Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
We had a big snowstorm this week from Wed. evening into Friday , which brought us about 20 inches of wet, heavy snow and strong winds overnight. Here’s the accumulation map beforehand, which was very accurate for us.
We lost power in the house for a little more than 6 hours, from about 3:45 to 10 p.m. on Thursday (which is minimal compared to many in Maine and NH who still didn’t have electricity by Sunday evening. (A lot of trees fell over, taking poles and wires with them.)
Overall, the average high temperature this week was 42.6°F, with a range from 51.4°F to 31.1°F, and the average low temp was 29.8°F, with a narrow range from 28.2°F to 31.5°F. As mentioned, we got about 20 inches of snow plus another 0.8 inches of mix, sleet, or rain.
- Beginnings
It’s a beginning and an ending (harvesting): Clipped the first chives of the year from the garden to garnish soup this week!
- Flora, Fauna, Fungi
Many birds — mostly pine siskins, juncos, sparrows, and goldfinches — on the feeders after the snow on Friday!
Merlin heard … 14 species in a few minutes on 1 & 4 April.
Bird pics
- Wandering
Not a lot of walking this week and all of it in town (our town or in-town Concord, where we spent several hours on Saturday, after attending an open house for a condo friends were hoping to buy). I was a bit busy this week, with less time for being outside, and the big snowstorm from Wednesday into Friday (and the aftermath of snowplows, sidewalk plows, and slushy melting and ponding) made in-town walking risky; snowshoeing would have been difficult too in that much heavy wet snow. We took hour-long walks on Tuesday and Wednesday in town, plus several miles of walking while doing errands in Concord Saturday.
Next week looks warmer — highs of 40°Fs to 60°F — but there’s rain forecast from Wed. night into Friday.
These shots were taken on Tuesday, before the snowstorm.
Here are some chionodoxa and hyacinth, sheltered near a building, still blooming after the snow in downtown Concord on Sat.
- Curiosity & Discoveries
A new plant I came across in The Woman Next Door (see below under Reading) was Calodendrum capense, the cape chestnut, in the Rutaceae family (citrus), with pink blooms and a fragrant scent. “It got the common name ‘wild chestnut’ because William Burchell (1782-1863) thought that the flower and fruit resembled the horse chestnut. It is, however, not closely related to the horse chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum) in the Family Hippocastanaceae or the edible chestnuts, Castanea species, which belong in the Fagaceae, the beech & oak family. Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), pupil of Linnaeus and the ‘father of South African botany’, was so excited at the sight of a tree in flower when he visited Grootvaderbosch in 1772, that he fired his gun at the branches until one broke and delivered the blooms into his hand. He was the one who named it Calodendrum.”
Botany in a Winter (from Maine Audubon via Zoom) continued on Wednesday, with nettle, hops, mulberry, sweet gale, beech, walnut, hickory, alder, hornbeam, and other familiar trees and woody shrubs (mostly) featured.
We checked out an over-55 condo community in Bow NH on Saturday morning, touring an open house for a condo that friends of ours were interested in. Always interesting to see what’s out there.
- Creating
I though I might start a poetry challenge for April but haven’t yet and probably won’t, though it’s still possible I’ll write something. Some ideas have floated by my mind like sky.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house)
Repair and Maintenance: My husband repaired the weather station monitor on Monday, and he had the onerous task of driveway snow removal on Thursday.
An hour or two after the power went out on Thursday, we hooked up the portable generator to run a few things, like the fridge, septic pump, some outlets and lights. My husband performed the procedure slowly so I could document photographically each step in the hopes that if he weren’t here I could do this myself. A few of the 15 or so steps …
On Monday, I looked through more than 750 photos on one of our motion camera disks; I hadn’t been able to easily reach it due to snow until enough had melted (before the new storm) that I could pull the disk out of it. Sightings: Possibly a bear in early March, fox most nights, some deer, many grey squirrels, crows.
Financial: On Monday, I spent an hour or so updating and then printing a few sheets of financial info, with contacts, logins, and physical location details, that are part of our emergency preparations if we have to leave the house in a hurry, and it’s also for those left behind to help sort out our financial affairs.
Body & Mind: I participated in Dharma Sunday via Zoom this week for an hour, with teaching and practice in Insight Meditation and Insight Dialogue.
