Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We invite a few folks over for Sunday supper and two of them are able to join us. There are the tense few hours while we clean house and prep food — and the hour after they arrive where we finish preparing it — but it goes off well and we are so glad to have asked them over.

2. The purple bean plant I bought from a high school horticultural club has developed the stunning orange flowers they promised me.

3. Apricot and walnut bread from the farmers market, toasted with butter.

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

I’m tired and still need to wash the dishes before I can go to sleep, so let’s make this a quick post, shall we?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The park near our house shows a movie every month during the summer. Tonight was lovely, with starry skies, dry ground, low humidity, and pleasant temperatures. As a bonus, I actually liked the film version of We Bought a Zoo better than the book, despite the drastic changes they made to the story.

2. My post-dentist treat is often macarons. This week, the featured flavor, strawberry-basil, is unexpected and blows me away.

3. Reading Rainbow Rowell’s new novel, Landline, the week it came out. She is hilarious in person and on Twitter (her Tweets regularly get read aloud to Rudi), and it came through in this book about a comedy writer in crisis.

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

Our weekend began with a picnic at the Yards with friends on Friday night.

On Saturday, we drove up to Delaware for the day. We stopped for ice cream cones at a dairy (I had raspberry rumble and peanut butter swirl, which made for a PB&J-like cone) as a respite from the heat and traffic before carrying on to the beach. We ate fish sandwiches and swam in the calm ocean and baked in the sun and enjoyed pleasant temperatures and played in the surf and watched dolphins. We walked along the beach admiring sand castles and mourning horseshoe crabs. I found a new pair of sunglasses. We detoured to Salisbury, Maryland, at John’s suggestion for dinner at a brewery and then came home, exhausted but happy.

On Sunday, we slept in a bit, then got up to watch some bike racing and the end of CBS Sunday Morning before heading out to the farmers market. We filled our basket with end-of-season cherries and start-of-season sugar plums and a gigantic bag of basil due to become pesto, among other things. Laura wanted to go to the Spy Museum, so I accompanied her there. I don’t know if it was tiredness that made me feel disconnected from the experience or if the museum was just trying too hard for my taste, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. There was a quick dip in the pool before it closed and a watering of the garden (where I harvested tomatoes and lettuce and spinach). And then Rudi and I sat outside at a cafe for the last of the weekend sun.

(Weekending along with Karen)

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The biggest, brightest rainbow I have ever had the joy of seeing appeared Tuesday evening amidst a drenching rainstorm and a dinner party.

2. Following a rainy Thursday afternoon, the 4th of July 3-day weekend dawned bright and pleasant — and stayed that way through Sunday night. It allowed for reading outside and dining outside and watching fireworks on the Mall and checking out the Folklife Festival and going to the pool and hanging out with friends and generally having the nicest July weekend in our history of living in D.C.

3. We eat corn on the cob three times during the first week of the season. Delicious!

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

For goodness’ sake. Two weeks in a row I’m late with this. Yesterday I just forgot it wasn’t already Friday…

Anyway, here are three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I won a contest on Twitter from Books on the Metro (who generously leaves reading material on D.C.’s mass transit for its users), which netted me a copy of Robert Galbraith’s brand-new (and slightly grisly) Cormoran Strike novel, The Silkworm. It arrived from my favorite local bookseller at the end of last week, wrapped in cheerful paper, and I have been parceling it out over a few days’ time to savor it (but it will be done today).

2. Outside the coffeehouse, a bench hugs the building. I notice it seems dry as I enter, so I take my tea outside to enjoy the rain and my book.

3. I harvest the first tomato from our garden: it’s a single cherry tomato, that Rudi and I split in a tiny, delicious morsel.

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