A week on Sunday (no. 23)

A week in pictures

It’s often the case that when a week fills the photos app with colour, my desk has been conversely empty of desky activity. So, I’ve bravely dusted off my keyboard to show you some of the week here…

There was MH’s birthday which occasioned an outing at The Leaf; and aren’t they pretty, the smiling family seen through a water fall? This butterfly agreed to pose.

Then it was Canada Day and we joined a crowd of people at Assiniboia Downs. A thunderstorm broke shortly after we arrived, delaying the horse racing until it was cancelled. But we got to watch the clouds and lightning from our seats in the stand, sheltered from the rain and cooled by the breeze.

The fireworks, begun just before 10:30 were impressive: close, loud, and choreographed to last 20 minutes. Far quieter, but just as pretty, the rose a friend cut for us:

And one of the linden trees in our front yard bloomed this year. It smells so nice!

We went strawberry picking yesterday…

So many summers in a row, it’s a tradition now.

Four baskets were transformed into 19 and 3/4 jars of freezer jam, a quart of strawberry lemonade, a strawberry summer cake and strawberry-rhubarb popsicles, with more strawberries leftover for a strawberry milkshake for the kids, and maybe… a daiquiri for the adults. (But I’ve written about strawberries before… more than once!) So here… let’s end on a furry note.

Listening

Advertised on another podcast, I started listening to Outlaw Ocean, beginning with S2, episode 4: “The Repo Man” then went back and listened to everything available from the series. Episodes like “Waves of Extraction” and “The Magic Pipe” from Season 1 recall Toms River (mentioned a few weeks ago in No. 18) for our world’s continuing problem with pollution. And the latest episode in Season 2, “The Shrimp Factory Whistleblower” makes me think of themes in Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I really appreciated the more personal take on this work by Ian Urbina himself, in Season 1, Episode 7: “The Spell of the Sea”. All in all, a podcast series that I both learned so much from and enjoyed listening to, even if some of its topics were especially heavy.

Postcard

A quick phone capture of a meadow spied on a Friday night bike ride with Christian.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday (No. 16)

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!