Wind bag, joy and an hour out.

1. She runs to get back to the car before the warden comes, small child and black plastic sack of helium balloons slowing her down.

2. I run into a friend who is getting married in a few weeks' time. His eyes are shining, and he looks as if he would like to shout with joy -- except that he's in a shopping centre, and it's not entirely appropriate to walk around with an ear-to-ear smile.

3. Since it is hard to navigate the flat in the dark, and we are very full and heavy from supper, we spend Earth Hour lying in bed talking about our future.

30 days, virtue and a comparison.

1. The number of unread items in my spam box is going down by itself -- the 30-day auto delete has kicked in because I haven't looked in there for a month. This is good, because one of my new year's resolutions was to stop checking the spam folder. The Google system makes mistakes so rarely that a daily wallow in mails from people who peddle filth and misery is not worth it. My other resolution -- to stop reading the depressing Have Your Say message boards on the BBC -- is going well, too.

2. I hold up my cotton bag for my purchases, and the shop man smiles and says: 'Good girl.'

3. I skim over my copy of the Watchmen graphic novel to compare it with the film I saw last night.

Time of day, passing on and the grasses.

1. A morning chat with my little sister on her birthday.

2. I've been Freecycling books, and I get a note from a lady saying that she wishes I could have seen her little girl when she got home from school and discovered the pile of children's books -- apparently she is devouring one or two a day, so new ones are always needed. I'm really glad to have helped out another bookworm.

3. Looking across the long grass on the Common. I love seeing the wind turn the stems like waves on water.

Not lost, travelling, books away and dinner out.

There has been plenty of 3BT action over at Applehouse Poetry Workshop -- check out the comments.

And all you writers -- Fiona Robyn is running a workshop in August: Developing your writing practice.

1. Bookcrossing -- I put my stuff down in the Post Office, and when I leave 'forget' to pick up a labelled book. I wonder who will find, and if they'll like it.

2. Freecycling -- piles of books disappear off our doorstep, carried away by readers.

3. The words 'dinner' and 'my treat'. And little dishes of tapas.

There all along, beans and object of desire.

1. In my pile of morning reading, a list of homographs makes me perk up -- I'd never noticed evening and evening or moped and moped.

3. Popping broad beans out of their pods -- I like the foamy lining.

2. A Freecycle pick-up. At 9am, I decide I want a soldering iron to fix my hairclip. At 4.30pm, I find one waiting on an assigned bench.

Green acres, nightwatch and after the storm.

1a. Today I am 30.

2a. There is a new post up at 12 Old Masters.

3a. My book proposal is one of six shortlisted in the Long Barn Books loo book competition. The results are posted on Susan Hill's blog. I'll hear on 30 June if it has won a publishing contract. I can't stop smiling.

4a. My new favourite riddle: 'A man in Egypt jumps into a river and shouts "I am not wet." Why?' Guesses in the comments, please, and I'll give the official answer tomorrow.

1. My brother has bought me half an acre of rainforest from Cool Earth. I love the idea that there's a little slip of land in Brazil that belongs to me, containing 22 mature hardwoods and thousands of species of insects. The purchase price will be used to pay for rangers from the area and to support income generating schemes that work with the forest rather than against it.

2. Hearing owls -- this reminds me of a line from a Siegfried Sassoon Poem called 'Middle-Ages':
'Owls in the wood were shrill
And the moon sank red.'
And a bat flies over my head, which makes me think of William Blakes' 'Augeries of Innocence':
'The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the soul that won't believe.'

3. Louise is taking me home after a cheery supper at her parents'. A thunder storm has rolled away and we find ourselves under a sky lit up by silent flashes of lightening. Louise says that she likes it when it is still warm after the rain. 'It's softened the air,' she says.

How long, moult and guerilla tactics.

1. Looking back over a long piece of work and running a word count on it.

2. Pippin, a golden retriever, is moulting -- fluffs of white blonde undercoat are poking through her red gold topcoat. It is tremendously satisfying to pull them out and let them fly away.

3. Stripping the cardboard off a four-pack of tins and leaving it at the checkout so that we don't have to take it home, store it and then bring it back to the recycling centre. I secretly hope that other people will do it too and supermarkets will start to take more responsibility for their share of domestic waste.

