1. Lavender shortbread. Taste testing reveals that 1) that’s a whole lotta butter, 2) i like salted butter in shortbread far better than unsalted, i care not what you shortbread purists say, and 3) 4 tsp of fresh lavender was plenty. i’d suggest dialing it back to 2 or 3, and be sure you find a way (spice mill, mini food processor, mortar/pestle, knife) to really chop the buds up fine. still, i made cookies that small like fresh laundry! the house smelled AWESOME while these were baking.

2. strawberry plants. i put in strawberry plants back in late may, and for a while they were doing great (assuming that “great” is defined as, “making delicious strawberries for me to eat”). with the arrival of the summer fog, however, the strawberry plants seem to have lost all interest in making fruit, and are concentrating all of their energy on growing big green leafies, and sending out shoots in every direction as if making effort to colonize the rest of the garden is quickly as possible. anyone with experience growing strawberries? is lack of direct sun causing this aggressive, fruitless behavior? (actually, lack of sunlight makes me aggressive and fruitless, too).

3. we are done with wedding traveling season, hooray! after making three trips to the east (or third) coast in the past 5 weeks we are most pleased to stay home for more than one week at a time. i have garden projects, things to bake, shelves to finish constructing. when did i get so old and boring?

4. as of july 1, i have an assistant at work! i generally try not to blog about work (rule no 1 of the internet: never post anything anywhere you wouldn’t want your boss or your mother to see), so we’ll leave it at that. but i am hopeful that this means that the life-work balance is about to get better. if there was an epiphany from last week’s visit “home” to chicago, it was that my life-work balance is a disaster. and if i’m not happy living in california, it’s not california’s fault, it’s that i have had no time to pursue a life outside of work for the past two years. something needs to change.

5. books recently finished: (audible is radically changing my literary life and the way i feel about an hour-long daily commute) State of Wonder, Ann Patchett; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell; Thunderstuck, Erik Larsen. to quote lau on reading David Mitchell, “i’ve been trying to ration myself and make it last, but i kind of want to crumple it into a ball and stuff it into my eyes.”