I didn’t really notice tonight’s sunset, but last night’s was particularly stunning:

Another weekend, another list of things I’d like to accomplish…

Tomorrow the Capital Weather Gang has given D.C.’s forecast a 10/10. I’d very much like to spend as much of it outside as possible. The rest of the weekend also looks lovely.

I’m thinking a trip to one of D.C.’s nurseries is in order. As I said to Rudi earlier, the mid-Atlantic still has at least three months of growing time left this year. Everything was shut down when I planted in the spring, so I was using seeds I had on hand (I had many packets of peas…) and what I could get at the farmers market. Now, though, I need some more chard seeds. However, I will wait another month before I put kale back in my plot, since the harlequin beetles have wreaked havoc in our region this year and maybe they’ll fly south if we don’t replant too soon. I’d also like some fall flowers, since my echinacea are wrapping up for the season.

Rudi and I need to send some mail this week. I probably won’t get it all sent over the weekend, but I can maybe get it prepped. Also, has anyone seen what I did with my Forever postcard stamps?

I haven’t gone out on the bike in weeks, so maybe I will get up in the morning and ride someplace to pick up lunch. Maybe Sarah is around and would be interested in the Pretzel Bakery… Or I could get a vegetarian Cuban sandwich. Or a mango and papaya Indonesian salad… Regardless of where I go, I should remember to inflate my tires before I haul the bike up the stairs.

We did not get ourselves moving early enough to get pizza tonight, so that’s definitely on this weekend’s agenda. As is the usual trip to the farmers market.

Reading and knitting in the park are both on tap. It was packed up there tonight.

We need to watch the last episode of Endeavour before it goes behind PBS’ paywall. I wonder if our laptop batteries will let us watch up at the park…

I need to do some baking and make a new batch of ice cream. Both those things should be accomplished later in the weekend, when I’m tired of being outside, or at night.

I’d like to find my copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in French, since I’ve been studying again. The advantage to already knowing the story is that it should help me with the vocabulary not otherwise covered in my app tutorials. (For some reason they don’t think “goblin” or “magic wand” are likely to be needed on my next trip to Paris or Montreal.)

I really need to bring some semblance of order to the Burrow. I don’t want to waste my long weekend working on that, but maybe I can get my first bag of stuff to donate to Goodwill out the door and put away all those work shoes…

What’s on your long weekend to-do list?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We waited out the evening shower in Trader Joe’s loading dock and headed back out as soon as the rain lightens. The storm moved through quickly and the clouds afterwards skittered across the sky like a rapidly turning kaleidoscope, attaching one to another and then splitting apart in new shapes and colors.

2. I ordered some new, highly discounted clothes a couple weeks ago and Friday the Post Office showed the package as delivered, even though it was nowhere to be found. At first I wasn’t worried — we’re a USPS family and I know sometimes things slide under seats, plus we fall at the end of our carrier’s route — but when it didn’t appear on Saturday and tracking hadn’t been updated, I filed a missing package report. (While we’ve never had packages stolen, we do live in a city and we know people who have.) Monday evening, the package showed up as if it was right on time, which, I suppose, it was.

3. We were out of bread products last week (by which I mean I hadn’t made bread and didn’t feel like running out to the bagel shop), so I opened a boxed chocolate chip pannetone we’ve had sitting around since the holidays. It’s okay toasted, but makes an amazing French toast, which is a very pleasant way to start a workday.

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

Four days in and my shawl is currently about half the size of a washcloth, or roughly the size of a hardcover book. I’m enjoying knitting on it so far.

I’ve got three books on the go at the moment. I started a graphic novel this evening — Maggy Garrisson by Lewis Trondheim with illustrations by Stéphane Oiry. It’s about a scrappy young woman who starts working at a detective agency, only to have the detective beaten up less than a week into her employment. It reminds me of Stumptown. (I haven’t actually read the Stumptown graphic novels, so it just reminds me of the tv adaptation.)

I’ve also got We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry going. It’s set in a New England high school in 1989, where I also could be found that year. I’m finding it very familiar, although I’m hard pressed to believe something set during my lifetime is considered historical fiction.

