The scene is joyfully warm…
Outings, food, Enzo’s birthday… the week is a celebration in pictures! The crocuses in our front yard are blooming…
Enzo turned 5 in human years, but is significantly more mature in dog years. He’s pretty good… we’re happy to have him around. He got a big dog cookie shaped like a cake, and a toy and some treats he had to unwrap. He’s good at unwrapping…
I made falafel this week and fried it perfectly golden, a success in my non-expert frying experience. And were it not for the “shaping into balls and frying” bit, which is slightly effortful, I consider falafel to be an almost perfect meal… satisfying, vegetarian, interesting, customizable… Here, on our sun-drenched table, it is served with cucumbers, tomatoes, mango and pita, and (not-pictured) tahini sauce. Recipe here.
Thursday’s outing with my mother-in-law was a chance to document The Bay’s closing.
A friend and I visited the greenhouses for her garden. Such pretty places in spring!
This geranium caught my eye… It’s called “Starry Pure White” and I went back later and bought a few for our flower bed. Its petals are serrated instead of smooth and round.
Reading
Larger questions around childhood education usually piques my interest, and this week, Austin Kleon’s newsletter lead to the appraisal of a list of books, which lead to Josh Brake disputing a comment by Harari (“Today, nobody has any idea what to teach young people that will still be relevant in twenty years.”) with “Education is not primarily about the acquisition of skills like learning how to code, designing an engineering system, analyzing a business plan, or critiquing an essay. It's about learning to think, to ask questions, and to foster virtue.” (“Foster virtue”! A noble ideal it seems almost strange to admit…) which lead to his link to John Warner’s substack “What is the Purpose of Education?” refuting marketing around Sal Kahn’s upcoming book (titled Brave New Word) and Warner’s writing “I think education should be a process through which individuals become their best selves, which definitely includes finding their way to an economically productive life that provides material security, but is also much more than that.” All of which I found interesting.
Wobble
Sohla El-Waylly revealed her spring must-have items on Instagram, which included something that looks like these wedges, because “you don’t want to sit at a wobbly table when you eat out.” And I thought “clearly, I don’t eat out enough.” But it made me smile because my dad was always keen to fix wobbly tables with whatever cardboard or paper was at hand. Then my friend and I ate out at lunch on Friday and…
Postcard
This week a view toward the river, from beside a great big poplar and its buds. The green is just beginning to show!
Happy Sunday!