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

The high temperatures varied by almost 20 degrees this week, not surprising in Spring, from 72.7°F on Monday to 53.4°F on Wednesday. The lows hardly changed at all, only a 5.6°F spread between them, from 41°F on Saturday to 46.6°F on Wednesday. We got a little over half an inch of rain, almost all of it on Wednesday. Some days I’m still wearing fleece and my “light” winter coat, other days just a lightweight long-sleeved shirt and a flimsy windbreaker. The grass is really greening and most of the the trees and shrubs are leafing out now.

• Beginnings

I started working in the garden! I prepped the vegetable bed (lots of weeding) and planted peas on Monday. I saw my first hummingbird in the garden on Thursday (and again on Friday). We saw our first Baltimore oriole of the year while on a walk on Sunday.

On Thursday, I ran a full backup of my laptop for the first time onto a 1TB backup disk my husband bought me for Christmas.

• Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi

We had a bear visit on Thursday night. It left us something in the lawn.

Saw a hummingbird on Thurs. and Fri. but couldn’t get a photo.

We tried to see the aurora borealis on Friday night, going outside between 8:30p and 1:30a, but due to clouds didn’t see much; but the photos I took of the little bit of pink and green we did see came out great!, which is apparently a thing a lot of people noticed.

More wild plants and animals this week:

Here’s some of what Merlin heard in the garden and around the area this week, about 50 species; these collages are getting harder to make (and see!):

• Wandering

Took a short walk in our neighbourhood after dinner on Monday, walked around the lake on Tuesday, took a short in-town walk on Thursday and longer walks on Saturday and Sunday.

Lake

A 20-sec. video/audio of bird calls — mostly grackle and red-winged blackbird — at a nearby pond.

• Curiosity & Discoveries

This time of year, there’s so much to be discovered, so many new things popping up everywhere, I can’t narrow it down. I’m checking on a couple of moth cocoons every day now, and each time I enter the garden there’s a new flower budding or blooming or a shoot emerging. I like to encourage it all.

• Creating

I lightly edited a couple of poems this week.

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

Cat: I cleaned the cat’s litter box completely on Thursday.

Body/Mind: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week. I walked over 14,000 (FitBit) steps on four days and over 9,500 steps on six days. I had a negative Covid test on Wed. morning. I participated in Dharma Sunday via Zoom on Sunday for two hours, with meditation, teaching, and discussion; the topic was Portals of Presence, which is always timely. (The cat joined.)

Cars: My husband switched the snow tires for radials on one of the vehicles on Monday.

• Gardening/Yard 

As mentioned above, I weeded and readied the vegetable bed on Monday, and I planted shelling peas then and arugula and calendula seeds on Thursday. The fence around the garden still needs to be installed.

My husband repaired and set out the pea trellises, turned on the outside water spigots, picked up brush piles from my weeding and light pruning, set out the rain barrels, and moved the shepherd’s hook from its birdfeeder position to its hanging basket position. I haven’t cut back most of the garden yet. I did prune the elders and a rose bush and lightly pruned the crabapple, side yard lilac, and a couple of shrubs in the back/shade gardens, mostly removing dead wood.

Seen in the garden this week:

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

Food: Monday I made a farfelle pasta dish with tuna, capers, kalamata olives, etc., which we had for dinner that night and Wed., Thurs., Fri., along with some other things like sautéed broccolini and one night half a ham & cheese sandwich for husband.

Tuesday afternoon we ate outside on the patio at a local restaurant — my husband had shepherd’s pie and I had garlic-Parm French fries and a rocket salad.

On Saturday I made crabcakes, coleslaw, and homemade tartar sauce, which we had with corn that night and again on Sunday night.

My husband made sourdough bread (3 loaves) on Thursday and pancakes on Sunday.

Supplies: I requested an assortment of KN95 masks and 10 Covid rapid tests from the Vermont Mask Collective and received exactly what I needed in almost no time! Those folks are magic.

The cat’s subscribe & save Chewy order (all treats) arrived on Monday. I ordered some Kizik shoes for me on Wednesday; they’re great!; roomy toe-box, you can get them on and off without having to bend down, and they fit perfectly. (They come in much more interesting patterns and colours, too.)

I ordered a new garden carry bucket (from eBay) on Saturday to replace one that’s become damaged over 10 or more years of hard use. Ordered some mouthwash and upholstery cleaner on Thursday evening after we used up the last of both of those items that day.

Cleaning/Maintenance: I came across this this week and it resonated!