Speaking of historical, my final read is the audiobook of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, set in 1920s London. It is full of cartoonish villains and bias, but I find Tommy and Tuppence so utterly charming that I’m not put off the way I have been with similar novels.

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

We’re closing in on six months of pandemic shutdowns, travel restrictions, and general malaise. In an effort to keep these last months of the year from spiraling into a hot mess, I thought I’d come up with a list, similar to the ones I often make for weekends, of things I’d like to accomplish each month. I will not get mad at myself if I don’t cross items off, but if I get stuck this gives me a physical place to turn to to see what I could work on.

This month, I’d like to:

• Put away all my office shoes. My shoe storage features in the background of most of my Zoom calls, and if I’m not going back to business clothing until 2021, I can fill that space with my more colorful Chuck Taylors instead.
• Finish my Tour de France KAL shawl. I have knit on it a little each day so far (and KayT, you were right, it is easily memorized).
• If the dedication ceremony for D.C.’s revamped MLK Library is open to the public, attend it.
• Sit in on some of the virtual sessions of the National Book Festival.
• Ride my bike at least once a week now that the weather is cooling off again.
• Go apple picking/cider doughnut acquiring with Sarah.
• Take a long weekend off from work (in addition to Labor Day).
• Call some friends. We’ve all been bad about staying in touch.
• Come up with an actual way to mark Rudi’s and my 25th anniversary of being together.
• Declutter a carload’s worth of stuff to Goodwill.

How about you? What’s on tap for your September?

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl are the top ten books that make me hungry. Ten slots weren’t enough for this week’s list, so here’s a full baker’s dozen:

1. Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu — Adorable graphic novel featuring a gay hockey player who bakes for his team. I haven’t yet read the sequel, but am seriously hoping for end material with scone and pie recipes.
2. Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch — A teen whose mother has recently died is sent to Italy to live with her mom’s BFF. They bond over ice cream.
3. A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd — A girl and her family temporarily move back with her aunt to a hometown with an eccentric ice cream maker who channels feelings into his non-melting ice cream.
4. The entire Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas — Charlotte Holmes, better known by her nom de guerre Sherlock, struggles with a maximum tolerable number of chins. And she is cursed to live with and love people with really great dessert chefs. But you really want to be invited to have tea with her and Mrs. Watson.
5. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks — On their last night of working at the pumpkin patch their senior year of high school, our two protagonists have vowed to sample every single food stand on the property, from caramel apples to fudge to chili fries. Bonus, there’s a map of the farm inside the graphic novel’s cover with all their stops.
6. The Bandette series by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover — Our masked heroine is a huge fan of chocolate bars. You’d do well to stock up before beginning this graphic novel heist series.
7. The Three Pines series by Louise Penny — Inspector Gamache loves his food, and he will not let crime get in the way of a meal at the bistro (or catered by it) or a delicious dinner with friends (and potential suspects).
8. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo — Emoni loves to cook, imbuing her food with feeling. When her school overs a culinary course (with a trip to Europe at the end of the semester), she knows she needs to be part of it, even if it means juggling her work, her daughter’s daycare, and her responsibilities to her abuela.
9. Chocolat by Joanne Harris — Opening a chocolate shop in a small French village just before Easter should be a slam-dunk, particularly when the confections are particularly evocative, but maybe not when you’re accused of dabbling in witchcraft by Monsiuer le Maire and the church lackeys he has at his right hand.
10. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev — A modern take on the Austen classic, but featuring a British-Indian chef as one of our two stubborn protagonists.
11. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery — Okay, so I do not want to eat custard sauce in which a mouse has drowned or cake with liniment in it instead of vanilla. But other than that, I definitely want to sample raspberry cordial and hand-cranked ice cream on a hot day and even a cake that has been shoved into a story to win a writing prize by your BFF.
12. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han — I would love to spend evenings or weekends baking with Lara Jean and frankly the Song girls’ lead-up to Christmas with their cookie baking extravaganzas are the things that dreams are made of.
13. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling — So evocative with her food descriptions they literally made a candy line based on it. However, I could live without Nearly Headless Nick’s deathday feast.

How about you? Do you have favorite books that you just want to invite yourself to a meal in?