A spider just drifted by and I let it be, floating on its piece of silk, because, I think, I should let bugs live. But when the ambient air in this big-windowed study room moves a stray hair against my cheek, I think "spider?" But no, it's now landed and is exploring the floor...

1. Having a routine just to take a break

Today, I give you no weighty thoughts, no facts or quotes, just this leftover feeling... Yesterday, I broke my self-imposed week-time routine to take the day and celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. We packed a picnic and spent all afternoon at Assiniboine Park, visiting the Leaf, getting ice cream across the bridge at Sargent Sundae, and touring the English Garden and Leo Mol's sculpture garden. Besides the fact that the outing was itself really nice, that it pleased the generational span of our family and that everything went smoothly, it was also the momentary release of choosing to take the day off without setting any expectation on it that brought a "relaxing into the moment" kind of happiness I wasn't expecting. But I think that contrary to the impulse of wanting to chase that "relief from routine" feeling, it only reinforces (for me) the benefit of having a discipline to help me with this isolated - and isolating - kind of pursuit. I'm happier when I consciously dedicate time to both.

2. See?

This is the hat-wearing contingent of our little group headed over to get a treat. I'm really grateful to the city for maintaining such pretty gardens in the summer!

3. Eating

The beginning of the week, and most of the month of July so far, has been unusually cold. After a decadent supper with relatives, we had Christian's brother and mother over for Fish Stew on Sunday. Fish stew doesn't sound appetizing, but I can always trust Nigella Lawson to win me over to something over the course of one lengthy recipe introduction or another... This one, she promised, would resolve my "fissues", and just being provoked to lol, I decided to take on almost two pounds of cod.

Sometimes, I think, it's not about the recipe itself that I want to devote all my enthusiastic writing... sometimes it's better to just appreciate the "a-propos"-ness of food. The supper felt like a healthy pause in the midst of going-out extravagance and it felt warm against the chill. I appreciated it for that.

Yesterday, it was warm, and sunny, and after a day of walking around gardens and plants, we had salade nicoise, just to catch up on all the wax beans our garden has been producing. The day before, I'd said to Christian "maybe plant fewer beans next year?" A second and third serving of the salad and my mind thinks maybe I should hit "backspace" on the comment. Before assembling the salad, I made a riff on this Antipasti by Grossy Pelosi. (What? A salad before a salad? Ah! It's summer dear!)

4. A podcast I like

I'm new to listening to Hard Fork, and press play whether or not I understand the episode titles, only to feel like I'm always learning something new about AI and feeling a little smarter for it. There's a gap between appreciating new ideas and actually being able to explain them to someone else, but still, hosts that help pierce the nebulous nature of this technology are to be commended! (And hey! I learned about the Effort Heuristic!)

5. Scenery

From the beautifully manicured Assiniboine gardens, to the lightly-maintained Henteleff, here are thistles and milkweed. The milkweed is treated with care in this park so that monarchs can lay their eggs on them. Swaths of grass will be weed-whacked, but special allowance is made for milkweed.

And the thistles? They grow everywhere! I kind of like them though... Celtic nations associate positive qualities to the thistle and so I look at them with a benevolent eye.

Psst! Happy Friday!

Welcome to this week’s edition of things I’ve enjoyed and thought about… And while I hone my conversational writing to match Nigella Lawson’s, this rambling and the links from which it is inspired is all free!

1. Drawing, again

Drawing for Illustration by Martin Salisbury, mentioned last week, had these two inspiring quotes from illustrators, on the subject of drawing:

David Humphries:

"When I was a student, I remember visiting an exhibition of drawings at the Royal College of Art by Sir Isaac Newton and his contemporaries. I was really annoyed that all of the scientists could draw better than me. After the exhibition, when I was sitting under a tree in Hyde Park, an iPhone dropped out of the sky and hit me on the head. At that moment it occurred to me that very few modern illustrators have the technical ability to make drawings of that quality, and it is the advent of photography that has allowed drawing to disappear from the science curriculum (and the majority of art schools). But the real loss is that the act (and discipline) of describing things visually helps us understand their function and appreciate their beauty; merely pressing a button on a camera or a phone just isn't the same."

Kerry Lemon:

"I'm evangelistic about drawing. Always on a mission to get people to draw. The tragedy of art education is the quick determination of who is 'good' at drawing and who is not. An obsession with product, rather than the process of creation. Finding joy in the process, the sound and texture of dragging pen, brush or pencil across a page will mean you will continue to do it and, as in all things, the more you actually draw, the more you WILL automatically improve - your finished drawings will become better and better. There are no shortcuts. No expensive pens or expert tuition will get you there. Just draw. Draw constantly. Draw everything, all the time. Drawing is all about looking and a regular drawing practice will alter your view of the world. You will begin to see things that you previously ignored. Sitting on the train, you will be acutely aware of the pattern of the seat, the light on the metal railing, the profile of the commuter opposite, the weave of their scarf. Drawing is magic, and I am bewitched by it.

2. A thing I learned about rhubarb

It's nice sitting down with a cookbook written by Nigella Lawson. She's a very chatty cook and were you to compare recipes to all the thoughts she pens along with them, I wonder if the latter wouldn't outweigh the former. But I like listening to her.... she writes so well, it does indeed feel like listening, I swear I can even hear her British accent. Her recipe books have photos, and I always find them very colourful, almost over-saturated. She has a chapter on rhubarb, accompanied by bright pink rhubarb photo-subjects... in a trifle, all soft in a tray, fresh from being roasted. Until I read the chapter though, I didn't know that there are two kinds of rhubarb... In Cook, Eat, Repeat, she writes:

For much of the world, the coming of rhubarb heralds the arrival of spring; for those in England, it appears brightly in the bleak midwinter, absurdly, improbably pink, the color of hope, filled with all the light that is missing from our skies. My heart lifts every time it comes into season towards the end of December. How could it not? Yorkshire forced rhubarb, which is started off outside, but then transplanted inside, cultivated in the dark and harvested by candlelight, is one of our greatest culinary treasures: hot pink from the cold earth, its stalks are more tender, their texture more delicate, and the taste purer and more vibrant than the hefty red rhubarb that comes later, out in the open, and which, as the year moves on, and the stalks grow thicker and greener, all too often cooks into a fibrous khaki mush (p 127).

Mystery solved! I will no longer worry where all the pretty pink colour goes... it was never really there to begin with!

3. Tiktok is still fun

Sometimes I abandon a social media platform for awhile... I scrolled through Tiktok recently and it made me feel happy that Hank Green's office has been redecorated since I last visited the platform. And a ceramicist got accepted into a market after being turned down again and again. Feeling "heartwarmed" on social media should be celebrated!

4. Geraniums

Inspired by this post, I bought geraniums for inside the house. They remind me of the ones that lined the window sill behind our elementary school teacher's desk. For years, I disdained them, but my taste has changed, and now they make me think of coziness and comfort.

5. The view here

It's been very warm this week. Leaves are sprouting, delicate and shiny like butterfly wings before they dry. I planted flowers in the garden a week earlier than in years past. Everywhere, the first dandelions of the season...

Psst! Happy Friday! This was sent just before the day ended, and doesn’t include a link to a recipe. But if you’d like a recommendation, we tried this soup on Wednesday, when it was chilly and rainy, and paired it with Buttermilk Biscuits and felt satisfied.