?

I have just one more evening of reading The Flatshare. I reached a moment of peace, where everyone was still relatively okay, and decided to put the book down for the night. I looked at the chunk of pages left, then ticked off five separate story elements left to be resolved, and decided that was too many for 50 pages and that it must be 75. Turns out it was 80, including the acknowledgements. I look forward to the fast resolution.

I’m also nearing the end on my audiobook, Size 12 Is Not Fat, by Meg Cabot. Former pop star turned assistant residence hall director Heather has figured out who the murderer must be, but she has to convince Cooper still, not to mention, the N.Y.C. police.

I’m not quite as close to finished with my second Smock Madness sock, but I have memorized the pattern, so that has to be something, right?

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

Some people have yard flamingos. Others have yard mammoths. (Their yard was not especially bigger than their decoration.)

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Top Ten Books I Wish I’d Read as a Child. Even though I always read a lot, I missed a bunch of classics. While I’m glad I’ve gotten to read them as an adult, I bet reading them as a kid would have been even better.

1. Matilda by Roald Dahl. The two Charlie & the Chocolate Factory books were the only Dahl I read as a kid, and, honestly, I liked the movie better. But obviously I would have loved this book about a girl reader. (Actually, I see now that this book didn’t come out until I was in high school, but I don’t care. I’m keeping it on the list.)
2. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by Bill Konigsburg. I honestly do not know how I missed this book as a kid. A favorite of many of my favorite people, it falls squarely in the sort of books I loved as a kid and also seems like the sort of book that my dad would have loved to share with us if he’d known about it at the time. Apparently the whole family missed out on museum-sneaking adventures. (Although, it should be noted that Grey Kitten and I had our own adventures at the Met when we were in high school, so it may be that I didn’t actually need additional inspiration.)
3. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Nowadays, when I see a book compared to The Westing Game, I know it is nearly guaranteed to fall into my wheelhouse. The possibility of magic, but maybe mystical magic and maybe just sleight of hand. Possibly a heist. Definitely subterfuge. And a payoff at the end.
4. The Swallows and the Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. This series of two families in early 20th-century England — one on vacation and one local — who have sailing and camping adventures all summer is criminally unknown in the U.S. It wasn’t until I was going to the U.K. for the first time and asking an online book group for recommendations that I was introduced to it. I still haven’t read all of them, but I collect them as I find them, the way I have with other childhood series I’ve loved. (There is a made-for-tv series that I was excited about right up until I learned they introduced new, extraneous adult characters and elements into the story.)
5. The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper. It took a while for me to grow into fantasy novels, but it seems like this might have moved the needle earlier had I read the series, particularly since the first book is set at Christmas and I do love me some holiday books. Probably, though, the second two books in the series would have been more my speed as a kid.
6. Half Magic series by Edward Eager. Karen gave me a couple books from this series as a going-away present when I moved, because I was really reluctant to leave and, I think, she sensed that I needed some inspiration to embrace the adventure I was about to embark upon. I am glad, therefore, that I didn’t read it as a kid because I got to read it when I needed it most.
7. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. Plucky girl (why are boys never plucky?) stories, particularly those set in England of yore, were the sort of books I loved as a kid. (See Frances Hodgson Burnett’s works.) This was probably a little more gothic than I would have chosen on my own, but I was more of a finisher as a kid and I think I would have enjoyed it once I got through it, particularly since the story wraps up very patly.
8. The Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren. I was definitely aware of these books growing up and they even made a movie based on it when I was in middle school, but somehow I missed their delight until much later. I have since dressed as Pippi for Halloween at least twice. (It requires my hair to be long enough to pull into braids. I waited to cut my hair one year until after Halloween just so I could play her.)
9. The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston. I liked stories where time is fluid at a certain fixed point, so I feel like I would have loved this series as a kid.
10. Momo by Michael Ende. This is another book Karen introduced me to. Ende is best known as the author of The Neverending Story (which people often better recognize from the film, rather than the novel), but his other books are equally charming, especially this one about the importance of spending time doing things we love. There’s a possibility some of the lessons might have gone over my head as a kid, but I suspect not.

How about you? Are there titles you’ve since read that you wished you could go back in time to hand to your earlier self?