A Moveable Garden

My continuation of Sharon Astyk’s now-completed “Independence Days” project (June-Aug 2022), which offered a framework for recognising how we’re building resiliency, community, and accountability that will make our lives better now and in the future. Many of Sharon’s categories are (or could be) related to gardening, so it seems to fit here on this blog. Equally, none of them has to do with gardening. They’re all multifaceted.

I’ve modified Sharon’s categories to better match my own life and community; I may continue to tinker with the framework as time goes on.

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• Plant something: plant, start something

I wrote and scheduled Jacquie Lawson Thansgiving cards on Saturday to be sent to friends and family this coming Thursday. My husband strung and programmed outside Christmas lights on Friday. He was given sourdough starter by a friend on Friday, too, the first step in his making lots of sourdough breads, hopefully.

• Harvest something: harvest, forage, glean, or bring to fruition

Nothing harvested but parsley and chives are available in the garden. I guess we gleaned or harvested firewood from the apple branches husband pruned and sawed up on Thursday and Friday (more on that below).

• Preserve something: food, local community resources

Local resources: Shopped local farmstand on Monday. Shopped local co-op on Saturday. Ate a snack inside local coffee shop on Wednesday (in a nook, with very few others in the place) and ate outside at a local cafe on Friday, when temps were in the 50°Fs. Looked at local art with husband on Wed. [The featured image at the top of the post is part of the interior of the coffee shop from our nook.]

• Waste Not: reduce waste, reuse, salvage & repair, give away

Husband hemmed a handtowel and mended his PJs on Tuesday.

• Keep Stocked Up: with food and emergency supplies, financial resources, and experiences that make life worth living

Food and Supplies: Ordered Cocofloss dental flosses on Tuesday to try — arrived Friday and I really like their texture. Also ordered a pair of Tencel pants and two wool-blend sweaters (each less than $25 at a pre-black Friday sale) on Tuesday — they arrived Saturday as well, and all fit nicely, a minor miracle. Ordered vegan mini-marshmallows and multi-coloured orzo on Thursday (we’d run out of both and they’re not available in town). Chewy subscribe & save arrived on Saturday with cat litter and cat treats. On Sunday I ordered an online gift for a friend going through a tough time, sent directly to her from a favourite Vermont business, and two Christmas gifts for my sister and her family, also sent directly to them, from a public garden we have long supported.

Financial: On Sunday, I finally completed my ACA/healthcare.gov application and chose my health insurance plan in the marketplace for 2024.

Experiences: We walked around the lake (3 miles) on a chilly Saturday afternoon.

Also took some walks in town to friends’ houses, to the library, to a local art gallery, and to coffee shops, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.

I like seeing the perennial mums looking so beautiful as they fade.

This week I enjoyed rewatching another Poirot movie (Dead Man’s Folly) and rewatching Arsenic & Old Lace (1944, directed by Frank Capra, with Cary Grant). And reading Ruth Ware’s latest, Zero Days, a well-written and suspenseful crime novel set in the UK over about 10 days. I also had fun playing with the Jacquie Lawson Edwardian Advent calendar, writing my last Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post for the year, and spontaneously working an Edward Gorey jigsaw puzzle for few hours on Wednesday afternoon.

• Food Stuff: learn new food skills, try new recipes, use what’s available in the pantry, use what’s grown/made locally and what’s seasonal

I made cheese grits with spicy veggies (bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, black beans, cayenne, etc.) and shrimp on Monday, which I hadn’t made in a while; leftovers on Tuesday and maybe Wed? Can’t recall. On Thursday, it was orzo salad again, with breaded haddock again, and leftovers of both again on Friday and Saturday, with sautéed broccoli & garlic, and then breaded haddock with garlic & herbed rice pilaf and sautéed broccolini with tamari on Sunday.

I also made four small loaves of orange-poppyseed tea bread on Sunday, partly for a friend coming over for tea on Monday as well as for holiday gifts. The first of the holiday baking!

• Be Neighbourly: contribute to community support systems, look for ways to help neighbours and others

We went over to help our friends change their Facebook password on Monday afternoon. Same friends gave my husband some sourdough starter on Friday because he wants to learn to make sourdough bread. We watered houseplants at a recuperating friend/neighbour’s on Friday and brought in a package.

• Skill up: learn new things, especially skills or knowledge that remind us of our place in the natural world and within the social fabric

I didn’t learn much new from this but it was inspiring and interesting at Tuesday’s Zoom interview event to hear Margaret Renkl talk about her writing group, the process of writing her latest book — which my permaculture group will begin reading and discussing in a couple of weeks, and what she hopes people will take from the book, including possibly a meditative habit of stopping and paying attention.

• Tend & Maintain: maintain our bodies, minds, and relationships to keep us resilient; and do what’s needed in the house, yard, and elsewhere to prevent failure/breaking/hassle down the line

Bodies/minds: Husband called Monday for a medical appoinment for a current issue; it’s scheduled for … July 2024. I worked out 3 times (3 hours) this week.

House & Garden: We replaced the refrigerator lightbulb on Monday (bought replacement at local hardware store). On Wednesday, husband worked in the yard cutting up fallen leaves and covering the recently planted garlic with them.

Thursday was a lovely warm day, with a high of 55°F — we both worked in the yard, me for three hours pruning and cutting and generally tidying up the front and side yards while also leaving fallen foliage on top of the soil and cutting pithy stalks to different lengths for various insects to use (see Xerces sheet on this), and husband pruning the dead branches out of a large, oldish apple tree.

On Friday, when we hit 61°F!, he sawed up the wood and collected it for future firewood.

I watered houseplants on Friday.

I cleaned and tidied in the house a bit on Sunday, including dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the stovetop and kitchen counters, cleaning toilets, and putting clutter away.

Relationships: My husband and I both enjoyed hanging out with our friends at their house for 1.5 hours on Monday, ostensibly there to help them change a Facebook password but really more for wide-ranging conversation and sourdough pointers. I enjoyed my Salon group on Friday, with three of us in person and one on Zoom from Colorado, and my permaculture Zoom meeting on Thursday morning, with six of us discussing the book chapter et al. On Thursday morning, I talked with a close friend by phone for 40 minutes or so. Texted more than daily with my sisters this week.

• Winter is coming: notice Earth’s seasons and our own seasons of life and daily rhythms, and look ahead to what’s needed now to make life better in the future

I attended Dharma Sunday via Zoom this Sunday for an hour, part of the year-long Rewilding series through Wonderwell. Meditation and good teaching is definitely on my “making life better in the future” agenda. The topic this week was timeless time, aka non-linear time or the fourth time … Lama Willa mentions it in this short essay and also calls it “absolute nowness.”

We’re looking at the imminent arrival of several inches of snow (7″ is the number I’m seeing) on Tuesday night into Wednesday before it probably turns to rain. This feels like the actual start of winter, along with predicted lows of, for example, 11°F this coming Friday. We’re having a woodstove fire most evenings with dinner.

And the Helleborus foetidus are in bud!