A Moveable Garden

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

• Weather

We’re starting to see true spring weather here, with high temperatures this week ranging from 63.9°F on Tuesday to 41°F on Wednesday, and averaging 52.7°F; lows ranged from 31.3°F on Monday to 42.1°F on Friday, averaging 36.2°F. We had quite a lot of rain this week, though none on “eclipse day” (Monday), with almost 2 inches on Friday alone and slightly more than 2.5 inches overall, falling on five days. The side yard, where the vegetable garden is, has been supersaturated.

We watched the solar eclipse on Monday afternoon in our then-snowy backyard, where the eclipse reached supposedly 97% totality, but it was pretty much a non-event. I remember a solar eclipse in 2017, which I think reached only 60% here, and that one in 2017 seemed to me much more something, with such strange light. Anyway, we had eclipse glasses and snacks and it was as good a way as any to spend an hour or so. This was seven minutes before the peak here:

• Beginnings

This is the time of the year — one time of the year, anyway — for beginnings! This week I saw my “first of the spring” woolly bear caterpillars, flickers (four of them together), early tachnid flies (mating), mosquito, crocuses in bloom, and azalea blooms.

Merlin heard the first brown-headed cowbirds, yellow-bellied sapsucker, pine warbler, hermit thrush, eastern phoebe, and chipping sparrows in the yard this year.

The chives are now fully uncovered by the melted snow and we’re using them regularly again. Garlic shoots have emerged!

The tiny daffodil that I don’t recall planting in the back of a garden is blooming, as it does every year before everything else, and the drumstick primroses I planted last fall, in what is now a mucky wetland on the side yard, are in full bud.

In addition to everything the earth is beginning again right now, I also was called for jury duty for the first time in NH at the county courthouse this week, which meant spending 3.5 hours on a beautiful Tuesday morning masked in a room with 125 other people (quite a few of whom were sick and coughing uncontrollably), reading a book and not being even considered for a jury (names were drawn at random). The most thrilling part was spending another hour with my name almost drawn at random for a specific jury trial. I get to do it all again in a couple of weeks.

Happily, because Tuesday was so warm, our sunroom reached temperatures above 70°F for the first time this year (actually hit 73°F) and we celebrated with a G&T.

• Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi

(See also “Beginnings.”)

The bird feeders are down until next winter and all the excess seed has been spread, so getting bird photos is a bit harder.

But, here’s a curious deer in the yard, caught on motion camera one night.

• Wandering

Still no walking in the woods or our usual trails, due to the wetness of the earth at the mo. We took a long walk on Monday (4 miles), I walked in Concord after my jury duty on Tuesday and we took an hour-long walk in town when I got home, I walked for 1.25 hours on Friday even though that’s the day we got almost 2 inches of rain, I took a 4-mile walk in town on Sat., and we took two shorter walks in town on Sunday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon to run an errand. A few walk pics:

• Curiosity & Discoveries

We attended (masked) the 4-day Five Colleges Book Sale at the Lebanon High School this week on Thursday afternoon, and it’s always full of curiosities, oddments (the actual name of one of their sections), and unusual discoveries. We bought 15-20 books, 8 or 10 dvds (British comedy, some of my workout dvds!), and about a dozen CDs, all for $55. A few pics from there:

On Monday, I watched a webinar presented by Michael Dosmann of the Arnold Arboretum, hosted by the Trustees of the Reservation in Boston, offered both in person and via Zoom. His topic was “Tales from the Plant Explorer” and the talk included a history of the Arboretum’s past plant exploration, brief vignettes of a few plant trips Dosmann’s led or participated in himself, and commentary on the virtues and foibles of introducing seeds from other continents and climes into a new ecosystem.

This is a curiosity I noticed while browsing the Flight Radar 24 app on Sunday, a Boeing Dreamliner that’s part of the Air Nippon Airways Star Wars R2-D2 Livery. Huh.

• Creating

Nada.

• Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)

Body/Mind: Worked out three times (3 hours) this week. Walked over 10,000 steps on each of five days. Tested (negative) for Covid before jury duty on Tuesday and again on Friday; I’ll test again on Monday. Attended another Botany in a Winter Zoom class on Wed. … only about five more to go!

Attended Dharma Sunday for 1.5 hours via Zoom, with half-hour meditation and then teaching on “Conscious Generosity: Hidden Gem of the Paramitas.” Lama Willa recommended a book I’m going to look for, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation: The Wish-Fulfilling Gem of the Noble Teachings by Gampopa.

I watched the Masters golf tournament on Saturday and Sunday, which is very relaxing for me. I wish it came on every weekend 😉

• Gardening/Yard 

I’m not doing gardening per se yet but I’m walking around the yard now that the snow has almost completely melted to take inventory and see what’s going on. Very soon, once the gardens are dry enough, I will be planting peas and arugula and I’m not sure what else.

Here’s what’s growing in the garden, besides the chives, garlic, primula, and tiny daffodil mentioned earlier; it’s all foliage or buds:

• Nesting – Design/Decor, Maintenance, Supplies, Food, etc.

