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:

This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic from Carole asks us to write about Ten Things I Like to Do Outdoors:

1. Be at the beach. I like to swim in the summer. I like to wade in the spring and fall. I like to walk briskly in the winter. I like to look for shells. I like to watch dolphins swim past. I like to read. I like to picnic. I like to nap. Pretty much everything else I like doing in life is better when done outdoors at the beach.
2. Ride my bike. Rudi and I do not agree on a ton of things about cycling, but we both concur that there is very little point in doing it indoors. It’s also a surprisingly nice way to see a city at the ground level while covering more ground, if you have that option. I’m lucky that I quickly overcame my concerns about biking in traffic, which even some of Rudi’s suburban cycley friends don’t like to do. We also have some very nice bike trails around and just outside the city if you are leery about spending a lot of time in the same space as cars. Oh, and, it makes you very virtuous if you bike to an ice cream shop and then bike home after consuming a cone.
3. Listen to music. Concerts are great at any time of the year in any setting, but they’re especially nice outside. We are partial to the free Friday night concerts at Yards Park, which finds us across town to mark the start of nearly every weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
4. Swim. This partially goes along with #1, but it also applies to lakes, ponds, and pools. I somehow never bring myself to get to the indoor pools here in D.C., but I’m at the outdoor pool by my garden every weekend it’s open, if only for half an hour.
5. Garden. I have indoor plants that live on my windowsill at work, but they are of the ornamental variety. Don’t get me wrong, plant gods, I love when those plants thrive and flower. But there’s something about the plants I grow in my community garden plot that seem especially … real, I guess, and connected to the cycle of living things.
6. Watch baseball games. I grew up listening to baseball on the radio, so I’m really perfectly content with a play-by-play announcer and color commentator and nothing else. However, since moving to a city that now has a team and joining a season ticket group, I’ve grown to see the appeal of early spring and late September games in a stadium. There is a magical moment when the sun gets low in the sky and you start to notice the park lights (unless it’s an overlong day game, they turn them on ahead of time, although that’s always a great scene in baseball movies).
7. Shop. I am lucky in that in our city there are farmers markets practically every day during the spring, summer, and fall, and that I live in the neighborhood with one of the two year-round markets, so I do a lot of my grocery buying there. We also have flea-type markets where you can buy greeting cards, maker markets where you can shop for funky gifts, and Christmas markets where you can stock up for the holidays.
8. Walk. It drives my more suburban friends a little nuts when they come to town and I assure them the fastest way to get down to and around the Mall, museums, and monuments is not, in fact, to take the Metro, but is to walk the two miles down there, walk around, and then walk back. Plus, during tourist season, it’s probably the best way to avoid wanting to stab people who stand on the wrong side of the escalator and then stop one step off of the top of it to pull out their phones and acclimate themselves.
9. Watch movies. Outdoor films have become a big thing during the summer season. Once upon a time, we had to rely on the Screen on the Green to allow us to watch movies al fresco. Now, inflatable screen rentals have become so cheap that you can literally go to the movies outside every night in July and August if you are so inclined. Some film series have themes (office movies, superheroes, presidential flicks), and they range in age from the 1930s to winter releases. There’s something literally for everyone.
10. Drink hot beverages, have a snack, read, and knit. Now, yes, I see how you could make those four separate things, but they aren’t, really. I like to do all those things together, whether it’s outside a cafe or in a park, and whether it’s comestibles I’ve picked up out and about or something I’ve packed from home.

How about you? What do you like to do outside?

Dear Gramma,

Today would have been your 95th birthday.

In your memory, I’ve made some cranberry bread. In my own unique way, I managed to leave out the sugar. I didn’t catch it until after I’d put the batter in the pan, because I was being good and hadn’t licked my fingers until then. I thought you’d have been proud — until I tasted the dough. I’d known something was off — I’d checked the wet ingredient list several times because it had seemed too thick, but those were correct. It was that sole tricky dry ingredient tucked between the stuff I was supposed to sift and the wet ingredients that I’d combined. So I scraped the entire thing back into the bowl and poured in the sugar and then stood there trying to get the sugar to mix in thoroughly and laughed. You would have, too, because it was such an important ingredient to leave out. And because I could imagine you laughing about it with me, I started to cry.

