I can’t believe the weekend is only half over. It’s already been so full!

Last night, after fulfilling our two volunteer shifts with Filmfest D.C., Rudi and I headed up to catch a showing of The Hula Girls. Japan’s submission for best foreign picture to the Oscars this past year, the movie focused on a group of (mostly) teenage girls in a coal-mining town in 1965 Japan. Facing trouble making ends meet, the owners of the mine have simultaneously laid workers off and have allowed some of their land to be used to create a mock Hawaiian paradise designed to bring tourism dollars into the region. The Hawaiian center is looking for hula dancers and bring in a former dancer to teach anyone they can convince in this rural, conservative town to shake their hips. The movie does an excellent job of looking at the struggle between honoring tradition and moving forward in a world that’s not going to wait for you or your customs to catch up. It also avoids some of the easy plot devices that I think would have been taken advantage of had the movie been made in Hollywood. It was excellent and I’d be delighted to see it win the festival’s best picture prize. There’s no current timetable for release here in the U.S., but if you see it on a film festival roster or at an art house, I can’t recommend it enough.

After the movie, we headed to Two Amys, a local pizzeria that’s slightly too far to be considered for takeout. In addition to two pies, we also split some bruchetta covered with a delicious (and seasonably green) fava bean spread.

This morning I arose early to take part in Hands on D.C., an annual school clean-up project. The group I went with ended up at a middle school in Shaw, where we painted three floors’ worth of stairwell. It was tiring but at the end of the afternoon, I felt glad we’d done such a thorough job. D.C.’s schools aren’t great — either academically or structurally — and our kids deserve better. There’s not a lot I can do on a day-to-day basis to improve the schools, so I’m happy to help in this (albeit small) way.

Tonight, being too tired to head to the ballpark, I watched the Nationals and the Mets square off. The first six innings featured a pitching duel, followed by outstanding pitching from the bullpens of both clubs. The Mets failed to capitalize on a number of scenarios that would have allowed them to take control of the game early on, but with two outs in the top of the ninth, ancient go-to guy Julio Franco strode to the mound and swatted in the tying run. The game would head into the twelfth inning before the Mets could score again, at which point they sent four runners across home plate to secure a victory.

Tomorrow, I’m again rising early, but this time just to take Rudi out to Virginia, so he can catch a carpool to a bike ride he’s taking out in the mountains. Then I’ll return to the city in time to head to the farmers’ market, which, rumor has it, will feature morels and asparagus! Then I’ll put in some time working on finishing up my Bloomin Feet pal’s second sock before I go to the film festival’s closing gala reception. The final movie is Paris, je t’aime, a series of short films about Paris done by a plethora of international directors and stars including Gus Van Sant, the Coen brothers, Gerard Depardieu, Marianne Faithfull, Steve Buscemi, Elijah Wood, Juliette Binoche, and Wes Craven.

I don’t think I’ll make it into the garden tomorrow, which is a shame, but I’ll head over there on Monday to take some updated photos and to do some more planting. Today, Rudi bought a couple of tomato plants as well as whole bunches of seeds — English and sugar snap peas; zucchini and yellow squash; blue lake, soy, and pole beans; and leeks. I might also pick up a couple of flowers at the market tomorrow just to attract helpful (and pretty) bugs and birds to our plot.

I think I’d better head to bed soon. It’s been an exhausting weekend!

Rudi came down with me to the garden today and we put some sweat equity into the plot. We cleared the rest of the land. Yay! No more condoms or drug paraphernalia in our garden!

Rudi transplanted a number of violets from other sections of the garden to form a border along the fence and planted three dozen marigolds that he bought last week. He also hauled in some manure to mix in with our soil. I hoed around the rest of the plants. The back corner must have been used to grow rocks in the past, because I harvested a whole bunch from that section of the plot.

I find it an encouraging sign that there are lots of worms in our garden. Every time we pulled up a weed or shifted a board or turned some earth, it seemed like there was another gigantic worm. I feel bad, because I’m sure we hurt some of them with or hoe and shovel, but they were very hard to avoid. I also hope that those birds who were hovering about didn’t make away with any of them.

