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?

It’s been an eventful week, with Rudi returning home from Salt Lake, several stressful work-related issues, and my dad being in the hospital (he’s recuperating nicely, and we all hope he’ll be cleared to head home tomorrow). Kind of feels like a month has passed since Sunday, honestly. But there have been beautiful things in it, too, and these are three of them:

1. Rudi and I scoot out to see Quartet, a gentle, genteel film about a retirement home for aging British musicians, directed by Dustin Hoffman. The acting is superb, the varied musical interludes enjoyable, and the scenery sublime. I couldn’t ask for a nicer 100-minute escape.

2. Last fall when they cleared the area of trash, the city (or WMATA, I don’t know whose jurisdiction such things fall under) must have stirred up the terraced plots of dirt interspersed along the Dupont Circle north escalator and planted things in them. (I’m pretty sure they’ve only grown stringy grass or trash during the previous 10 springs we’ve lived here.) This week my commute to work has included the cheery nodding of daffodils.

3. Knowing that my mother would be stressed about my dad’s health and being away from my grandmother (who is at home, but still a bit fragile) and that Rudi and I had just returned from an extended trip of dealing with his mom’s health woes in Salt Lake, my brother jumped into the fray and headed east for a few days. I would have gone north and my mother would have coped just fine if neither of us had been around, but I think we were all grateful that Josh stepped in as he did. And it reminded me that he’s grown up into a good man (sometimes you might forget that when your kid brother lives 3,000 miles away and you see him only once a year; in my head he’s still 14 or 17).

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Returning home after a fortnight away has meant especially affectionate cats. Posey has been a little guarded in her joy; after all, her boy has not yet come back. But Corey and Jeremiah feel that if I’m sitting or lying down, I should be weighted by at least one purring, drooling cat body, if not two, in case I get the idea to depart again.

2. At this time of year, a few warm days can make all the difference in the world to the flowering trees. I was pleased to notice that while the magnolias are just starting to flower, the cooler-than-usual weather has kept the cherries in check, which means that Rudi will not miss their peak blooming season.

3. Sarah and I go out to dinner as an excuse to drink Samoa-flavored milkshakes, a March special at a local fast food joint. They are not perfect replicas of my favorite Girl Scout cookie, but they are mighty delicious.

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

A day late, but I couldn’t break into our computer last night and opted to let Rudi sleep instead of waking him up so I could blog.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. We get a crew to help us clean. They blow through in five hours what would have taken Rudi and me a week.

2. A friend of Rudi’s mom gives us the key to an apartment. We have access to a shower and a fridge and a washer/dryer and a bed.

3. Rudi’s mom is up and moving with a walker. Her progress over the last week has been impressive.

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

This is a day late, but it’s been a long week, and I was so tired last night that I fell asleep as soon as I got into bed.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi’s mother had her second hip replaced and the doctor says that the surgery went well. Her hip was badly degraded and her leg length had shrunk by 1.5″, which explains a lot of the pain that she’s been in the last few years. I’m delighted that she’s finally taken care of it, and hope this means she’ll feel better and more energetic moving forward.

2. We gather with friends at a recent addition to the bar scene in our neighborhood. It’s a place where you can play board games, and where you can bring in your own food. We opt for pan-Asian takeout and a modern version of Trivial Pursuit, which even if it wasn’t very good, did offer us entertaining insights into what the game makers consider “literature.”

3. It is remarkably hard to accept help when it is offered. It’s even harder to ask for it. We are getting better at it.

That’s it for me, probably until next week’s 3BT post, although maybe I’ll get something up after the weekend (Sunday is the blog’s 8th anniversary, after all). We’ll see. But in the meantime, tell me what’s been beautiful in your world this week. I really would love to hear it.