I know, I know. You’ve been gone almost a year, and by now you’d have hoped I’d have gotten past this stage. So, of course, I cried harder, because you’d have been impatient and fed up with my sentimentality, and I cried because I knew that, too.

A year ago, I called you from a hotel in Budapest to wish you a happy birthday. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about — probably how much snow was still on the ground in Connecticut and what Mum had made for your birthday dinner and then about what Rudi and I had seen so far. You always asked me what exciting things I’d been up to, declaring that you counted on me (and, I assume, Josh, since I’d guess you probably said the same thing to him) to do exciting things to tell you about.

So, let me tell you: I took this afternoon off from work to spend some time with Rudi before he heads out on a two-week road trip. (Yes, that is a long time. Yes, I am going to miss having him cook for me, but I’ll muddle through.) We walked down to look at the garden; it’s probably time for me to head out and start digging up the plot and get my peas in. (Yes, I remember your telling me that your father would plant his peas and his potatoes on Good Friday.) Maybe this weekend. Then we walked over to Georgetown and stopped at this cafe to buy cupcakes and hot drinks, and we took them down to the park by the river. There’s a spot where the steps go right down into the Potomac, and people were feeding the ducks, and a guy kept throwing sticks into the water for his dog to chase, and the rowing teams were out in their sculls practicing on the river. (Yes, I think Josh did do crew for a while in school.) And it was sunny and pleasant out and we sat there watching it all until the sun got low in the sky and the rowing teams went back to their boathouses and the dog and his person went home, and then we went home, too. So, no, I guess that wasn’t very exciting after all, was it?

I realized the other day that I don’t remember the last conversations we had. I assured Josh last year that time was kind and that we’d forget those last couple horrid conversations where you were out of it, and, for me at least, that’s been true. But I’ve lost any specifics of the good ones before that, probably in part because our conversations took much of the same shape every week, so they all blend into a whole pattern, rather than any one standing out on its own. So even though I can fill in your end of the conversation as if you were here, I’d still love it if you were the one saying your lines instead of my reciting them for you.

I would have poured one out for you today, but you wouldn’t have had any patience for that kind of waste. So, instead, I’ll leave a teaspoon or so of tea at the bottom of my mug when I get to the end of my cup. Despite the fact that you spent 60 years drinking tea made from tea bags, you still left a mouthful behind from your days as a girl drinking loose-leaf tea. We all thought it was weird, but now it’s just another one of those things that made you you.

I love you, Gramma, and I miss you. Happy birthday. I’m going to go eat a piece of cranberry bread for you.

love,
kase

This was a quiet weekend. I took myself bowling yesterday and spent last night and today being surprised exactly how many muscles in your butt you use to bowl. Other than some soreness, though, it was just what I needed to clear my head. It’s surprising how refreshing it feels to fling a ball as hard as you can at something that will clatter loudly to the ground. (In case you were wondering, it takes three games to clear my head and a fourth one to bowl a proper game.)

This weekend was the quarterly member sale at one of my local bookshops, so I headed there, as well. I bought myself a book and one for an upcoming swap out of the frequent buyer dividends we’d accrued shopping at Christmas, so it was kind of like they were free!

Today I acquired another book, this time a cookbook. My farmers market decided to institute a free frequent shopping program to drum up business at the winter market. Because I go the market every weekend we’re in town regardless of the season, and because I’ve had no travel plans this winter, they’ve rewarded me with a market bag and a book with recipes for cooking vegetable dishes for one. As Rudi is about to begin a two-week road trip with his skiers, its arrival really is quite timely. Maybe I’ll eat something for supper besides sandwiches or cereal while he’s away!

I also played volleyball and ran a couple of errands on bike share for the annual Errandeneuring bike challenge, read a bit, and knit on my Sock Madness sock. I’ll have to pick up the pace while Rudi’s away if I want to advance, but it’s not like I have any other plans later this week, so I’m not despairing yet.