I thought I’d share some of what’s flowering around D.C. right now, per today’s bike ride:

Mostly those are the early cherry trees on Hains Point, which abuts the harbor, the Tidal Basin, and the Potomac River; peak bloom (the day when 70% of the flowers are open) won’t be for another week. Most of them look like this right now:

Is anything blooming in your neck of the woods yet?

Corey has two modes when we’re home just the two of us — screaming at me for more food … and this:

I think he loves me…

Glory be! It’s the last weekend of the ski season! Rudi will be home by midday on Monday! It’s supposed to be dry!

In my final few days holding down the home front, I have already started the weekend off right by heading across town for a book reading (Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken, about an early 20th-century woman who builds a candlepin bowling alley in a Massachusetts town), followed by a Korean mushroom bun eaten while walking to the grocery store (for whipped cream).

Tomorrow, there’s an early afternoon alumni gathering that I might attend. Then I’m going to head back to the bookstore for another reading (Giraffes on Horseback Salad by Josh Frank, Manuela Pertega, and Tim Heidecker, a graphic novel version of the film script written by Salvador Dalí for the Marx Brothers lost until the late 1990s amongst Groucho’s papers) and then possibly on to a second bookstore, where they’re holding a standup show based on failed attempts to follow Marie Kondo’s uncluttering advice. I’m not usually a standup fan, but I’m hopeful that this one will work for me. Otherwise, I’ll just head home to Netflix (or read) and chill.

Sunday, I’ll head to the farmers market (I suspect it’s still too early for ramps, but maybe I’ll find some spring onions or spring garlic) and then it’s off to a friend’s house for the afternoon to divvy up our baseball season tickets. I’ll probably bike home via the Tidal Basin. Peak bloom season isn’t slated to arrive for another week or two, but the early trees supposedly have some flowers, if they didn’t all drop during today’s afternoon thunderstorm. The UConn women play in the evening, so I might try to stream some of the radio broadcast of their game while I attempt to put the living room back to rights after yesterday’s excitement.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

I just spent the past 12 hours doing flood control. It was only that long because in doing flood damage control, I discovered that ants had moved in and set up nests along the 10-foot length of the dry bag I’d left there all winter to cut down on flood damage. Thousands of ants. Karen called and asked if it was possible I was exaggerating. I was not.

The good news is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend or something like that, and the groundwater incursion took care of a surprising number of ants. My supposedly environmentally friendly cleaner also was a surprisingly effective tool of mass death. (I hate insect swarms because I feel really bad about having to kill them. But there’s really no getting around that with ants.)

Sadly, ants are not an easily defeated foe, so I am aware that the next few days I will need to remain vigilant and set up checkpoints and demand IDs. There will be no masquerading as the smallish spiders I let live in my corners. (Imagine how much worse it would have been if the spiders hadn’t been there!) And I have left the furniture in that part of the room askew to make checking the baseboards easier.

But we can’t end on that kind of note. Let’s look back at three beautiful things from our week in order to conclude the night in a more positive headspace:

1. The Thai place by my house makes very good (emergency) takeout.

2. Our friend Sarah kindly lent us her car so I could take Rudi to the Baltimore airport early last Friday. Because his flight left before dawn, I was back just as the pretzel bakery by her house was opening and got to enjoy very tasty treats — their specialty drink is a hot Nutella — early in the day.

3. No obvious signs of life yet amongst the peas I’ve planted in the garden, but when I tucked a few of them back into the ground, I noticed they’d grown roots, which is also true of the onion or shallot bulbs I planted last fall.

How about you? Tell me what’s been beautiful in your world this week!

While biking between appointments this afternoon, I decided to stop by a sunny patio at a local café for a little while to pass the time. We’re due for more than an inch of rain tomorrow, so this seemed like a smart move for my mental wellbeing. It was just 50 degrees, but in the sun it felt quite pleasant in just my sweatshirt and cowl.

While there, I had an apple muffin and a pot of Earl Grey tea and followed it up with a bowl of white bean and kale soup when I decided I should eat something before volleyball.

I read some and knit. The shawl is too awkward to travel with, so this is the first of the stockinette socks I have on the go, which works well for multitasking. I’ve got about an inch before I decrease for the toe.

On the reading front, I’m still working through Early Riser, which I’m now only reading during the day because it’s filled with bad dreams and zombies and evil corporations, none of which I want to be thinking about before bed, as well as two audiobooks, A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy and Creative Quest. In the past two days, I’ve started the charming graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (It’s the tale of a 17th century seamstress who, after making one scandalous dress for a Parisian ball, becomes the personal designer for a prince who’d like to secretly go out in society in dresses) and A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos, about a magical girl who’s been betrothed to a stranger. I also resumed How To Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric with the intention of finishing it off. I’m hopeful it will have some useful advice. (It’s already made me feel better about my paralysis about the direction of my life; I’m hoping its next step will be to prod me problem-solving.)

Want to see what others are crafting and reading? Head over to As Kat Knits.

Today was the final full day of winter.

The Old Man held onto his domain until the last: although today was beautifully blue and sunny, there was a brisk north breeze to make those of us who went without coats rue our headiness.

But he cannot keep us in his clutches. Even now, his grasp loosens as the earth warms and brave leaflings burst forth and robins hold court both in the yards during the day and in the trees in the evening.

His final evening was quiet, with the sun setting nearly 20 minutes past seven. His final sunrise will be roughly that same time in the morning. He will need to cede to the new season before tomorrow evening rolls around. He’s been a mild Old Man this year here in the mid-Atlantic (particularly given what many of you have had to deal with), and we’ve been grateful, but we’re ready for him to head south. Bon voyage and see you next December!