A Moveable Garden

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)

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• Weather

High temps ranged from 36°F to 21°F, with lows from 8.8°F to 22°F. We got graupel on Thursday and about 10 inches of fluffy snow overnight Saturday and into Sunday.

• Beginnings

First bird I saw in 2024 was a male cardinal at the heated birdbath. I might not have noticed had the cat not alerted me. In other bird news, we put out the birdfeeders for the season on Saturday, before the snow fell.

I placed my first garden plants order for 2024 on Monday, with a local nursery that mainly sells native perennials & shrubs but also some annuals. Not on this list is the Lindera benzoin (northern spicebush shrub) I ordered after being assured I will get a female; they’re dioecious, and I currently have four males and no females, so no flowers or berries.

I started my new list of Books Read 2024 on Friday, when I finished my first book of the year, Hidden Pictures (2022) by Jason Rekulak, “a wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller,” which is not usually my thing, but I really enjoyed it.

• Flora, Fauna, Fungi

See Wandering, below, and also

• Wandering

We took a 3-mile walk around the lake on Monday. The previously frozen lake was now all open water again, after the warm spell around Christmas.

On Tuesday, I walked four miles to deposit a $20 check in the bank.

We walked around the bog trails twice on Wednesday. It’s unusual though not unprecedented to be in the bog in January – I have photos taken there in Jan 2021 and Jan 2017, so it’s happened before — because feet of snow typically covers the small parking area in the winter, but with late December’s warmer temps the little snow we had had melted, allowing us to park there.

I walked to my Salon group meeting on Friday, about 3 miles round-trip, including a slight side-trip onto a trail near the road.

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I’m Zooming a 17-week series called Botany in a Winter (through Maine Audubon; the title is a play on Thomas Elpel’s book Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification), which started on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m and ended around 9 p.m., about twice as long as my brain could take in so much new and interesting information, so much scientific language. In fact, it was advertised as a 13-week course and as I mentioned above it’s now become a 17-week course. Should be fun!

I learned the name of a fungus and a lichen I saw in the bog this week. I thought the lichen was an Usnea (Old Man’s Beard) lichen, but the people at iNaturalist say it’s Boreal Oakmoss (Evernia mesomorpha).

And I had no idea what this interesting looking fungus on a log was. It’s Conifer Mazegill (Gloeophyllum sepiarium).

• Creating

I created a Jan 2024 Nature Photos album online to save and share nature photos with friends and family. And I spent a lot of time thinking about this new format and about liminality in general.

• Repairing & Maintaining (everything but the house)

Body/Mind: I worked out for three hours this week (strength training, stretching). I started the 17-week Botany in a Winter course, mentioned above, which will teach me a lot and make my brain hurt.

Cat: Husband took the cat to have his nails trimmed on Thursday.

Vehicles: Husband attempted to take one of the vehicles for inspection on Tuesday but the garage owners had had a medical issue and missed the appointment; it’s been rescheduled for two weeks later.

Yard: Husband cleared the ten inches of snow from the driveway on Sunday. He also ran a new extension cord to the heated bird bath after it froze over one morning.

Hobbies: I spent several hours this week (most of Thursday and a couple hours Sunday) updating both the Fiction Set in Maine booklist and the Literary Births Calendar that I keep on another website, finally clearing my inbox of emails suggesting additions and corrections to those pages, and ploughing through hundreds of Feedly-saved New York Times obituaries checking for authors on the list (or who should be on the list) who’ve died recently. I also link-checked all the January births and corrected the links that weren’t working or hadn’t been updated. Lots more to be done on that website when I can tear myself away from other things.

• Nesting

I loved this light in the sunroom this week.

Decor/Design: I undecorated the Christmas tree on Monday, New Year’s Day, because it was drying out, much sooner than they usually do. It’s in the backyard, becoming animal habitat/cover and eventually compost.

Maintenance: I cleaned the master bath shower floor (little tiles) and vacuumed the family room and kitchen rug on Tuesday. Husband repaired a Christmas ornament and two broken stocking hangers this week.

Supplies: Tired of the old clothes de-nubber not really working on some sweaters, for years, I finally checked Wirecutter and ordered a new one — they call it a clothes shaver — on Friday.

Food: I made our traditional New Year’s Day meal of bourbon shrimp over jasmine rice, served with sautéed spinach.

We also had breaded haddock, bucatini with marinara sauce augmented with soy crumbles and black olives, couscous with artichoke hearts and peas, and various vegetable side dishes (sautéed spinach, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, steamed peas, and raw sliced cucumbers) this week.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

I slept an average of 7 hours and 42 minutes per night this week, with a high of 8 hours 48 mins on Wednesday and a low of 6 hrs 42 mins on Saturday. My average FitBit sleep score was 86, with a high of 91 on Wednesday and a low of 77 on Saturday. Except for the Tuesday and Saturday, the rest of my sleep scores were between 85-90. A pretty typical sleep week.

I had many vivid dreams this week, as usual. I remember some involving a friend, Marion, who died last year, and our dog, Petunia, who died in 2004.

• Reading & Ideas

I read two books this week — Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett; I liked the former more than latter but both were pretty good.

Also scanned dozens of email newsletters as I try to clean out my Updates inbox. Paid an annual subscription fee this week for an online newsletter whose free issues I’ve been enjoying and feeling inspired by for a while, Mark Diacono’s Imperfect Umbrella.

Some words I liked:

• Connections & Community

I suggested a new member of our permaculture group and she joined us for the first time on Thursday at our Zoom meeting, attended by eight people, discussing Week 4: The Birdfeeder in Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows. My Salon group met in person on Friday, four of us (all but one of the local members), for about 2.5 hours. Texted and emailed with friends quite a bit this week. My husband and I both helped friends (a couple, one of whom had surgery on Friday) on Saturday morning.

Shopped at the local farmstand on Saturday — from Jan-March, it’s open only on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, which I’m trying to remember. The local bakery was still closed this week for their holiday break.

• Endings

I posted my 2003 list of books read — 74 books total — and a summary with numbers and discussion of favourites, on Tuesday.

The final Christmas gifts to me from my sisters arrived via FedEx on Tuesday; they’d been shipped on 18 December and had an apparently peripatetic journey here. It was a pleasure to receive them! One was dried pears (yum) and the other was this pretty serving tray and mechanical pencil from Rifle Paper Co., in their Marguerite floral pattern.

• All This Useless Beauty

In the yard, this winter sun and the patio moss.

HAPPY NEW SPIN AROUND THE GOLDEN ORB