Mirrored in your swimming pool

[dolorosa_12]

After a few false starts, summer is truly here in earnest. Matthias and I spent part of the morning in the garden, planting corn, peas, nasturtiums, chives, zucchini and butternut pumpkin, and pulling out handfuls of weeds. The tomato, rocket and radish seedlings I've been growing in the kitchen are off to a good start. We ate breakfast this morning on the deck under the umbrella (and the fruiting cherry, apple and pear trees) for the first time this year.

I've been drinking a lot of iced coffee, and listening to a lot of Miami Horror.

Yesterday (or really the middle of the night on Friday), the Once Upon a Fic collection went live, and I spent most of Saturday afternoon reading through it, and commenting on the stuff I enjoyed. I'll do a full recs post once authors are revealed, but I am very happy with my own gift, my assignment was well-received, so I'd say the exchange has been a success from my perspective.

Other than the usual cooking (a new-to-me Indonesian recipe last night), reading (just more of my Benjamin January reread) and gym/swimming, Matthias and I managed to finish booking all the accommodation and most of the flights/transport for our Finland and Baltic countries summer holiday. The latter half of this is something we've been planning vaguely for a while; the Finnish component is happening because one of Matthias's old school friends is getting married there this summer to his (Finnish) fiancée, which gave us the push we needed to finally make concrete plans for the other countries in the trip. It's a bit complicated (because of the location of the wedding, we ended up needing to stay in five different places for the first five nights), but as long as trains and ferries run as anticipated, it should work out smoothly. I will post more details later on a post just about the trip.

This afternoon will be slow and sleepy: catching up on Dreamwidth, a yoga class, a bit more reading, taking the laundry in, lazily cooking risotto. We are going out to the community cinema to see Challengers this evening, but beyond that it's been a pretty low-key weekend, which was definitely welcome.

Comments

[oracne]

That sounds like a great weekend!

[dolorosa_12]

It was wonderful!

[chestnut_pod]

Your seeds and seedlings sound like a bounty in the making! Are nasturtiums annuals in your garden?

[dolorosa_12]

Fingers crossed!

The nasturtium seed packet says they are annuals (as apparently most varieties are in the UK), unfortunately. But they're such good companion plants that I really wanted to include them.

[chestnut_pod]

That’s fascinating! They’re super-perennials here, forming huge thickets in shady spots. One of the pretty-but-invasive species. I wonder if that’s because we have a totally different varietal, or if it’s a climate question.

[dolorosa_12]

It's something to do with them not being frost-resistant, apparently. So I would say it's probably related to the climate. I will leave them be, and see if they survive the winter!

[trepkos]

I'll be interested to see what you make of Challengers. I haven't seen it, but have read widely differing views on it!

[dolorosa_12]

I quite enjoyed it. It's a well-made, well-written, and well-acted film about a trio of terrible people for whom nobody really exists apart from themselves and each other (an attitude I find reminscent of gods in mythology; no one else is really real to them, a fundamentally inhuman way of seeing the world). If you like that sort of thing, it's a great film!

[trepkos]

One of my friends list saw it as a story about the love of three people for the perfect game of tennis.

[dolorosa_12]

I mean ... it's that too!

[merit]

May you have a bountiful harvest.

And good luck with all the interrelated transport! Someone I know went to Estonia & Lithuania last year and had an amazing time.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you on both counts!

[hoarmurath]

Baltics???

Asking as a regular Estonia dweller, are you coming to Estonia too?

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, we will be in Estonia! I'm going to make a locked post with further details soon; I've granted you access so you'll be able to see it. We'll be in Tallinn and Tartu (but only for about four days in total).

I'm looking forward to it a lot.

[hoarmurath]

Ooh la la, it is me the little excited cat emoji.

Well, the first and last time a DW friend came over, we just got to hang out in Tallinn for like 2 hours, so!

If you want any advice, I am here.

[svgurl]

Sounds like a nice weekend! That's exciting about the upcoming trip and it's great that you had a good exchange too. :D

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, lots of good things happening now, and in the immediate future!