Food: One big benefit of jury duty in Concord on Tuesday was that I could order takeout online the night before from the new Indian restaurant there and walk to pick up the food after jury duty ended around 1. That takeout took care of our dinners (with slight augmentation) for Tuesday through Saturday nights! And it was delicious.

Supplies: Ordered more Cocofloss Lychee Breeze toothpaste and three coconut dental floss refills on Wednesday. Ordered two pairs of Darn Tough socks on Thursday (free shipping). Bought a Cos wool sweater on eBay on Friday.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Mostly my sleep time was extremely and unusually consistent on a daily basis this week — from 7 hours 24 mins to 7 hours 40 mins on five days — but Monday night I slept 5 hours 55 mins and Tuesday night 8 hours 46 mins. Overall, my average sleep time was 7.5 hours and my score was 84. Lackluster. Honestly, I felt like I slept better than this, I felt that my quality of sleep was pretty good, but one thing the Fitbit seems to record fairly accurately (based on what I’ve read about it) is sleep. My REM time was recorded as about 12.5 hours for the week (low of 1 hour 18 mins, high of 2 hours 26 mins) and deep sleep as a little more than 9 hours for the week (low of 1 hour, high of 2 hours). My resting pulse was 60-61 all week.

I recorded one dream, on Sunday morning: I’m visiting my friend Annie [no longer alive] in a remote house on a dirt road. Her granddaughter, a young girl, is also visiting. I’m trying to read a definition or description of dedication or devotion (like in the song “Walk of Life” by the Dire Straits: “He got the action, he got the motion / Oh, yeah, the boy can play / Dedication, devotion / He turnin’ all the nighttime into the day”) from a red-covered dictionary I’ve had for 20-30 yrs, but it’s more a short and interesting essay than a definition. I read one line without interruptions (something about the word being coined in the 1600s) and then some men are playing music on a radio, making it hard to hear anything and finally Annie stops them. She wants to hear about the words and so do others but I don’t get to read any more.

Before I got there, I was looking online for a florist in her town, a town in Colorado that begins with an E, to send her flowers for her birthday, which is today [in the dream, not in reality]. But there aren’t any florists listed. Once I’m in the house with her, I ask the manager about it and she says they are so remote that she doesn’t think they’ve ever had a flower delivery. It occurs to me I should have brought flowers with me but this was apparently a very spontaneous visit. It’s just great to be with Annie at this place.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching 

New Words: The first came up because of golfer Ludvig Åberg’s name and the circle over his “A”; the other two were in Rachel Cusk’s book Aftermath, and of course I know the word aftermath but I didn’t know the etymology. I’m sure I’ve heard traduce but could not remember what it meant.

Books: I mentioned this last week — I am still reading and loving Stacey Heale’s book, just published, titled Now Is Not the Time for Flowers: What No One Tells You About Life, Love and Loss. I’m savouring it and trying to make it last, because what she says about relationships, marriage, grief, dying, death (and almost certainly parenting, but I don’t know firsthand) is so important, so resonant, and really worth contemplating over time. Stacey’s husband, Greg Gilbert (frontman of the band The Delays), was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016, on his second daughter’s first birthday, and died from it in 2021 at age 44, leaving behind Stacey and their two young daughters, Dalí and Bay. I’ve followed Stacey on Instagram for years and am so impressed with her writing, her insight, her willingness to access and explore emotional complexity, and how she talks about her personal life in a way that makes it so relatable, even if your situation isn’t the same. The book focuses on Greg’s diagnosis and how he died, but also on his life before cancer, and her life apart from his, and their life together as a couple and as parents, and her life since — and she harmonises it all with such apparent fluency, so seamlessly.

These are two of many passages that struck me in particular:

As I’m reading Stacey’s book, I also read and finished Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012), written in typical Cusk style, and really almost the perfect companion to Now Is Not the Time for Flowers. Cusk talks about her marriage and separation as she explores the impact of divorce on women. What I hadn’t realised until I started Aftermath was the degree to which Greek literature plays a role in how she tells this story. The inside flap of the book references another of her books, A Life’s Work (2002), about “the cataclysm of motherhood,” and a lot of that “cataclysm” is woven through this one, too. She writes with extreme acuity, and she forms her personal narrative within a societal context in a way that seems effortless.

• Connections &  Community

Local resources: Bought Indian takeout from a local place in Concord on Tues. Shopped at the regional co-op on Thursday (and picked up small item for friend). Husband picked up prescription from local independent pharmacy on Saturday. We picked up two Too Good To Go bags from a local bakery on Sunday (with two sandwiches, one an Italian and one a veggie; four pastries; and two granola-yogurt-berry cups). Donated to Long Island Bulldog Rescue on Friday for their 25th anniversary. Made a membership donation to the Arnold Arboretum on Monday.

Relationships: Talked with my sister by phone for about 25 minutes on Tuesday evening. Attended permaculture meeting on Zoom (8 of us) on Thursday morning.

Attended Salon on Zoom (Zoom because of possible germ exposure from jury duty) on Friday afternoon, with one other on Zoom from Colorado and four in person. Texted and emailed with a few people.

• Endings

Bye bye snow.

• All This Useless Beauty