Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Thanks to Rudi’s planning ahead, I had eclipse glasses enough not only for me, but also to share with my friend Chris. We watched the solar eclipse (87% covered here in D.C.) together at a nearby park along with his wife, Julie, and two of her friends — and a lot of workers sneaking out for a late lunch to stare up at the sky.

2. The dogwoods, wisteria, and viburnum are out, and walking around the neighborhood is a treat for eyes and nose alike.

3. Long ago, our community garden erected a wooden pen to put discarded plant matter into, and periodically, we would dig out the bottom and then someone would climb atop it to condense the rest down to allow for more detritus to fit. We’d sift the extracted dirt and parcel out fine compost for each gardener. Nowadays, we have a three-bin composting system that we mostly use instead, which means the pen was overflowing, having not been dealt with for years. (Periodically animals also move into the middle of the pen, which is really the main reason we’d left it untouched.) So last weekend, we attacked it from the top — hauling sticks and vines off to a dumpster — and the bottom, where I filled bucket after bucket of rich, unsifted dirt for my fellow gardeners to add to their plots. And, even better, there is space again at the top.

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