Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Work let us go early in honor of the long holiday weekend. It was lovely to spend some extra time outside on a sunny afternoon.

2. The first fireflies of the season have shown up. They aren’t blinking en masse yet, but you’ll see a couple each evening in front yards and parks. Looking back through past Three Beautiful Things posts suggests to me that they appear right around now every year, but since they were a July insect where I grew up, I’m always so surprised to see them in the final days of May and first days of June.

3. Walking into Trader Joe’s on a Saturday evening and having there be no line. We’re in between sessions at the local university, so that had to have cut down some on the usual crowds there at that time.

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

Three beautiful things from this past week:

1. Three strawberries and three pods of peas — so sweet, Rudi says, they make you want to eat peas — from my garden.

2. Rudi’s recovery from hip replacement has been nothing short of miraculous. Seventeen days out from surgery and he’s gone from walker to crutches to cane to being told by his physical therapist to try to walk without his cane as much as he can. The surgeon who did his original repair saw him today and thought he was six weeks out based on how well he was doing. We expect there will be some setbacks, but in the meantime we’ll take this.

3. We took some time Saturday afternoon to enjoy to our local Greek festival. We listened to a traditional band, browsed imported wares, bought some baked goods, and ate freshly baked honey doughnuts and a light lupper (for those unfamiliar with the term, it’s a portmanteau of lunch and supper, not a Greek delicacy) and then strolled the two miles home.

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

If it’s Thursday, it’s time to look back on three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We Skyped with John, Nicole, and Juliet for the first time since they moved out west. John and Nicole look good, and Juliet has blossomed in these months since her first birthday, adding recognizable words, basic sign language, walking, and carrying things to her repertoire since we last saw her.

2. It’s been in the 90s the past two days, so yesterday at lunchtime I walked over to the park area with the splash fountain and stood in it and read for a bit.

3. A small group of friends gathered to celebrate Rudi’s birthday. We ate cold pizza (it’s a long story, but Turkish thugs prevented me from bringing it home quickly) and cupcakes and sang maybe the most atonal version of “Happy Birthday” I’ve ever heard. We really appreciated that they were able to come over to ring in his 44th with us.

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

Three beautiful things (belatedly) from my last week:

1. Rudi’s surgery was a success and he’s in significantly less pain than he was before his hip replacement. He’s home, and the cats and I all appreciated being able to curl up next to him in bed last night.

2. After a combination of irritating and exacerbating events over a long day, there were Samoas to eat, Sarah to reassure me, and a door to slam really, really hard.

3. The hospital where the surgeon Rudi wanted to use has operating privileges is 45 minutes away (as opposed to the four hospitals within 10 miles of our house). But they also have a healing garden, which is a far nicer and safer place to take a mid-operation nap than any of our urban hospitals can offer.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. On Monday, I took the day off from work, and Rudi and I drove to Delaware for the day to go to Bethany Beach. There was a steady 20 mph breeze, which meant that a fine shower of sand literally rained down upon us for several hours, covering our blanket — and us — with a layer of granules. Otherwise, we had a lovely day. We waded in the water, soaked up some sun (clear skies and low 80s), and ate fish sandwiches and Dairy Queen Blizzards (our favorite ice cream shop just off the boardwalk is still only open on the weekend at this point in the season) and doughnuts from a new-to-us chain. We stopped at a farm stand for strawberries and pickles. And we were home in time for our favorite tv show.

2. The purple irises at the park by our house have bloomed, filling the hillside verge with deep violets and greens.

3. We finally got to our first baseball game of the season on Friday when the Mets came to town. It was a pleasant evening for a game under the lights and, despite a shaky showing by the bullpen, the Mets pulled off a win. (We also went today for a day game with Sarah and one of her friends, in which the Nationals held off the Arizona Diamondbacks.)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I take a long weekend and head to Connecticut for the first time since Christmas. I eat pizza, make scones, catch up on sleep, and visit with my folks and a couple friends. Completely worth the 20 hours of solo driving.

2. Rudi returns from a trip to the compost pile at our garden with the final half dozen violets of the spring and reports of flowering strawberry plants in our plot.

3. Although we’re terrible at remembering to go to art shows before they close, we make it to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at our neighborhood museum days before it goes. Somehow I didn’t take a photo of the ice skater, which was my favorite of his works, but I did capture the draft and final work for an ad for a brand of bike chain:

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