Hobbies: On Tuesday, I sent out the April (and March) nature photos links (on Google) to the email list of friends and family who want them.
- Nesting
Household maintenance: Husband cleaned the filters for both Winix air purifiers on Monday. I watered houseplants the same day. I did clothes laundry on Tuesday and Sunday, and towel laundry on Saturday.
Food: We got takeout pizza (black olive, spinach, artichoke) and green salad from a local place on Tuesday, had veggie burgers with sides on Thursday, and it was premade breaded haddock with sides, including steamed asparagus. on Friday through Sunday, along with some leek-potato soup from a local café through Too Good To Go, which I served with wet, snowy chives from our garden! Unimaginative but we got fed.
Supplies: Received iHerb order of three Rishi teas, two Equal Exchange teas, and a small box of Quest protein bars on Wednesday.
We ran some errands in Concord while were there Saturday, including a stop at Bean for a pair of shoes for my husband (50% off and we had a stockpile of Bean points to use) and a stop at Staples for copy paper and address labels.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
I slept an average of 7 hours and 43 minutes per night this week, with a high of 8 hours 32 mins on Sunday night and low of 6 hours 58 mins on Thurs night. My average Fitbit sleep score was 85.4, with a high of 90 on Sunday night and a low of 83 on both Thursday and Friday nights. It felt like a better sleep week than I’ve had lately. I got almost 3 hours of REM sleep on Tuesday night (and it did feel full of dreams), which resulted in a lower sleep score even though I slept 20 minutes more than my target of 8 hours.
I wrote down one dream, on the morning of 5 April: People keep telling me I’m unethical for planning to use the word more to structure a story or book I’m writing. I got the idea from a piece on Vermont Public Radio, a woman talking about “more.” I said, it’s just a device, it might not even appear in the final product, but “more” is an interesting idea because maybe you think you want more but maybe you actually don’t even want any of what you have.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
New Words: These are all from the book The Woman Next Door (see below): Fynbos, a healthland/shrubland vegetation in South Africa; Sparaxis, a flowering plant in the iris family, found in Cape Town; and Koeksisters, fried dough dipped in honey.
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Books: I finished reading two books this week: I really liked The Woman Next Door (2016) by Yewande Omotoso. Two women in their 80s who’ve both had successful professional careers live next door to each other in current-day Cape Town, South Africa, and they don’t like each other, but circumstances conspire to allow them to explore their histories, personal and societal, and how they (and others in their sphere) have been treated and what’s been expected of them because of their race, their social position, and overarching and often unspoken cultural norms and mores – and to perhaps find compassion for each other. The second book I finished was The Overnight Guest (2022) by Heather Gudenkauf — murder, terror, and suspense in Iowa involving three connected stories from different vantage points.
Other reading:
I’m about halfway through Stacey Heale’s book Now Is Not The Time For Flowers (2024), about her husband Greg Gilbert’s death at age 44 from colon cancer, which he’d been diagnosed with 5 years earlier, exactly a year after their second daughter was born. It’s moving, honest, insightful, and very well-written.
Switching gears … A dressing recipe I want to try, from Victoria Smith, SFGirlByBay newsletter.
Handy post of the week; my favourite is #11 – when you could either resign yourself to a fixed situation, or you could accept that situation, accept it and don’t whine about it (and the quicker the better):
- Connections & Community
Local Resources: We bought takeout from the local pizza place (a small independent chain) on Tuesday. We bought two Too Good To Go bags from a local bakery/café on Sunday. I renewed our Maine Audubon membership on Monday and our Bedrock Gardens (Lee NH) membership on Saturday.
Relationships: A friend picked up an item for us from the grocery store 40 minutes RT away on Monday (thanks, Ruth!). Chatted a few minutes with a neighbour out dog-walking on Wednesday. Texted several friends at length this week. I hosted our permaculture group online, five of us, on Thursday morning for an hour, and I hosted Salon here in person on Friday for almost 3 hours, with five of us in person and one joining from Alabama on Zoom.
- Endings
I think this week might be the last week for significant snowfall for five or six months! Maybe?
- All This Useless Beauty
Cat had an imposed photo shoot after Dharma Sunday in my office
I like the abstract art of nature.
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