Last weekend’s list was overly ambitious, particularly since I was sick. This weekend’s to-do list is shorter, if not actually more scaled back:
Do a couple last Coffeeneuring bike rides.
Dig up my potatoes.
Clean the bathroom and the kitchen.
Sort through my clothes.
Complete my socks.
Finish Exit West
I’d like to include watch a movie on this list, but Rudi caught my cold, which caused us to cancel not one, but two, movie plans this week already and I just can’t bring myself to make it three.
How’s your weekend looking? What are you hoping it includes?
Three beautiful things from my past week, now part of Carole’s Three on Thursday:
1. As you might be able to tell, this is a banana flower, cultivated by the Japanese for a more temperate climate than other species. What is not obvious from my photo is that it’s growing at my community garden, right here in D.C. The tree is about ten feet tall and that flower is larger than a football. The tiny banana fruits you see are apparently inedible, filled with only a little bit of fruit and lots of black seeds. I’m sure that now that we’ve had a freeze, the flower has died, but this was last Friday morning, still blooming well into November.
2. With the cold snap, the gingko trees dropped many of their leaves prematurely, so instead of a nearby block turning golden, as it usually does in the autumn, the street was covered with green.
3. My orchids usually bloom right around Thanksgiving. That also coincides with the birthday of my Uncle George, who sent them to me for my birthday the year before he died. This will be our fifth season together, and the flowers began unfurling yesterday morning. I’ve moved them from my office windowsill to my desk for the moment so I can enjoy the day-to-day differences at this stage. It has a second stem shooting off in the opposite direction (those are roots you can see in the background) and the other surviving orchid has a stem growing, too, but it usually holds off blooming until the new year.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world recently? (And, oh! Would taking part in the Virtual Advent Tour next month make your life beautiful? If so, sign up!)
As my socks come to an end (they’re not there yet, but with luck we’ll have an FO post this week!), I’m looking ahead and contemplating future knitting. This is one contender: the blue (it’s only got 135 yards, which makes it a little short on its own for much of anything) with one of the greens.
Speaking of contenders, while my first post-illness read was Jason Reynolds’ latest, Long Way Down (go read it!), I took my readers’ opinions and the length of the holds list at the library into consideration and pulled Exit West by Mohsin Hamid back into the game as well. I’m about two-thirds of the way through and am enjoying its storytelling quite a bit.
I may up the playback speed of The Secret History of Wonder Woman to see if it sounds weird. (I’m more than halfway through and we haven’t yet reached Wonder Woman’s conception; it would have been better titled The Secret History of Wonder Woman’s Creator and the Women He Loved) I’ve still got a week on it from the library, but Ibi Ziboi’s American Street is also checked out to me and I’d like to get going on that. I wonder if Rudi would be interested in listening to that for some of the Thanksgiving weekend drive…
Today marks the middle of November, so it seems like a good time to announce that I’m going to run the Virtual Advent Tour once again.
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept, on each December morning leading up to Christmas, I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share some aspect of the holiday season — akin to the treat or scene you get opening the door on a traditional Advent calendar. I believe this marks the 10th year a full 24-day tour has run (a mini two-week version ran in 2006 before expanding the following year and in 2014 the tour was on hiatus).
While the concept skews Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates holidays of any kind during the month of December and wants to share them with us. Tell us what you do for Hanukkah. Explore how you observe the principles of Kwanzaa. Air your grievances for Festivus. Talk about the importance of the changing seasons for the Solstice. Share your favorite Christmas menu. We love reading about all kinds of holiday traditions and celebrations!
Would you be willing to share a winter holiday post one or two days next month? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like), your post can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and there’s no need to tell me what you’re going to write about in advance. Folks have shared favorite holiday charities, recipes, religious events, songs, books, local events, memories, and old and new traditions, to name just a few topics from years past. All that I ask is that you have your post published by midnight your time the evening before the date(s) you pick.
If it sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days and will work on a badge for this year in case people want to use it.
Thanks in advance for making this such an enjoyable December tradition!
No, in case you were paying attention, you did not miss posts on rides #2 or #3. Because ride #2 was to my regular library, I didn’t think to take photos inside, so I want to go back and get some to show it off properly. And I had a good portion of the post for ride #3 done when I realized that I wanted to include shots that are on Rudi’s phone (and he’s sleeping).
That sickness I was trying to outrun on Friday caught up with me early Saturday morning and I’ve spent most of the weekend listlessly curled up on the couch, canceling plans left and right. I’m still not feeling 100%, so I’m going to leave you with some music for Monday and head to bed:
David Wilcox’s “Cold”:
Betty Boop’s “I Got A Cold In My Nose”
Skip James’ “Sickbed Blues”
Lisa Loeb’s “A Co Di by Doze (A Cold in My Nose)”
Harry Nilsson’s “Put the Lime in the Coconut”
Johnny Rivers’ “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu”
If you’ve got a favorite sickbed song, leave it in the comments.