Donkey work, gardening and network.

1. My father dropping me off and staying to help put books on shelves.

2. The smell of sage, oregano and thyme (present from my cousin) and compost (present from my father) as I planted them in a big blue ceramic pot (present from my aunt) out on the balcony.

3. The magic of Freecycle means that instead of cluttering up our new flat, the boxes I moved with are helping other people.

Words, summoning and green skirt.

1. The comments and emails I get about 3BT usually brighten my morning routine and often change the way I think about the day. Cheers everyone.

2. Sunday morning text messages that are a call to brunch.

3. My green skirt. The end has come for this beloved garment: the tatter on the left hip where my bag rubs, has grown so large as to be indecent, and summer is over, so it's time for our ways to part. I love green as a base colour for summer, so I always have a green skirt or two. This has been one of my favourites: soft linen is a pleasure to wear and easy to care for; the generous cut makes it easy to move in; the shade of green is pretty and easy to match. If you hear the last post at the recycling centre, you'll know why.

Scented day, postcard and pass it on.

1. Walking into work, Oli remarked that he could feel the pollen in the air. There was a certain sweet smell in the car park, and the lime tree just outside was buzzing with flies and bees. In the evening walking across town, I passed a garden that wafted the scent of buddleja, and the park was full of lavender.

2. I've been joining in at Postcrossing and today I got a card from a lady in Japan. I asked for Three Beautiful Things and she has shared:

• The letter reached...
• The flower of the veranda bloomed.
• One problem of the work decreased.

Each one is illustrated with a little picture, and the rest of the card contains the same poetic English. Plus there are two gorgeous stamps -- one of a Geisha and one of cartoon rabbit postman.

3. Through the magic of Freecyle, I now have a sliderule. There are some good people out there.

Pudding, travel plans and florals.

1. Sharing a pudding, because you get the taste without having to eat the whole thing.

2. Not being a driver, I sometimes have to be a bit creative in my travel plans -- there are often ways of getting about that don't follow roads. I realised that a colleague's journey home takes her near the back of the forest where my parents live, so I cadged a lift and got myself dropped off. I met Rosey for a fine stroll through the pine woods full of low sun and wildflowers and bracken smells. The Mother met us on the road too, and Daddy walked the last part with us.

3. Fresh flowers in my bedroom. There is a pale pink rose and some deep purple clematis. Rosey has some flowers to -- sweetpeas; and there is a white jug of orange marigolds on the kitchen table.

Shelter, tip and muscles.

1. The windproofness of my Northface flight fleece.

2. Dropping things off at the dump. I think it's the busyness of the place; and I like seeing all the rubbish separated for recycling; and watching the attendants carefully putting to one side things that they like.

3. A masseur who appreciates that because I'm at the more tightly coiled end of the scale, a deep massage is pretty painful, and that a softer touch is much more useful.

Re-use, free food and tunes.

1. Using things twice at work. We use a lot of paper because there is nothing like a paper proof for editing. However, we save the pages and print on the back too. Once a page has been used twice, it goes in a box to be recycled -- since they don't pick up our paper here, He-who-shall-not-be-named takes the box to the recycling centre once it is full. Another thing we re-use is coffee -- the grounds go in a box in the kitchen and are taken home by Ellen. She uses them to frighten slugs in her garden.

2. A catering accident that left us with two huges dishes of sandwiches to share round the office.

3. Two songs on the White Stripes album White Blood Cells -- I am specially enjoying Hotel Yorba, which I think must be about a musician deciding he's had enough of being shoved around by his public; and We're going to be friends -- a cheery little picture of school life. I like them because they stand out among the discordant punk-rock tracks.

Box o' books, going and flowers.

1. The postman knocking before he has another Amazon parcel for me -- this from Cat, Alan and Ellie contains: If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino; Death: the High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman and Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones. Will this birthday never end?

2. Buying a travel mug so I can:

a. take my tea with me when I am running late.
b. say 'no' to paper cups.

3. The sound of rose petals falling off the mantelpiece.

Islanders, little door and glass.

