Weekending along with Karen and Carole:

1. Missed the thunderstorm and got to picnic with Shawn and Sarah. We saw gigantic catfish and ate ice cream cones.
2. 

   Witnessed nature’s fireworks (a good thing since the manmade ones ended up being canceled after the ballgame went late.

3. Picked up some books and my latest summer reading prize at the library.
4. 
   

   Read and ate doughnuts along the river with Rudi.

5. Started a new knitting project for the Tour de France knit along and watched a lot of bike racing.
6. Went to the farmers market.
7. 

   Pulled out imitation strawberries and other vines from my garden. Ate peas. Checked on the blackberries growing on the fence. (This week…)

8. Slept in.
9. Saw The BFG at the cinema. We both really liked it.
10. 

    Biked down to the Lincoln Memorial and watched the fireworks through the fog and drizzle. (If you were watching A Capitol Fourth, you saw fireworks from previous, clearer years.)

How was your holiday weekend?

So neither of my go-to Tuesday memes interested me today especially: I listen to audiobooks while knitting, driving, and doing the dishes, but prefer baseball games on the radio or music for most other tasks, and while I’ve read seven 2016 releases this year, I have yet to hand out five stars to any of them.

So instead, I’m going to answer the meme I was too busy vacationing last week to write about: 10 Things on This Summer’s Bucket List:

1. Visit Theodore Roosevelt Island. It’s three miles from my door (maybe less). I’m finally getting over there. Related: Visit Kingman Island on the other side of town.
2. Make ice cream, yogurt, or popsicles once a week. Related: play volleyball regularly.
3. Get to the pool or beach every week.
4. Take in an outdoor movie at least every other week, preferably every week. (This is my favorite way to catch up on recent releases to “video” and classics I’ve missed. Pending more weather, we’re catching Mister Roberts in our local park later this week.)
5. Read in our hammock. (I need to check if there are rules stating I can’t suspend things from trees in our closest park. I know I can take the portable stand one up there if I can dig it out of our building’s storage closet.)
6. Attend an outdoor concert. Something big would be nice, but I’d settle for one of the free Fort Reno shows.
7. Freeze fruit (and maybe veg) for the winter. (I like the idea of canning, but really need to work with things that require minimal storage/equipment.)
8. Eat picnic suppers outside once a week. Perhaps in conjunction with the movies, but maybe not.
9. Go to the midnight release party for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the book version of the script of the new West End play.
10. Finish two knitting projects. Any two.

How about you? What are you hoping to cross off your list this season?

Weekending with Karen at Pumpkin Sunrise and Ten on Tuesday’ing with Carole at Carole Knits:

1. The weekend began with our traditional Friday night picnic by the waterfront. We were more together than usual, which meant that Michael and Julia had brought an entree and Rudi and I had brought dessert, in addition to the other drinks and tapas we usually make a meal out of.
2. I got up early on Saturday to bike down to the sand courts near the Lincoln Memorial to play volleyball with some of the folks from the team I’ve been playing with. I did not get up early enough to eat breakfast beforehand, which was not a mistake I should make again.
3. Sarah and I then headed out to the countryside to pick strawberries. It was 90 degrees and humid and brightly sunny. We picked for an hour, and we were drained by the end of it. I came home with about four quarts of berries.
4. I stopped at the local garden center/co-op place and picked up some more basil, since mine vanished, thanks, I assume, to the slugs.
5. I went to the park to hang out and read, but instead fell fast asleep in the shade after I finished my mango lassi. A nap was precisely what the rest of the day demanded.
6. On Sunday, we got up and watched the final stage of the Giro d’Italia (similar to the Tour de France in bike racing importance and difficulty, but set in Italy and less famous) and a couple bits of CBS Sunday Morning.
7. We then headed out to the farmers market.
8. Later in the day, we went to the local pool, which opened this weekend for the season.
9. Today, we slept in. It was glorious.
10. I went to the garden and planted the latest round of vegetation. I also harvested a handful of strawberries and strung some string trellises for my peas.
11. We ended the weekend by watching Love and Mercy, the Brian Wilson biopic from last year. It wasn’t really my thing, but I could appreciate that it was well done.

That’s one more than called for by Carole, but long weekends were made to break the rules.

How about you? How was your (long) weekend?

This weekend was pleasant, but oh, so short!

On Friday after work, we celebrated the sun by taking our books and beverages up to the park. This park is one of my favorite things about my neighborhood, and I ended up there on Saturday, too, when it was a bit less fair out. But there’s a little caretaker cottage that gets used during the summertime with a generous overhang, so as you can see I didn’t let a little rain stop me.

I’m really pleased with the camera on my new phone and I took a bunch of photos on my walk home”

Saturday also included a visit to a couple embassies for EU Day, when members of the European Union open their D.C. embassies to the public for a few hours. I visited Cypress briefly, where things were winding down, but then moved on to Slovenia, which was far more lively.

In the evening, we had a party for Rudi at our local board game bar. We ate and drank, had cupcakes, and played Trvial Pursuit and Jenga, both of which Rudi won, which seemed only appropriate.

Yesterday, I went to the farmers market and spent three plus hours in the garden. You can see that the violets and the sorrel had been loving the rain:

I yanked violet leaves (although left most of the roots), because they share the plot with my strawberries and had far eclipsed them in height. Now that sun was in the forecast, they needed to be able to start turning red! I also got 20 plants in the ground, most of which were acquired last weekend at Sheep & Wool. It took a while, but I hope this will be my last long day in the garden for a while.

This morning I was up early to get breakfast for Rudi, since it’s his birthday. After work, we’re going out to dinner at a new-to-us restaurant (a Christmas present from my brother).

How was your weekend?

This weekend included Friday pizza dinner with a friend and a trip for the three of us to opening day of the new Captain America: Civil War. (I’m #TeamBlackWidow, if it matters.)

On Saturday, I slept in and got some chores done. I missed out on visiting the Bahamanian embassy as part of Passport DC, but did get to my local comic book shop, Fantom, for Free Comic Book Day. I also visited the French bakery that opened where the cupcake shop used to be. They make desserts based around meringues. I started reading a new graphic novel, planted some things at the garden, and bought a case for my new cell phone. I did not write a book blog post about my April reading because I had to finish a post for work about bee swarms, and it took longer than I expected. (The book post will come later this week.)

Today, Rudi and I went to the farmers market and to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. We saw sheep and sheepdogs and ate funnel cake. I bought a skein of yarn to make Rudi a hat. He bought spices to make me dinners. We bought tomato, pepper, and basil plants to make our garden productive.

And now a look ahead, rather than backward: This week is both Armchair BEA, the book blogger version of the Book Expo of America convention, and Bout of Books 16, a weeklong readathon/reading challenge. I’ll be participating in both and blogging about them here and invite you to take part, too. I’m hoping to finish three books by the end of the week, blog at least thrice on bookish topics, and take part in at least two off-blog events (be they contests or Twitter chats or something else remains to be seen).

As promised, yesterday’s moonrise from Savin Rock in West Haven, Connecticut: