We're going camping in Wisconsin this weekend. I'm always overzealous with vacation reading, usually only making it through a couple chapters and somehow coming home with new books.

Have you read anything worth recommending lately? Have you read either of the two above? I'd love to hear.

Now, into the wild.

I woke up at 5:55, liking the rhythm of those numbers the night before when setting my alarm, thinking: this is going to be my new thing.

I hope it's my new thing.

Let's all sit down, putting our hands together in front of our hearts. We'll take a deep breath in through our noses and then a loud exhale. Inhale again. Now exhale.

It's amazing what you can grow in a space of 22 square feet. Can I confess that I left all of those radishes to wilt while I was gone for a week? Some things are perfect; some things aren't.

Bass Harbor and its tide pools, and its sunburns.

Happy 30th last Sunday to our dearest Sarah.

It was worth it, even with the mosquito bites.

The five of us went on a 22-mile bike ride along the carriage roads of Acadia National Park, stopping at Jordan Pond House midway for lobster bisque, popovers, and lemonade.

Sam, can you believe how it smells here? This most amazing smell.

Samuel putting together a wildflower bouquet for his momma and a tiny shop to buy cookies, after I finally made it to Maine. My 8 p.m. flight from Boston, via New York, was canceled due to fog. In a panic—none of us wanting to miss precious time in Maine—I pitched in for a rental car with four strangers.

Roz is English and lives on her coffee plantation/cattle ranch in Costa Rica; she doesn't drink coffee or eat meat. Marsha teaches at a private girls school in Fort Worth; botany is her passion. Molly is traveling around the country for three months; she studied languages in college, but is moving to London to study physical therapy. The Irish lad—Molly's boyfriend—I never got his name, but he lives in Manhattan and was the butt of all of our which-one-of-us-is-a-serial-killer jokes, driving through rural Maine at 2 a.m.

I was the first to be dropped off, and each one of them got out of the car to hug me goodbye—friendships develop quickly with five strangers, five hours, in the night.

The wedding of our friends Michael and Kathryn—for which I made the paper goods—just outside of Woodstock, NY, captured in a few snapshots. (This does not include what you would have seen around 2 a.m.: dancing around a bonfire to filthy hip-hop music, an empty bottle of champagne in one hand and a half-smoked cigar in the other.) We hiked that morning and lunched at the Phoenicia Diner. Then, we continued driving and pulled over to change into our formal clothes on the side of a quiet road, walking down to a stream to wade in the cold water.

Molly took this photo of me applying mascara afterward, as we prepared to leave the water for the ceremony—me and Molly, sirens for the afternoon.

We picked up berries at a roadside stand.

"Can we play a game where we guess what her name was?"

I took the Amtrak to Rochester to spend in a day in Molly's new town, reading on her sofa and touring her workplace and eating dinner on her roof. We rented a car the next day and drove down along one of the Finger Lakes as it rained, clearing up just in time for our arrival at The Graham and Co. in Phoenicia. It was simple, relaxing, and so beautiful.

Plus, they give you a free beer upon arrival.

I'm going to New York for a wedding of friends, and then further north to spend a week where I've never been.

I created all of the paper goods for the wedding and can't wait to see them in the hands of friends and strangers, hopefully running their fingers back and forth across the letterpress along with me.

Perhaps the seasons don't shift, but instead we do. Maybe they look at us, thinking, "I can't wait for them to turn to spring! Oh, spring's so chilly. Summer already, humans!"

I like the idea of turning into summer, or any season for that matter.

On either side.

I paid a long-awaited visit to the gardens at Thomas Jefferson's dreamy Monticello.

Maira Kalman on the subject.

Swimming lessons in the river and blackberry ice cream pie at the top of the mountain. Didn't I tell you it was "the most American of weekends?"

It should be noted that Parker also wears his life jacket and goggles during his nightly baths.

My morning ride into work on a cloudy day, just as the foliage—what little there was in May—turns into concrete. You'd expect disappointment with the transition, but it's seamless joy as the skyline grows out of the trees.

Today marks the first day of Chicago Bike to Work Week, if you're local and interested in participating.