Sweetpea’s Garden

It’s one of those Mondays where it is challenging to think of beauty. Between the teeming rain, chilly temperature, nasty wind, and general gloom, it is more the sort of day where merely getting out of bed seems like an accomplishment. But I will try nevertheless, because I clearly I need to, given that intro.

So, here are three beautiful things from the past week:

1. My littlest nephew, H (cousin Common Loon’s 18-month-old) had pretty serious surgery on Tuesday to fix a birth defect, and came through it amazingly well. So much so, in fact, that he was running around the children’s playroom at the hospital as soon as the morphine wore off — and before they took the IV shunt out of his foot.

1. I noticed early last week that, seemingly overnight, the wild rosebushes in my neighborhood exploded into bloom, and when the azaleas are added in, my walk to the Metro was a riot of color for several days.

2. At the fundraiser I wrote about in last week’s My DC post, I managed to spill a not-insignificant quantity of red wine on my dress. Now, it was not anything fancy or expensive (from Target, about $25) but it was cute, so I was kinda pissed that I’d ruined it the first time I wore it. I decided on Saturday to see if soaking it in OxyClean — a product I love which has only ever let me down once — could get the stain out. I was not optimistic, knowing red wine’s tenacity, but it worked! My new dress will live to see another wearing.

I had intended to write a post about the trip sprite and I took to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend, but I haven’t yet had a chance. And now I don’t need to, because sprite did such an excellent job of capturing the day. So if you want to know what, exactly, goes on at such an event, give it a read.

It’s the start of the week, and in an attempt to nip any bad-Monday mojo in the bud, I am posting my three beautiful things from the past week before I do anything else. (Well, other than make coffee. I can’t type before caffeine.)

1. Two of my favorite people received very good news about their health: my sister’s six-month neurology checkup confirmed that last fall’s MS scare was a false alarm, and my friend Julia found out she does not have cancer.

2. We’ve hired the first of the three newly-created positions in my office, so help is, at last, on the way.

3. I spent Sunday afternoon at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival with sprite — and if ever a day was made for hanging out at a farm buying yarn and eating funnel cake, yesterday was it. The weather was perfect (70s, sunny, no humidity), and in between bouts of lounging in the grass with our fair food, we managed to buy quite a bit of yarn.