Saturday:

I spent some time sitting outside at a coffeehouse with my reading.

I spent a little time at the garden, where my peas are now half a hand tall and where one of the strawberry plants I bought last week now has two white berries on them. My violets are flourishing and I picked a nosegay to bring home. They smelled so lovely!

I spent the evening chatting with Karen and got to say hi to both her kids who shared with me stories of their trip to the carnival.

Sunday:

Today Rudi and I went to the farmers market early, hoping to collect both asparagus and a free compost bin. We were successful at both and procured several other items, including greenhouse tomatoes, milk, soft wheat flour, and leeks.

After a leisurely breakfast, he vacuumed before heading off on a bike ride with a friend, and I did laundry prior to venturing over to the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill, where they were celebrating Billy Shakes’ 454th birthday. I’d never been to the building before, so I was particularly excited to visit, because, well … library!

The building is beautiful and is divided into long galleries, of which this is the central one. There’s a quartet performing at the far end of this room, a play reading going on in the theater, an exhibit on early books, and trivia and costume dress-up in the back reading room. Outside, there were kids’ activities and, at the end of the event, Queen Elizabeth I and the Eastern High School marching band arrived (separately) to lead us in singing “Happy Birthday” to her most loyal subject. She then cut the cake using a rapier and then staff passed out slices (of sheet cake, rather than the fancy cake that may or may not have been a prop).

Even Puck got in on the celebration! Or maybe he was really delighted to see this bird.

Rudi and I concluded the evening with risotto made with ramps and asparagus and mushrooms, strawberry ice cream, and tv. I finished my book after he went to bed, painted my toenails (I’m saving the fingernails for tomorrow night), and will soon head to bed.

It was a busy weekend.

My plans for this weekend are small. I need to put things in the living room back in place after the flooding rearrangement, because currently there’s nowhere to put the laundry rack and I need clean clothes.

I would like to stop by the garden to see if anything’s growing and to harvest some more violets.

I plan to knit the heel of my Posey sock.

I want to buy milk and asparagus at the farmers market, a wallet online, and beads somewhere since apparently my local bead shop doesn’t think bright pink beads in the size called for in my pattern is something they should carry.

I’d like to finish a book or two and watch a video or two, but the former is going to come down to wakefulness and the latter to Rudi’s availability.

I’d like to go to the free events happening at the Folger Shakespeare Library or at the Tudor House on Sunday, since I haven’t been to either one.

I want to paint my nails. The green is mostly gone.

I have to get some sleep and spend lots of time outside.

Here are some of the things I think this weekend might include:

• Do my taxes. By the way, D.C.’s Emancipation Day is Monday, so you don’t have to turn your taxes in until Tuesday. You’re welcome.
• Buy strawberry plants. (I first typed “pants” instead of “plants” and think that might be just as interesting shopping, but probably harder if I wanted to buy them for myself.) My local nursery opens this weekend, so I’m hopeful if I get there early they’ll still have some.
• Extricate my bike and get Rudi to inflate the tires to a pressure he feels is adequate. It’s been blocked in since Christmas (and I like my tires with way more give than he feels is appropriate for city riding; we usually compromise at some magic number in between each of our ideals). Luckily, the nearest bikeshare station is just a block away, so this is less of a big deal than it would be otherwise.
• Think about going down to the Tidal Basin. Last weekend it was just too much to deal with hordes of tourists. But the blossoms have passed peak and the heat from this weekend will finish them off, so it’s now or never for the season.
• Take a photo of my pea vines. They were about half an inch tall last weekend, but I forgot to document them. I know you’re disappointed.
• Buy a new wallet. The zipper on my old one broke over Easter weekend, and I’ve put off getting a new one because I haven’t seen the design I like. But one of the cute boutique shops a couple metro stops away that carries that brand is going out of business and having clearance sale, before I resort to the internet.
• Speaking of the internet, one of my best friends since high school has just published a book of short stories with his writing group. It’s available as an e-book on Amazon. I will be making an exception to my anti-Amazon book buying in order to procure a copy this weekend, and having read an early version of at least one of Danny’s two stories in it, I think you might enjoy it, too. /completelybiasedsalespitch
• Wash the pile of handknits in the bathroom.
• Take some books to local Little Free Libraries and some materials back to the library.
• Purchase beads for my hat and then knit on it. (Knitters, I know I will need to make the hat longer. Would you add more blue yarn before the colorwork or put it below?.
• Try backing up my phone again. I tried last month, but didn’t realize the cord was dying and that that might have been why it failed.
• Spend as much time as possible outside (possibly by attending some of the Porch Fest concerts)!!!

How about you? What are you hoping to get up to this weekend?

Here are some of the things I’m hoping to accomplish this weekend:

• Go see the cherry blossoms.
• Take part in the garden clean-up day (which has been postponed to Sunday).
• Attend a Cry Cry Cry concert (Rudi gave me tickets for my birthday).
• Get some laundry done.
• Drink the apple cider in the fridge.
• Finish Strange the Dreamer.
• Find the brown yarn for my hat.
• Buy flowers at the farmers market.
• Sleep in.
• Send a belated birthday card.
• Watch Ferdinand.
• Retrieve our duvet from the dry cleaner.

How about you? What are you hoping your weekend includes?

We got about five inches of snow at my folks’ this morning . . .

. . . which quickly melted this afternoon.

I wish you all a joyful fourth month of the year. In D.C., this month will be filled with cherry blossoms and warmer days, our first baseball games and the first garden clean-up of the year, bike rides and violets. But first we have to get home from Connecticut, where they’re expecting a couple inches of snow tomorrow morning. I’m not amused.

I hope everyone had a nice Easter. We ate a tasty supper, followed by lemon black-bottom pie and Jesus Christ Superstar live on tv.