It’s Thursday and Rudi and I will be hitting the road north tonight to spend a long weekend in Connecticut. But before we go, I offer you three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A brightly colored garland with theater masks on it adorns a tree in Franklin Square.

2. From the sidewalk, I can’t quite reach the lilacs blooming in a neighbor’s yard, but the mere act of stretching toward them wafts the delicious odor my way.

3. I watch two old films over the weekend: It Happened to Jane stars Doris Day and Jack Lemmon and substitutes Connecticut scenery for Maine’s. And Mr. Deeds Goes to Town showcases the talents of Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in the move that netted Frank Capra his second (of three) Oscars for direction. Both have happy endings for the heroes.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

If things are going to start hiding in the places where they belong (like books in a bookshelf), I’m never going to find anything.

Plain Kate has been located on a bookshelf — the one under my desk that I sit and look at every day. It was cleverly hidden right next to another book I got the same day.

Interestingly, right next to them is another advance reader copy from last summer of a book that I have picked up and put down at the library at least three times.