We identified a number of plants: sage, lettuce, and ramps. Rudi picked some of the ramps and made them the centerpiece of a lovely pasta sauce for tonight’s dinner. (If we die, it was the “ramps.” You can find the rest of the sauce in the fridge for the toxicology analysis.)

We also ditched some plants, which seemed to be more weed than intentional garden addition. And apparently I didn’t replant my non-dead herb properly because the rain had managed to unearth and kill it. Oops.

Next up is finding some veggies to plant. I’m hoping to find some lettuce and chives and English peas and beans. I think it might still be too early to plant tomatoes and peppers, so I’ll hold off until May for them.

Well, I knew when I proposed my weekend activities that it was a long-shot that I’d fit them all in. It was, and I didn’t.

But it was a full weekend.

Saturday, I got up with Rudi (who was leading an early morning bike ride out in Maryland) and headed out to the garden to put in some serious labor. I’m glad I did.

The neighbor had already tilled his section of the garden, so I was the lone slacker with a 15 foot by 15 foot plot that just plain looked neglected.

This is what four hours of playing in the garden looks like:

With the exception of the corner of the plot (where I could see urban detritus I didn’t want to touch without gloves), I cleared out all the dead scruff and the ground cover weeds. I didn’t turn the soil, because a) I figured that I would just wait for the rain to make it much easier for me and b) I might as well wait and clear out that back corner first and hit it all at once. Plus if I were going to go to all the trouble of adding in manure, I didn’t want it to wash away down into the creek.

I left in plants that I recognized (like the herbs), that looked like they might have been part of last year’s garden, or that I think are lovely regardless (like the violets). I’ve put photos onto Flickr and sorted them into a collection of garden shots. (As a free user, apparently I’ve maxed out my set allotment.) If you recognize any of the plants, please let me know if I should keep them or pull them.

That pretty much did me in and after a shower and a bowl of granola, I conked out on the couch for a long nap. Later in the evening, I watched Brit coms while as the rain came down and did a little test swatch for the sock heel to determine needle size.

(Right, I had a question for you knitters. If you knew the knitter you were making socks for preferred a certain heel when she knit, would that make you more inclined to use it in your pair?)

Today, dawned far too early. I got up to use the bathroom and stopped by the living room for some reason. As I did, I noticed what every basement-dweller hates to see aftering being socked by a nor’easter: water infiltration.

Yup, we were leaking — again.

We sighed heavily, shifted some things, put down newspaper, and decided we’d done as much as we could for the moment.

So we headed to the farmers’ market pretty much right as they started. And what a bounty we bought home with us! In addition to tasty breakfast pastries (the first blueberry scones of the spring!), we also picked up ramps, green garlic, spring onions, watercress, two types of lettuce, two types of greenhouse-grown tomatoes, leeks, broccoli, carrots, chives, and a cucumber (for Rudi). We also bought mascarpone, whole milk ricotta, eggs and a bouquet of daffodils and tulips.

Laden down, we returned home, unloaded the market basket, ate breakfast, and started to read the paper, before we realized the flooding had, indeed, gotten worse. The water was just seeping in through the baseboards. More things were shifted — furniture, storage bins and baskets, the rug — but all proactively to prevent later sorrow. Last year’s catastrophe turned out to be in our favor this year because the tile that they put down doesn’t soak up water the way the wood parquet did.

After a few hours of laying down newspapers and towels, the rain let up and so did the flooding. I did my taxes. Rudi cooked a yummy Spanish torta with potatoes and ramps. I baked oatmeal scotchies and started an overdue letter. We watched Because of Winn-Dixie, which was as cute as the book and did not, as the trailer had suggested, include a computer generation of the dog winking. We put clean sheets on the bed and played with the cats.

Monday’s plans? Why it’s a lovely day for a voting rights march, don’t you think?