Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones and a gentle calendar prod. Somehow, there are still four full weekends left in July, which in my mind is the Saturday of summer.

June is Friday, when you’re just so ready for the weekend that you commit to multiple happy hours and end up going to bed at 3am. August is Sunday, when you realize you have toilets to clean and laundry to do before the dinner you’re hosting.

July is the blissful middle of the weekend, when you’re finally relaxed and your responsibilities haven’t caught up to you yet. My goal is to ride my bike, lay in the sunshine, and ignore all yard work until 8/1.

Do one long thumb scroll for more Cville-specific updates like local events, cool houses, and pets to adopt.

🐶 Speaking of: Lady Bird! If you’re in need of a calming presence to follow you from room to room, then this is your girl. Treeing Walker Coonhound, 3 years old, 51 lbs.

🐱 Plus a mystery cat full of affection named Bunny.

Longtime Hot Bones readers may remember that occasionally I stray from the sustainability track to talk about the apple of my eye, the light of my life, the center of everything: tennis. Noncompetitive, knee-grinding, advil-inducing tennis.

Ain’t nothin’ better, even when it means waking up at six on Saturday morning to sweat it out with friendly but perhaps somewhat questionable strangers. Which is where I was a few weekends ago.

Every summer, G goes to Nantucket to help produce their film festival, and I go to my parents out in the Blue Ridge for the free dog care and long walks in the woods. I miss my wife a lot when this happens, not least because she’s also my main tennis partner. And when we play, it’s just the best: super lowkey, super loose, super long rallies, and then a killer angle shot right when you let your guard down. Loser pays for dinner.

So when I was out in the country this June, I had to grab my tennis Rolodex and give it a whirl. As luck would have it, my first go-tos were all out of town. But they recommended I sign up for the regular Saturday group that plays on the local county courts. There was one spot left for that weekend in fact.

“Who are you playing with?” my mom asked as I packed my tennis bag with orange Gatorade and extra towels that morning. “Jim?”

“I wish. He’s gone this weekend. I actually have no idea who I’m playing with. Should be fun.”

And then I drove off to either absolutely smoke three spry retirees or get my ass handed to me by three spry retirees.

I pulled up to the county park, skirted the picnic table pavilion, and walked through the wet grass to the tennis courts in the back. Some pickleballers were on one side, but the tennis-first court was all ours. Dave 1, Dave 2, and Brad were already there, warming up.

We started the usual way, soft hitting from the service box. This is a great time to get intros out of the way (weekenders from DC, one full-timer, all male, middle aged, and friendly) while also sussing out the competition. As the token female, I figured out my strategy pretty quickly: rally long enough to let them get antsy and pummel the ball over the net, over the fence, and into the picnic pavilion. Win by letting them lose.

And that’s how things went. It was a fun match for sure, but a week’s worth of pent up work frustration, traffic agony, logistical headaches, and school pickup drama had to be released on that court. Those poor Penn 1s didn’t stand a chance.

At one point, Brad was gifted an overhead lob with the sun in the eyes of his opponents. Instead of going for a short quick angle, he blasted it so hard into our opponents’ service box that not only did the ball go over the tennis court fence but it also went over the country park fence into someone’s backyard.

“Was that in?”

We stopped the game to admire the crater left in the concrete (outside the doubles lines) and then these three grown men all simultaneously offered to climb the six-foot fence to retrieve the ball. Not as a joke. Real offers.

“Christ, guys, think of your chiropractor bill if you tried that,” I whispered as I walked over to my bag.

While the men continued to out-hero each other about hypothetically climbing this fence and saving the day, I grabbed an only-used-once can of balls.

“Mind if we keep playing and use one of these instead?”

Thankfully, they agreed immediately and we could get on with the match. The massive overheads happened a few more times after this, but luckily they were directed toward the picnic area where balls are easier to retrieve.

Later, when we’d finished playing and were packing up, the guys did end checking the fence situation. It turns out it’s actually two fences, the second one likely constructed specifically to deter men in instances like this.

I’ve been thinking about this interlude a lot recently because while I was for sure correct in advising three middle aged men to not attempt to climb over a splintery, nail-ridden fence — I was also advocating for us to abandon a perfectly good tennis ball. Tennis balls take 400 years to decompose, and every year around 125 million of them are tossed into landfills in the US.

And worldwide, that number jumps to about 300 million tennis balls chucked annually. I love tennis a lot a lot, but it can be a pretty harsh sport when it comes to sustainability stuff. (Although one quick solution would be just not smashing it so hard that it could slice through your skull or pop over a fence in the first place? Food for thought.)

Not to mention, with Wimbledon in full swing and the finals this weekend, these stats feel particularly salient. In fact, the tournament itself goes through 65,000 balls singlehandedly every year. There’s even a special underground room that handles all the fresh and used balls. It must smell amazing.

