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

We had what the weather station considered measurable amounts of rain from Monday through Friday this week, and altogether it amounted to 1.4 inches. There’s still snow on the ground, though also bare spots, and there’s more snow forecast for the end of this coming week. High temperatures ranged from 46.4°F on Saturday to 37.2°F on Tuesday, for an average high temp of 42.7°F. Low temps averaged 29.1°F, with a range from 15.1°F on Monday to 36.3°F on Thursday. It was breezy to windy on both Friday and Saturday.

• Beginnings

Saw small flocks of common grackles and red-winged blackbirds in the yard for the first time this year on Friday. They are a sure sign of Spring approaching.

On Sunday, we also saw the first common loon to return to the lake this year (but too far away to get a photo; fortunately, my husband had binoculars). And we saw our first mourning cloak of the year there, too, trying to get some sun.

I made corpse reviver cocktails on Easter, first time I’d made them since Christmas.

• Flora, Fauna, Fungi

Besides what’s shown in other sections, here’s some of what I saw this week.

And here’s some of what Merlin and we heard this week, all in the yard or within a block or two from it.

• Wandering

Walked in town, longish walks (4ish miles), on Monday, Wed., and Sat., with shorter walks in town on Thursday and Friday. We walked around the lake (3 miles) on Sunday.

On Tuesday, we walked around a pond in Hanover twice and around the Dartmouth Health (DH) medical center campus for an hour or two.

In town pics

Lake photos

Hanover

• Curiosity & Discoveries

At Dartmouth Health, a pay phone! Both a discovery and a curiosity. I wonder how often it’s used.

• Creating

Nothing except a fairly lame Easter basket. (Husband’s gifts were much more thoughtful.)

• Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house)

Finances: Signed taxes at office of tax preparer on Wednesday so that he could e-file them. Looking forward to receiving the refund.

Body/Mind: I attended Dharma Sunday (via Zoom) on Easter, with Lala Liz Monson interviewing Staci Haines about somatics. Really interesting; I appreciated the practices and the teaching. I worked out three times (3 hours) this week. (No Botany in a Winter Zoom this week; it was cancelled by Maine Audubon but will resume next week.)

• Nesting [house, eating, stockpiling, supplies, cleaning] – Design/Decor, Maintenance, Supplies, Food, etc.

Maintenance: On Saturday I spent 2 hours clearing cobwebs and dust bunnies from the bedroom, two bathrooms, the hallway, and the kitchen, using the vacuum and an improvised (by husband) system of plastic attachments from various vacuums past and present to reach the ceilings. I also vacuumed the kitchen and hallway. Did a load of clothes laundry this week. My husband made a dump run on Wednesday.

Food: I made cacio e pepe with artichoke hearts on Tuesday and added asparagus to it for dinner on Wed., when we had it with sautéed fresh local spinach. Thursday we had veggie burgers with arugula, plus the last of the cacio e pepe, and corn. I made spicy cod (marinated in Old Bay, vinegar, etc.) with rice pilaf and peas on Friday and we had that again Saturday but with sautéed broccolini instead of peas. Sunday was Easter; we had Niçoise salads (hard-boiled eggs, steamed green beans, roasted asparagus, kalamata olives, steamed fingerling potatoes, and canned tuna with a champagne dressing on a bed of arugula and local baby kale greens), and we’ll have that again tomorrow night. Easter brunch was scrambled eggs, either soy or regular maple sausage, roasted asparagus, and orange rolls, with mimosas and tea/coffee.

I didn’t take a photo but I also really enjoyed the falafel burger and big side order of cauliflower aloo gobi I bought for lunch at the DH hospital cafeteria (all of that and a diet ginger ale for $6!).

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Another mediocre sleeping week with Monday night being quite poor. Overall, I slept about 7 hours and 41 minutes on average per night, with a low of 6 hours 30 mins on Monday night and a high of 9 hours 19 minutes on Tuesday night (making up for Monday). My average sleep score was 82.

I wrote down dreams only on Friday morning, two that were quite vivid; one involved a (dead) friend killing her husband and two of his colleagues by incinerating them in a fireplace at a party, apparently with her husband’s complicity; in the second one, I wanted to fly up a beautiful tall tree but couldn’t make it happen, and then I was making sure two grey foxes (or fox/wolves) didn’t get through a hedge into a low-slung modern building.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  (was Reading & Ideas [including words/memes])

Watching: We re-watched “An American in Paris” on Sunday and Monday nights; that film is just wild. I love Oscar Levant, ever since I read his The Memoirs of an Amnesiac as a teen.

Listening: I tend to forget to note all the interesting things I hear on NPR, NHPR, Vermont Public, and the music I listen to, but here’s one short interview that really made me feel happy, Ayesha Rascoe’s interview of ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant on this Sunday’s Weekend Edition: How Rae Wynn-Grant defied expectations and became an ecologist and host of a nature show.

Reading: I am still reading Barbara Hurd’s Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination (2008) and am still mining it for her great images, phraseology, and insights. Here are two more paragraphs, one suggesting that clinging to a fixed notion of ourself might not be the way to go, and the other extolling the privilege of not being interrupted in a sanctuary all our own.

These are important mythbusters about Covid-19: a Covid infection provides a very short time of immunity against having another one (as little as 16 days); a sizeable number of Covid infections are asymptomatic (but contagious) and they cause Long Covid; and Covid is a full-body, vascular disease, not just a respiratory disease, and it can damage any organ in the body.

For anyone with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or ME (Myalgic encephalomyelitis), this chart of interventions might be helpful to minimise sensory triggers.

Handy chart of the week – I always forget these demarcations, not that I’m convinced they matter in any significant way. I’ve also seen the Baby Boomer cohort split into two groups, Early Boomer 1946-1954 and Generation Jones 1955-1964.

• Connections &  Community [relationships, local support, giving/donating, receiving, friends, neighbours]

Local Support: Claimed a Too Good To Go bag of food for $3.99 from a local bakery/café in town on Saturday (ham & cheese sandwich, baguette, and three Easter sugar cookies). Also bought their last rice krispie treat on Sat. Shopped at the local in-town co-op on Friday and at the regional co-op for self and two friends on Tuesday. Shopped at the local farmstand (now open more regular hours) on Saturday. Bought a few things at the local (independent) drug store on Friday.

Relationships: Texted and emailed two daughters of a friend who died a year ago 25 March (and received nice responses from them). Sent longish emails to a few friends and my nephew (who with his longtime partner is buying his first house!) this week. Hosted permaculture via Zoom on Thursday, with 7 of us participating, and attended Salon in person on Friday, with all 5 current locals there.

I took those photos at the Salon host’s home (thru a window screen) on Friday; her feeders are far above the reach of any black bear, on a 2nd-story clothesline with a pulley for easy refilling.

We had the honour of driving a friend to his cancer treatment on Tuesday, which was an all-day affair with labs, medical visits, lunch together, and chemo infusions.; I hope we’re asked to do it again.

• Endings [finishing/harvesting]

March is over! On to April!

• All This Useless Beauty

(I mean, did you LOOK at that mourning cloak?)