Work ran late tonight, and by the time Rudi and I decided we should run to the local shop for mozzarella (they were sold out at the farmers market on Sunday), it was just after 9. But they’d been open until 10 last week when Rudi went, so we weren’t worried. But, it turns out, that was a Wednesday, and today was a Tuesday, so we did without.

It was a nice night, so we wandered around for a little, debating treating ourselves to Thai takeout or a gelato, but ultimately decided it made more fiscal sense just to cook supper at home and buy a container of ice cream for dessert over several nights.

So, we walked up to Walgreens to see what they had on sale. But they’d closed at 9. (They used to be a Rite Aid and used to never close, so it continues to be a true surprise when we find they do now — and at random, early hours.)

But that was fine, because Safeway is open until 11, and it was a nice night.

We arrived at Safeway at 9:59 to find they’d changed their hours, too.

So back to the neighborhood with no mozzarella and no ice cream.

Would the ice cream parlor still be open, at least? (We were pretty sure we knew the answer by now…)

No shopping for you!

There are no photos of the pool, the park, or the pancakes (or Rudi, for that matter). But I’ve got photos of the library:

The ballpark:

And the garden:

How was your weekend?

At the last minute, we were given today off from work to celebrate Juneteenth. It was a lovely surprise.

I used the afternoon to pick blueberries and spent a little time this evening reading So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo.

Tomorrow, I’m planning a trip to the library, garden, and pool. I have beans to plant and holds to pick up and am looking forward to spending some time swimming, since the heat and humidity are due to return. If Rudi’s up to a movie after his long bike ride (he’s leaving at 6 a.m.), I have a dvd or two we can pick from. If not, I have my book to read.

Sunday, I’ll hit the farmer’s market for some apricots, plums, and raspberries and possibly the season’s first corn. Dad and I will spend some time on the phone, and I’m hopeful the Mets will give us some good plays to discuss between now and then. I might also make some pancakes, since blueberry season is really the only time of the year, I enjoy eating them.

How are you hoping to spend this weekend?

Our weekend actually turned out pretty nice. Saturday, I caught up on sleep for the first half of the day. We spent five hours at our local watering hole with friends belatedly celebrating Rudi’s birthday and generally soaking up what turned out to be an ideal June evening. Oh, and I mostly finished my sock, too!

This morning I went to the farmers market and came home with strawberries and sweet cherries, among other things. I suspect there had been corn earlier in the morning, but I’m okay waiting until another day for that. I am hopeful for blueberries and raspberries sometime soon, though.

I spent a lot of time at the garden. All my plants (but not the beans) are in the ground. I harvested peas, herbs (you can see the basil on our supper capreses), strawberries, salad greens, my first cherry tomato of the season, and Swiss chard out of the main beds. Then, as I was planting the shallots in the potato patch, I discovered I had grown potatoes of actual size! I put them in around April 10, so we’re just around two months for a round trip from my kitchen and back! I’ve never done a midsummer harvest of potatoes, even though I know now is when I start finding new potatoes at the market. Some of them were tiny (once I’d severed their roots, there was really no going back), but some of them are of a saleable size! That’s about half a pint there — enough for a side dish!

I also got in a swim. I’m going to go do the dishes, take a shower, and then hit the hay. This week holds a baseball game, a movie, and a volleyball game if the weather finally cooperates again — and then maybe a trip to the beach on Saturday. I’m looking forward to it all.

It’s been a crummy workweek, with one coworker leaving and the news that my boss is being switched into a new position a week after she gets back from vacation, and somehow deadlines don’t ever get crossed off. Volleyball was canceled due to rain. It was ridiculously hot and then ridiculously rainy, and I spent way too much time sitting in my apartment. I worked my butt off to clear enough stuff to be able to keep my laptop closed this weekend (and mostly my remaining colleagues are interested in keeping me sane) and this is how I’m going to spend my time:

• Spend several hours in the garden. I have some more planting to do. There are peas and greens to be picked. I want to get beans and the last of the plants I picked up in Connecticut into the ground.
• Go to the farmers market. We’re getting close to the end of strawberry season, but that means cherries, blueberries, and raspberries are on their way in.
• Swim. While I did bike down to meet my coworker to take her to a goodbye lunch, my only other activity has been swimming. The outdoor pool is only open on weekends for the next few weeks, so I need to get myself moving a little earlier.
• Knit outside. Tomorrow is Worldwide Knit in Public Day. I have no qualms about knitting pretty much anyplace, but I think my rainbow sock will be super popular in Dupont on Pride Weekend.
• Pick up holds at two libraries. I didn’t get to either library last weekend, so now I need to get to both this weekend. (One is in Virginia, so it’s less convenient than it might otherwise be.)
• Buy books. It’s the quarterly member sale at one of my local bookshops.
• Have a belated birthday happy hour for Rudi at our local watering hole. (It’s also a fancy grocery store and has some tasty food options they make in-house, including a surprisingly good grilled cheese. We also have a gift card from last spring that expires next week, so that’s a nice bonus.)
• Do laundry. How do I have no clean tshirts?
• Paint my nails. I keep only thinking of it right before bed.
• Sleep.

How about you? What are you hoping to get to this weekend? (And lest you worry overmuch about my working too hard, next week I have fun evening activities on three days and maybe plans to go to the beach on Saturday.)

By and large, it was a quiet weekend. I didn’t feel great on Saturday, so I napped in the afternoon, messing up my plans for a productive day. But I felt much better when I got back up in the evening, and Rudi and I took a trip down to the garden to harvest some things that we ended up not eating, followed by a trip to Trader Joe’s to pick up some more things that we ended up not eating. We did eat some things already living in our fridge, though, thereby making room for our new acquisitions. We watched Rudi’s Red Sox beat the Yankees, and then I watched the Mets beat the Padres. I knit and then listened to my audiobook.

This morning I sallied forth to the farmers market. I bought a lot of strawberries and the first zucchini and green beans of the season, as well as a variety of other odds and ends.

I spent the later part of the afternoon at the pool for my first real swim since August 2019. (I’ve been to beaches since then, but either temperatures or rip tides made me decline to do more than dunk myself and then run back to my towel.) It was glorious. I swear the pool was Bahamian blue (or at least what it looks like on tv) and the trees practically glowed green, but that may just have been my joy at some sense of summer normalcy.

I pulled some spring greens out (all the arugula and some of the spinach) and yanked more violet leaves and bunching onions in an effort to find places for all my new plants. A few remain to be planted, which will force me to leave work at a reasonable enough time to spend an hour at the garden early this week. And then Rudi and I watched the Kennedy Center Honors before he retired and I raced the clock to finish my audiobook. (Downloading to your phone is very convenient, until you’re at the last day with more chapters remaining than you’d like before it stops being playable.)

The week ahead holds our baseball seat lottery for the rest of the season, hopefully my volleyball championship, and possibly a belated birthday outing for Rudi.

I hope you have a great start to the week!