The good news for Wimbledon is that it’s a very intentional, rational tournament, and it does lovely smart things like using renewable electricity, implementing a reusable cup system for Pimms and less interesting drinks, cultivating pollinator-friendly plants around the grounds, and — my personal favorite — often sending some of those used tennis balls to an unexpected place: into the grasslands and farmland in northern England where endangered harvest mice still live. Basically, the other side of the double fence.

These days, harvest mice are suffering from habitat loss, increased flooding, and probably really expensive groceries like the rest of us, and one solution conservationists have been implementing to protect these lil guys is to cut doorholes in old tennis balls, prop them on poles, and offer them to the harvest mice as surrogate nests.

The balls are waterproof which helps with the flooding problem, and the height means the mice are farther away from predators. Plus, it’s hands down the cutest thing ever.

If you’re not at Wimbledon this weekend or striding ardently through the moors of northern England, you may wish to dispose of your dead tennis balls in a more local fashion.

First: Do you have a dog? If so, make their day.

Second: A few UVA students started a local org called Aces for the Earth that collects old balls around town. Check them out. They donate some to the Charlottesville SPCA for the doggos to play with. They also send balls to the national org Recycleballs, which upcycles them into building material and even as the cushioning for new tennis courts.

Third: Make a note in your calendar to punt them over the fence next Saturday on the blue ridge county courts. Just make sure to add a little mouse doorway into the balls first.

And if tennis isn’t your thing, here are a few more options for your sport of choice:

Plus, for football, golf, weightlifting, soccer, baseball yaddahyaddah gear: Play It Again Sports is a national chain with nearly 300 stores, and there’s one in Cville off 29. You can sell your sports gear here and pick up used and new items for your next sporty adventure (it’s tennis).

Tough week for our backyard after the storms. Thankfully, Frannie has taken it as her personal mission to chew each limb to smithereens. We really don’t deserve dogs.

The polls are closed and the results are in: An overwhelming majority of readers said you were down to try the ISO Adventure Friend idea, which is very exciting. And it’s also completely uncharted territory, so let’s see where this goes.

I’m working on the best way to make this fun, easy, and safe for everyone. Here’s a prototype of how things could look:

ISO tennis friend. Best times are weekdays after work or at lunch. Let’s use local courts or sneak into UVA when we can. Intermediate (3.5) player. Would love to avoid gear zealotry and fist pumps after winning points. Would love to talk Wimbledon between games instead. [Contact info]

Next steps: What would be super helpful to learn from the group is how folks would like to communicate about listings.

The Hot Bones pocket tee crew is going strong. Everyone looks fabulous.

If you would also like to look fabulous, here’s your chance.

🛍️ Market of the week: Vintage street market downtown on Saturday from 10am - 4pm, hosted by Old Flame and Darling x Dashing. There will also be corndogs.

🚗 Bubble car 2.0: Fiat’s smallest car yet is now available in the US, and it’s incredibly adorable, possibly more so than tiny mice in tennis balls. Top speed is 25 mph, but you’ll never have to hunt for parking again.

⛰️ Ragged Mountain back on track: Some of the trails around the reservoir are back open for all the hikers in the group chat.

🏠 Historic house of the week: Fully restored 1890s farmhouse with original heart pine floors, a sparkly new kitchen, a yard so long it hits the next block, and a bunch of new appliances (3 beds, 3 baths for $549k in downtown Staunton). I had trouble finding red flags for this one.

🏡 Cool rental of the week: Classic 1930s home in Belmont with a full circle driveway, a separate art studio, and a quintessential front porch swing (3 beds, 2 baths for $3,300/month). No photos of the bathrooms, so don’t blame me if it’s just a hole in the ground.

💐 Good times ahead: The Queerish Cville Garden Club is hosting a tea party on Sunday from 10am - 1pm. Interested gardeners should reach out via the posting here for location etc.

🪲 Not unlike Pokemon Go: The Rivanna Conservation Alliance is hosting a bioblitz in Darden Towe Park this Sunday from 10am - noon, where anyone who loves nature, bugs, birds, and other critters can help identify as many species as possible in the park.

💼 Job of the week: Manager, Festival of the Book (part of Virginia Humanities, $65k - $75k).

💾 Remote job: Communications and Digital Manager at Greenlight America ($75k - $100k).

➕ Bonus 1: Chief Administrative Officer at the Southern Environmental Law Center (based in Cville, $190k - $250k).

➕ Bonus 2: Reporter/Editor at the Environmental Defense Fund (remote, $92k - $98k).

Have an event or rec you’d like to share? Hiring? Interested in advertising? Share any and all info here.