Friday Lunch Special: Big Dill, Optimus Prime, Co-working, and Digestibles
Another helping of a little bit of everything!
Welcome to another edition of Friday Lunch Special. Once upon a time I was a girl who wrote long, winding, heartfelt captions on Instagram. Now I’m a girl who has Instagram blocked on my phone for most of the day, and I use it primarily for IRL connection and sharing this newsletter. As you may know, I try to write every day. Most of the time, what I’m writing isn’t in any state to see your inbox, but some of the time there are tidbits that I like. Those bits and bobs will live here, along with some recommendations and links. Friday Lunch Special is a little bit of everything. I hope you enjoy!
P.S. Check out past issues here: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06
Big Dill
In my garden there are several things that are growing all on their own without my needing to plant them this year and that’s making all the difference. A smattering of cosmos with deckled morning light are visible from the seat I read and write in each morning. Tall millennial pink larkspur sits next to them, proud until the point that they fall over, making little bridges for bugs to get from the flower bed to the strawberries that have popped up this year too. Speaking of strawberries– the 8 small plants I set in last year have exploded into around 20 plants making small handfuls of the smallest sweetest berries I’ve ever tasted (maybe that’s just because they’re growing in my backyard and thus they feel more special). Hollyhocks are starting to bear their flowers too, big explosions of pinks and purples that I can barely make out from my window.
The herb beds are thriving. Creeping thyme crept a little too efficiently. I had to cut back an entire plant, repotting it into small planters for friends. I planted a slow bolt variety of cilantro in its place, thinking that mid summer when our cilantro has seeded into coriander the thyme could take over and stretch its legs.
Oregano, scallions, chives, mint, parsley, lavender and sage have all made a comeback too. They waited all winter to show back up, to our delight.
The basil bed I’ve just planted is doing well, seedlings are finally starting to begin the process of getting tall. I decided that it would be fun to stripe the bed, so I planted alternating rows of a deep purple basil as well as a large leafed green basil. It’s looking beautiful already.
I was maybe overzealous with the dill– I threw an entire seed packet in the herb ordained half bed I had ready, that neighbors the basil. Dill is my favorite herb and my most utilized. I like to make my way out each morning to cut sprigs to go in my eggs, and it’s not uncommon to need it again for lunch. I will likely need to thin it out as the plants mature, but right now they all seem happy.
I planted something else in the bed that houses the scallions, chives and sage but I can’t remember what it was. It was either fennel or lavender, and to be honest I hope it was fennel.
Optimus Prime
A friend shared a photo of a beautiful wall with tiles of painted vegetables and fruits and herbs and right smack dab in the middle is an Optimus Prime clock and I love it so much I have to say something about it. Life is like that, you know? Something charming with something banal and grotesque right in the middle of it, and I don’t know why but I think that makes it more beautiful. It’s like we’re all right here, trying to parse it all out, trying to make something nice and somehow the best we’ve got sometimes is the Transformers franchise.
Co-working
When I’m working at the co-working space I frequent, I have a habit of getting lost in my mind and while I’m detoured I like to write little vignettes about the world around me. This is one from this week that I can’t stop thinking about because in reading it back, it feels flavorless, but when I wrote it it felt like I was getting to the bottom of an Agatha Christie novel. I spent a good 20 minutes typing it out and trying to figure out why this person was of such interest to me. I think it’s because she was totally unknowable and I felt like I knew her.
A woman sits across from me reading a book that is incredibly thick but the spine faces away and I can’t tell what it is. She wears a turquoise shirt that is unbranded, jeans, and a hat that just says ‘1974’. She’s too young for that to be the year that she was born. Later I look this up and it might have something to do with the class that graduated that year at UVA. She talks into her headphones about an app that either she is working on or the person she’s speaking with is working on. She’s captivating in a way I can’t figure out and then I realize it’s because she looks like someone I knew in 2017, in what feels like another lifetime. “Son of a Preacher Man” plays over the sound system as my decaf coffee gets cold.
Digestibles
Alison Roman’s newsletter from Tuesday of this week is a sublime glimpse of the pressure she feels to show up perfectly and sell herself. I believe it resonates because it puts into words the dichotomy of having a public self online and the private self in the real world, and how, often, that carries a great deal of tension. You can read it here.
Silvie has a new song and, as per usual, it's incredible.
My friend Jordan Ward has revamped his newsletter and his first piece is out today. He has famously strong opinions that he communicates with such charisma and assuredness that I always want to hear what he’s got to say (despite often not agreeing with him!) Today’s piece is on airports and air travel, something I very vocally love, that he hates. It’s wonderful. Read it here.
Look at this cute photo of me (in meme form)!
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