1. A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble. I picked this up because I liked the cheery South Pacific cover. I imagined that this was all I would like about it, assuming that it would be a paternalist ha ha stupid savages who are scared of 'magic' it's a good thing the English are here to sort them out book. It's not -- it's intelligent, reverent and intrigued; the author looks up to his islanders, exploring their manners, their stories and their civilisation. If you are convinced the British Empire was a malevolent force, get hold of this and read what the administrators of the Tuvalu and Kiribati (then called the Gilbert and Ellice Islands) believed they were there to do. Here are Wikipedia articles on Tuvalu and Kiribati and also the British Protectorate of Gilbert and Ellice.

2. We were getting changed after swimming when a tiny little girl escaped while her mother was changing and climbed inside a locker. These lockers slam themselves flat even when unlocked, so no-one would know which one she was in. I panicked briefly -- it would be dark and narrow in there, and how would you know, if you were only two, that the door would push open again... So I opened the locker and enquired, 'You all right in there?', and was welcomed by an enormous smirk, as if I should have known all along.

3. The emptiness of my hall after bottle banking a big bag of glass.

Pass it on, true stories and chilly.

1. Freecycle -- post anything you have to give away or anything you want on the web and people who want it or have it reply. I got a splendid set of knitting needles this week. Can't wait until I have something to pass on. Click here to see a list of British groups and here to see the Freecycle homepage.

2. A friend telling me that he never thought I was the sort of person who read 'chav rags' like Pick me up, Chat and Take A Break. So I am still safe in my secret fascination with 'I savaged Barbie to save us all' and 'Alcoholic at 12' and 'Caught with 15 men in my shed' and 'Docs told teen: get breeding' and 'He wore my knickers' and 'Just wed and ready to kill' and 'Unnatural relations: Mum fell for her own son'. This last, apparently without a trace of irony, is splashed across the cover above 'EXTRA: 8-page healthy minds pull out'.

3. Carefully eating icecream with a teaspoon.

Sunlight, saucy and bovine.

1. The arrival of my solar charger -- Solio claims that it can charge up a mobile phone or an organiser or an Ipod using sunlight. Prop it in a sunny spot, plug in the device and away you go. I'm hoping to put it in the sunny window at work and share it with my colleagues -- although we really do need a bit more sunshine, please, oh Gods and Goddesses of the Skies?

2. The New Covent Garden Soup Company are now doing sauces that really do taste homecooked.

3. Supporting Rachel's Organic in sending cows to Africa by buying a pint of their milk and giving them the barcode.

Parallel lines, string bags and b&b.

1. There is about three quarters of an inch of snow in the Grove and it is covered in sledge tracks.

2. A lady at the checkout asked me all about my string bags: how useful did I find them and where did I get them from. I try not to take plastic supermarket bags -- except when I've run out of binliners. Instead I have some string bags, which are great because they fit in my handbag; they stretch to accomodate anything from an onion to an entire week's shopping; they are easy on the hands; and they come in pretty colours, so I can match them to whatever I'm wearing (if I feel inclined). The bags I use, from The String Bag Lady, are made from jute by a ladies' fair-trade co-operative in India. The only bad thing is, the String Bag Lady is presently on a gap year. Hope she hurries home.

3. The taste of fresh bread and butter.

Good spot, all together and sleep.

1. The rewards of virtue. I took my bottles and tins to the recycling bins, and what did I find sitting on top of the book bank but a little pile of unwanted singles - vinyl and CD. I had a good fertle through and ran away with a stash - a Thin Lizzie with a striking over-exposed photo cover; a Bananarama single with a scribbly birds and fishes design on the label; Shangrila and This Man He Weeps Tonight by The Kinks; and some Indie sampler CDs.

2. When you have everything you need -- passport, selection of payslips, other forms, recent bills, certificate of hygiene, bronze swimming award, pen -- to fill in an important and complicated application form.

3. Going to bed early -- in clean sheets -- with all chores down.

Apple, green path and joints.

1. Kentish apple juice that comes in green glass bottles. It's much sharper than the supermarket juice, which I think is too sickly sweet (although it is great for cooking).

2. On a really hot day, walking off the road and into the woods.

3. Stretching.