We have some progress

This city has taken its sweet time in getting rid of winter, but I am happy to report that, as of this writing, it is 61 degrees and sunny. Actually, what it really is is 61 degrees and S!U!N!N!Y!




At last, we have some progress. We ate lunch outside yesterday. Last night, we came out of a restaurant at nearly ten, and there was still a royal blue glow, the last dregs of sunset, along the western horizon. The pink dogwood tree in the front yard is (sort of) in bloom! The backyard is a jungle! I have no idea how to garden! Everything feels like it’s opening up and starting over.




You do know, right, that you can click on these photos and make them enormous? You, too, can throw yourself face-first into the hard-won glory that is spring in Seattle.




Today, in celebration of all that, I want to share some recent favorites, a list of the best things I’ve read, heard, seen, or tasted in the past few weeks. I wanted to record them somehow, and I thought you might like them, too. I hope so.

- Canal House roasted rhubarb with white wine and vanilla bean. Just made a batch this afternoon.

- Radiolab’s remarkable Where Am I?

- Saipua soap. I read Sarah Ryhanen’s blog all the time, and I can’t get over what she does with flowers. Turns out, she also makes the nicest soap around. My current favorite is the Gardener’s Soap, though I also love Cedarwood and Coffee Mint. I order them online or buy them at Marigold & Mint.

- An Americano before dinner.

- Melissa Clark’s recipe for eggs poached in a buttery sorrel sauce. HELLO. We had this for dinner recently, and I can only say: if you come upon some sorrel, make it.

- An inspired asparagus fest, as captured by my friend Brian, in the garden of my friend Charlotte.

- A fascinating story about time, memory, and perception, from The New Yorker.

- Fleet Foxes! The new album! Spectacular.

- Jess pointed me to this wonderful two-part video of Charles and Ray Eames. They’re humble and unaffected and endearingly awkward on camera, and the host is a trip. (“Ray, should we let Chaaahles do it?”)

- I finished reading Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids more than a week ago, but I’m still thinking about it.

- I can’t stop watching this video of Bruce Springsteen performing “Thunder Road” in Passaic, New Jersey on September 19, 1978. My favorite Bruce song, performed five days after I was born. I love the story he tells at the beginning, the way he tells it, the earnest way he starts the song, the way he winds up grinning and hopping around and having what I can only guess is a hell of a good time. It feels electric.

Happy spring.