Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I made it down to the Lincoln Memorial in time for sunrise on the first day of summer. Here’s what I saw:

2. The Supermoon was truly super and superb. The first shot is from 2 a.m. or so Sunday morning. The others are from moonrise Sunday evening:

3. The first peas and tomatoes from the garden.

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

This has to be quick. My alarm is set for 4 hours from now in the hopes I’ll get up in time to witness the first sunrise of summer. (I’d bet against me, too, if we were wagering, but I figured the worst that happens is that I ignore the alarm.)

So, with no additional fuss, the final three beautiful things of the spring:

1. We see an albino squirrel at a local park:

2. Foraging for mulberries in the trees along national park property (technically illegal) at night on our walk home. In the dark, we use the flashlight app on my phone to find ripe berries and to avoid picking the bugs that were nearly as plentiful.

3. We’ve witnessed three sunsets this week: from a picnic with Sarah at the Yards on Friday, from the Georgetown Waterfront park on Saturday, and from the ballpark tonight. The skies were lovely (particularly this evening’s), and the weather all you could hope for in the final week of spring.

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

Today was gloomy, but the storm clouds started to clear near dusk, offering up a glowing skyline to enjoy. Here are three more beautiful things from my past week:

1. Fireflies showed up this week. I passed a woman who was trying to catch one last night. (She was no more successful than I was over the weekend.)

2. I did something outstandingly stupid and hurt myself. After the tears and the not fainting and the cursing of why we only have ointments Rudi likes, I applied a Muppets-themed bandage and immediately felt less awful.

3. For his birthday last month, I gave Rudi concert tickets to see Of Monsters and Men and he kindly took me along with him to the show this week. Our grilled cheeses (hooray for a venue that offers veg-friendly options) were melted, they’ve added milkshakes since last summer, and the seats I’d procured were sheltered and on the aisle (which meant we didn’t have to sit in the mud from the previous day’s deluge and that I didn’t have a panic attack about personal space infringements). The opening acts were decent, and our Icelandic headliners — and the crowd — were full of positive energy. It was a good evening.

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

This week has been surprisingly quick. How is tomorrow Friday? Anyway, before we get there, we have to finish up Thursday, which means three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I return to a work conference to help pack up only to find the task already done. “The only thing left to do is to take a centerpiece.” A vase of golden flowers now sits on my desk.

2. The display set up next to the library’s front door includes Sarah Dessen’s new novel, which just came out on Tuesday.

3. I feel inordinately lazy, but want to take advantage of some of the strawberries in the fridge for dessert. Strawberry fool requires only four ingredients, takes ten minutes to prepare, and is delicious.

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

It’s getting late, so I want to quickly highlight three beautiful things from the past week and then head to bed. Here we go:

1. Friends invite me to join them for dinner. Holden, who’s 2 1/2, started singing the English translation of “Frere Jacques,” then moved on to “The Alphabet Song” and later “Twinkle, Twinkle.” For a while he was content to serenade us (Susan and Phillip tell me this is new), but then he commanded us to sing along. And we did. (For what it’s worth, I think we’d probably be a much happier society if we broke into song more often.)

2. This was the final week of spring volleyball. I hadn’t yet picked a summer league, but a teammate told me about one that plays at a local park (rather than across town or state lines), informed me of a Groupon expiring that night that would give me half off the cost, and suggested I see about being added to her team’s roster.

3. In addition to leaves of spinach, we also picked a head of bok choy and a quart of strawberries from the garden tonight.

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

Hey there! It’s Thursday night and the rain has finally arrived, after meteorologists having promised some for three days now. That means it’s a perfect time to look back at three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I suggested to Rudi that I might like to go up to Politics & Prose tonight because Eliot Schrefer, whose Endangered was one of my favorite books last year, was doing a reading. [More on the event over the weekend.] He offered to accompany me, so we followed up the bookstore visit with pizza at the Tenleytown outlet of Pete’s and ice cream cones from Max’s.

2. I have not been a huge fan of The Office, because I didn’t particularly enjoy the breakdown of the 4th wall (and, yes, I understand the show’s premise). But Rudi does and we have watched quite a bit of the show’s final season, allowing me enough fondness for it to want it to end well for all the characters. Last week’s feel-good finale wrapped things up in just the way I would have hoped.

3. The first strawberry crop of the season are three small, delicious, red berries.

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