I find hydrangea the most fascinating example of chemistry. For one type of this flowering bush, what color flowers you end up with depends entirely on the pH levels of your soil. Acidic soil gets you blue flowers; basic soil gives you pink. However, if your soil is in a rather narrow band of neutral pH, you get flowers that are purple or have a tie-dye effect. Some people will go so far as to put metal into their hydrangea bed in the hopes that as the nail oxidizes, it will cause the soil to become more acidic.
It’s the last weekend of June, before a short workweek.
Paint my nails. I’m thinking seasonal colors.
Bake. I have both sweet and sour cherries (but not sweet-and-sour cherries; that would not be delicious), so I’m thinking some iteration of a pie. Remind me to take a box of butter out of the freezer before I go to bed.
Plant beans and potatoes in the garden.
Find the safe place I put my tax forms.
Catch up on my email and snail mail correspondence.
Attend a ballet class over Zoom.
Make strawberry daiquiris and herbal tea (the latter to mix with lemonade for Arnold Palmers, the former not to mix with rum because that ruins them for me)
Write an Into the Stacks post. (I think we’re ready for March.)
Knit the heel of a sock or a zig zag on my lightning shawl.
“Sunrays and Saturdays” is an early Vertical Horizons song off their second album, Running on Ice (1995). While it’s technically about a couple breaking up, the song reverberates down through the ages (read: in the decades since college) for me because of good things the singer wishes for his ex because he “still feel[s] love for you.”
After all, who doesn’t wish all these things for the people that we love:
Sunrays and Saturdays
Perfect starry nights
Sweet dreams and moonbeams
And a love that’s warm and bright …
Friendship strong and true
Oceans of blue and a room with a view
To live the life you … choose.
I wish all those things — and more — for us all.
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The weekend was too short, as always, but it included a number of good things, including strawberry daiquiris, singing along to music, and an afternoon nap while it was raining. We did a video chat with my family, spent time in the reading in the park and planting in the garden, and bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers market (as well as the season’s first raspberries and blueberries).
We’re three days into a week where I declared at the outset that I wanted to spend more time at the park. How am I doing on that goal? To be honest, not great.
I’ve finished work no earlier than 8 p.m. every night this week. Two days I never made it outside the door of my apartment and the most exercise I got was walking to the bathroom or shuttling between the rocking chair and the couch.
So the highlight of the week was yesterday, when I did leave the couch, shutting the laptop in time to put on sneakers and leave the house and do a few laps of the traffic circle at the end of the block. I then sought higher ground at the park so I could catch the sunset.
Probably the nicest sunset I’ve seen this year, it was the sort of evolving beauty that you look at one second and think, “Wow! That’s amazing!” And then twenty seconds later you’re thinking, “What was I talking about? THIS is so much better than that was.” And so it continues until suddenly the show is just over, the screen goes black, and the house lights come up, and you’re able to think, “What a phenomenal show! That was totally worth the price of admission.”
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