“Most of housework is just maintenance, the wiping of countertops and shuffling of things from one place to another to make the appearance of homeostasis. You can work all day and everything looks pretty much the same unless you inspect the dust very carefully; much of life is like this. In many ways, adulthood is realising we are all Sisyphus, tired from pushing rocks which immediately slip right down to the bottom of the hill.” – Deb Champion, Mostly Just Art, in The Breakfast of Champignons

My husband took stuff, including printers, to Goodwill on Monday and he did the dump run on Thursday. He put new batteries in the motion camera on Wed., and for Mother’s Day the cat got me another wireless motion/wildlife camera, which my husband installed, so now we have three set up around the yard. We ran the first backup of my computer to the new 1TB hard drive on Thursday, overcoming some tech issues. I cleaned the guest shower on Thursday and both downstairs toilets. Did clothes laundry on Friday.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

I slept an average of 7 hours 36 minutes this week, with three nights of just about 8-1/4 hours, two nights of about 6-1/2 hours, and two nights just on either side of the 7 hours 36 minutes. My average sleep (FitBit) score was 84.4, with a high of 91 and a low of 77. I had 12 hours 50 mins of REM sleep and 7 hours 10 mins of deep.

I had the best wondrous dream on Monday morning: There were butterflies — looked like zebra longwings — one on each flower of a purple-flowered plant in a field or yard. I took photos of them with my camera and then kept looking and saw a caterpillar, coloured and patterned like a monarch but with a green head, on a plant in a row a little farther away, next to a couple of fully formed yellow squash hanging from vines. I was thinking that these things don’t usually occur in the same season, all at once, and then I saw a monarch butterfly flying closer. There were so many insects and flowers and fruits out all at the same time. When I saw the squash I thought “I could serve that today” for a lunch or small party I was hosting.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching 

New Word: Apricate.

Books: This week I finished another Anita Brookner, The Misalliance (1986), focusing on a recently divorced middle-aged woman, Blanche, trying to understand why men such as her former husband, who has gone off with his childlike, helpless secretary, seem to prefer women who are largely indifferent to their (the men’s) needs, apparently carefree women who seek only their own pleasure. I enjoyed it! I also finished the second in Heather Graham’s series featuring Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement Special Agent Amy Larson and FBI Special Agent Hunter Forrest, Crimson Summer (2022), in which they’re working together on a gruesomely dramatic killing of 20 gang members in Florida, found by a small tour on an Everglades boat trip; then a shooting of 12 men in a New York City alley; and finally a possible wider war, fomenting extremist religious beliefs, in Chicago. All of this is putatively tied to the “red horse” of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is the creator of war, strife, conflict. It was OK.

I need to keep better track of online stuff I read so I can mention some of it here. I plow through many essays and articles every week, a few of which I flag for my Tuesday Links posting, some of which I bookmark, some of which I save in email, pass along to particular groups or people, screenshot and save to Google Drive, and so on.

Listening: Still listening to FIP-Paris, that eclectic French online radio station, from time to time. I really enjoyed most of these, which I listened to and Shazam’d on Thursday night; “Is It Because I’m Black” and “Nice Town” are two new favourites:

Watching: We’re rewatching episodes of “Frasier” (not the reboot but the original series) with dinner recently. I need to laugh more and “Frasier,” Niles in particular, helps me do that.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: I bought potatoes, spinach, plus some High Mowing pea seeds at the local farmstand on Monday. Also got a birthday card at the local (independent) drug store on Monday. We ate outside at a local restaurant/pub on Tuesday afternoon and on the patio of a local bakery/café on both Thursday and Saturday at lunchtime.

Relationships: Sent birthday cards by mail to two friends on Monday and ordered flowers for a friend’s Friday birthday. Texted another friend on her birthday Sunday. Ordered Spoonful of Comfort meals for other friends on Wed., for delivery on Friday. Bought some groceries for a friend and picked her up from the hospital on Tuesday. Husband took a loaf of homemade sourdough to a friend/neighbour on Thursday afternoon and chatted with him for a bit. Permaculture group met on Thursday via Zoom, with 9 of us talking about our gardens and discussing a chapter in Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows. I hosted a small Salon here on Friday for two hours, with three of us in person and one on Zoom; we celebrated two birthdays occurring this week.

• Endings

Probably not an ending but we had a woodstove fire on Wednesday, when the high was 53°F. We often have fires into June, but it’s just possible this could be the last until later summer.

• All This Useless Beauty