I am bone tired, but I still have a heap of dishes to wash, so this will be a quick list of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I head out on our bikes along the C&O Canal towpath, hoping to see ducklings. We see some, as well as three families of goslings in various states of growth.

2. Saturday was E.U. Day, so many of the union’s members held open houses at their embassies to celebrate. We stopped by Austria for drinks, by Slovakia for food and folk dancing, and by Hungary to see a dog.

3. Rudi obligingly had a round birthday today, so I decided to mark it by throwing him a surprise party. Friends from all aspects of our D.C. lives came together in uncommunicativeness so that when he walked into the room, he really was surprised.

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

Posting slacks off when life gets a little crazy. It should calm down some next week, so hopefully I’ll sit down at the home keyboard a bit more often. However, it’s Thursday, and we try never to miss a Thursday (even if on the rare occasion it must be marked on a Friday instead). Here, to celebrate this week’s, are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Howard County was filled with fields like this:

2. A dapper, bearded older man rounds the corner. He’s dressed in a three-piece pin-stripe suit, with a tall bowler hat on his head and a walking stick topped with a silver lion in his hand.

3. A half-dozen men in their 20s are outside the fence playing a spirited game of cricket, with a deflated orange traffic cone as one of the wickets. I don’t understand the game, but they declare me an honorary player when I track down and retrieve for them the ball they inadvertently hit into the garden. (If I hadn’t been pressed for time, I would have stayed to watch for a longer while.)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There’s a single cupcake left at the software training.

2. The first strawberries of the season at today’s farmers market.

3. A nice weekend visiting my family includes pool, vegetarian dinners, and lunch and milkshakes with Karen.

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

Today marks 8 years (less a day) of writing weekly three beautiful things posts. With a few others sprinkled in from time to time, this marks the 445th time I’ve recorded things I’ve found beautiful here. I’ve had other features on the blog — sharing music, knitting, cat photos, and book reviews — but none of them have elicited the same dedication as this one. I’d like to think it’s because it’s such a nice way to share word-fashioned snapshots of my life — and that it makes me more mindful of positive things around me.

Thanks, as always, to Clare, who inspired the original post and whose daily meditations continue to be enjoyed so many years later.

Here are three from the past week:

1. John and Nicole pull off a near-perfect wedding with touches that reflect the two of them as individuals and as a couple. There are Chinese containers containing noodly appetizers, lemonade, and local beer; vases of yellow flowers and tea lights bedeck the tables; vegan and meaty food share the menu; and the favors are heart-shaped tea strainers. Nicole’s younger sister became ordained so she could officiate the ceremony, and her words of and for the couple are filled with love and mirth. Nicole trips over her lines, and John can’t take his eyes off her. Toasts are offered. Dancing (and drinking) lasts until late into the night, when the wedding party (and a few of us random stragglers) parade out of the mansion and up the street trailing decorations, cake, and chuppah.

2. Five days later and I’m still finding sparkles on me, making them even more pervasive than beach sand. Glitter may have become part of my DNA. (That would be an awesome genetic modification, by the way.)

3. Giddy glee pours through me until it feels necessary to twirl like an ice skater or Wonder Woman to share some of it with the world. So I put my bag down, make sure no one is close enough for me to run into them, and, spreading my arms wide, gyre until I’m so dizzy I can’t see and laugh until I’m out of breath.

Now, how about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

This seems like a really good time to look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. The soil in the part of the garden that Rudi’s been working on looks like he ran it through a sieve. No fibrous roots or lumps, like I’ve left in my part of the garden.

2. Tulips on my way to work in candy colors.

3. I take a solo spin up to our local indie bookstore for their monthly trivia night and join the team of two strangers from Northern Virginia. We come in fifth (or so), and although I am mildly ashamed that I couldn’t name Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick (I blanked!), I did correctly identify the cover of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the author of The Fight Club, Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” the reason for the nickname “The Bean Belt,” and the commonality between a parliament, an exultation, and a murder.

How about you? What beautiful things caught your attention this week?

It’s a glorious spring Thursday in D.C. that began with cherry blossoms, had a farmers market lunch in the middle, and will conclude with our first baseball game of the season. If that’s not enough here are three other beautiful things from my past week:

1. A hibiscus-mint iced tea after biking without a water bottle on a 90-degree day.

2. New flip flops for the first day of sandal weather and a new cherry red dress for the first Nats game.

3. Scrubbing the dirt from my fingernails and hands after hours of working at the garden.

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