Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The trichomes on one of my garden’s tomato stalks catch the low angle of the evening’s sunbeams and shine as if fairies had strung them up to the light the way to the butterfly ball. (Trichomes are the hairlike structures on plants’ stalks and leaves. They serve a variety of purposes, and botanists theorize on tomatoes they discourage predators. And An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball was a picture book I grew up with by the renowned Jane Yolen that combined counting and beautiful illustrations by Jane Breskin Zalben.)

2. A woman stops by the park with two dogs. One is an adorable 10-week-old puppy and the other an adult Australian shepherd. She throws a Frisbee across the field, and the older dog tears past, leaping in the air to catch the disc and racing with it back up the field to lay it at her feet. The dog’s athleticism wows everyone in the park, as we all look up from our meals, books, and conversations to marvel at its aerial feats. The puppy is content to trot a few steps after its friend, stand for a second, and then trot back with it to their person.

3. We have a new air conditioner. Our previous one behaved temperamentally for two weeks last month — working for a couple hours and then beeping incessantly until you unplugged it — and then, just before the heatwave commenced two weeks ago, it refused to do anything at all. Which, oddly enough, is exactly what Rudi and I felt like doing as the temperature in our basement apartment inched up toward the upper 80s. But now we have a lovely new machine that makes us want to work and cook and sleep again, and Corey has cardboard and styrofoam upon which to nap.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My semi-annual review was this week and my boss said really nice things about me.

2. One of the people in the neighborhood has a basset hound puppy. Watching its tail wagwagwag as it’s helped up onto the bench where its person is sitting so it can licklicklick his face is adorable.

3. We are a week into a heat wave, but it’s been a little less humid than usual, so there’s actual relief in the evenings. We’ve been trying to make sure we spend time at dusk in the park (along with many of our neighbors) and that we open the window after dark to let in some fresh air.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A group of people are playing petanque on the pathway at the park.

2. The post office delivers my box a day earlier than I expected, so my package was only a day late for Father’s Day, rather than two.

3. The sky has been awash with beautiful shades of rose, pink, and salmon at sunset lately.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I keep forgetting them come Thursday nights, but the fireflies are back in D.C. We started seeing them two weeks ago, and I encountered at least three between the park and home this evening.

2. I got to pick up a book — A.S. King’s Dig — and two dvds — season six of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Emilio Estevez’s The Public — at the library this evening.

3. Our team organizes our work projects by due date, and the oldest project on our list was one I was project managing. Its completion had been pushed off for two months because of a repeated series of slapstick situations that is both good for our audience and painful for those of us working on the project. (We literally had to ask the printer to stop the presses TWICE. It is not as cool as one is led to believe in movies.) But today all hindrances were pushed past, the print order has been given, and this project — overdue by more than a year and a half — was checked off.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. An email from the four-year-old daughter of our friends.

2. Spending time in the park.

3. Meeting up with Sarah at the protest last Saturday.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Loyalty Bookstores, one of D.C.’s indie bookstores owned by a Black woman, posted they’d received hundreds of orders this week requesting anti-racist books. Another local Black-owned bookstore, Mahogany Books, was featured in Time. D.C.’s other POC-owned indies — Sankofa, Solid State Books, and Duende District — also report people have placed a flurry of orders this week with a strong focus on getting more woke.

2. Super dramatic thunderstorms rolled through the area tonight (just after we watered the garden, of course).

3. José Andés’ local philanthropic endeavor, World Central Kitchen, reports they’ve made more than half a million meals since the pandemic began. Many of those meals have been cooked in the empty concession kitchens at Nationals Park.

How about you? What’s beautiful things have been getting you through this week?