Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
We had a small heatwave this week, with highs in the low 90°Fs. It wasn’t that warm in the house but we used the window A/C in the bedroom for a few days because night temps were closes to 70°F from Tues-Thurs., which makes it hard to sleep. Overall, the high temperatures averaged 80.2°F, ranging from 92.8°F to 61.5°F, and the lows averaged 61.2°F, ranging from 52.9°F to 69.1°F.
We had quite a lot of rain, some every day from Thursday to Sunday, with the most on Thursday, when our weather station got clogged and stopped recording rainfall, so I’m using the rainfall measured that day by friends who live a few houses away. In all, we had about 2.5 inches of rain this week, which tamped down my ability to take walks; almost every time I headed out or thought about heading out, it started raining, and once I had to be picked up halfway through due to lightning.
- Beginnings/Firsts
I never know which category to choose for the FIRST HARVEST of the year! (As usual, I will post it in as many categories as it might slightly fit.) On Tuesday, I harvested the first of the arugula, small kale, and most of the garlic scapes, yay! And I used the garlic scapes to cook with that very night, which I will also mention under Food. Also: found the first few hazelnuts starting to grow!
Thursday was my first day ever driving to or being at Manchester Airport (NH).
The 10-day Equanimity: A 10-Day Wisdom Course with Sharon Salzberg started on Wednesday. It’s so helpful.
And of course the first day of summer here in the northern hemisphere was on Thursday, when it was 91.6°F here and we had a thunderstorm from about 5-8 p.m.
- Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi
- Wandering
As mentioned above under Weather, the rain (and lightening) this week reduced my ability to walk as much from Thurs-Sunday. I got in as much walking as I could in Boston on Monday (it was a beautiful day!), and managed two longer walks during the “heatwave” on Tues. and Wed.
Here’s some of what I saw while wandering in Boston and walking around here.
Boston
Locals sightings on walks
- Curiosity & Discoveries
On Thursday we took a friend to the airport in Manchester NH and on the way home stopped into the Currier Museum there. Some interesting exhibits, especially one featuring side-by-side artworks of Filippo de Pisis (paintings) and Robert Mapplethorpe (photos), titled ‘A Distant Conversation,’ “revealing the intimate connections between the work of 20th-century Italian painter Filippo de Pisis and Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography.”
I’d never been to the airport in Manchester (NH), so that was a discovery as well.
- Creating
Creating more equanimity? Or accessing it?
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)
Body/Mind: We both had dental cleanings/check-ups this week. Me at the dentist:
Husband had a follow-up medical visit at Mass. General in Boston on Monday. I worked out three times (3 hours) this week with weights, and walked most days, though only walked more than 12,000 steps on three days; the rest were between 7,000 and 8,500, mostly due to rain. I had a negative Covid test on Friday morning. I started Sharon Salzberg’s 10-day Equanimity course on Wednesday, a combination of teachings, meditation, community comments, etc. on the topic.
- Gardening/Yard
I gardened about 5 hours this week, harvesting greens and scapes, watering, weeding, clearing up weed piles. On Sunday we both brought in patio furniture, the weather station, garden tools, wind chimes, and other possible projectiles due to a tornado watch all that afternoon and evening until 10 p.m. (we had rain and thunder but not much wind and no tornadoes).
In the garden this week:
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: Did clothes laundry on Saturday. During that laundry, the washing machine got very loud and clanky, so we stopped it and my husband investigated. There was a corroded piece of the basket in the water pump, which he removed, and all ran well after that. He’s started researching replacing the machine or replacing certain parts of the machine.
Food: Chinese leftovers on Monday, after the moosssst delicious lunch at Ma Maison in Boston earlier in the day. I had the sole meuniere and my husband had the coq au vin.
Tuesday I made my spring stand-by, penne with pine nuts, asparagus, chives, shrimp, and I added garlic scapes to it this time.
We had that on Wed., too, and finished what was left on Thursday, with a green salad made with harvested kale and arugula, plus olives, cucumbers, peppers, and carrots. Friday we had a premade spinach quiche from the co-op plus cukes + red peppers, and the same on Saturday. I made a tuna-pasta salad with capers (and red onion, kalamatas, celery, and fresh basil) on Sunday, which we had on arugula and kale, and there’s lots leftover for the next couple of days.
Supplies: I ordered eight CorDx Covid rapid tests on Saturday and 10 carbon filters for the kitchen compost bin — which we’ve had for over three years, never having replaced the filter! I guess we take out the compost enough to prevent stinkage.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Sleep was pretty good this week, with an average of 7 hours 39 minutes (low of 5 hours 25 minutes, high of 8 hours 35 mins) and an average sleep score of 85, including two of 90 and above. My dreams were even more vivid than usual this week; I remembered some for days, but I didn’t write them down. I had 13 hours 35 mins of REM sleep and 9 hours 35 mins of deep sleep.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Listening: Some of what I’ve been listening to this week and last. Françoise Hardy died on 11 June 2024 and I heard some of her music on one of the public radio programs. Here’s a recording of Hardy singing Comment te dire adieu.
Reading: BOOK / I finished Anita Brookner’s Latecomers (1988) this week. It’s about two men — one a socially graceful yet superficial hedonist, the other an anxious man who dwells on the past — who were sent out of Germany during World War II, adopted by different families, and sent to the same boarding school in England and who have remained close friends — they, their wives, their son and daughter — throughout their entire lives, living in flats in the same building and the men running a successful business as partners. We follow them through marriage, children and grandchildren, questioning their life choices, dealing (or not dealing) with the signs and reality of aging, feeling unsettled and then resettling again and again.
ESSAY / I’ve read before about emptiness (and quiet, an auditory emptiness — notably in a Sept. 2022 essay in The Atlantic) as the aesthetic of wealth in the U.S. (and perhaps other places). This little essay below talks about how we associate visual noisiness, messiness, and clutter with poverty, as we do also with auditory noise, the sounds of ordinary life such as loud music, kids playing outside, people yelling down the road to each other, and other sounds that wealthy people pay to avoid, through privacy, gated communities, HOA rules, quieter cars, insulation, etc., but what’s ironic to me is that lawn care, as discussed below, is SO noisy these days, with mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, pesticide and herbicide lawn treatments, Chippers trucks taking down and chopping up unwanted trees and shrubs, and so on. And yet that sort of noise is interpreted in the main not as the largely unnecessary and even damaging auditory clutter that it is but as somehow signalling respectability, safety, care and concern for others, when in fact it damages habitat, pollutes the air and water, and is anything but peaceful.
Watching: We watched an episode or two of “Shetland” this week on a DVD checked out from the library. Pretty good.
- Connections & Community
Local Support: Bought veggies and fruit at the local farmstand on Tuesday and Sunday. Bought Too Good To Go from the local bakery/café on Saturday. Bought groceries at the regional co-op on Tuesday while I was in the area for my dental appointment.
Relationships: No permaculture meeting this week. Salon met in person with 4 of us locals on Friday afternoon. Spent an hour with friend/neighbour (L) as we drove him to airport on Thursday. A friend (E) gave us their extra garlic scapes on Thursday! Lots of texting and some social media interaction this week. Enjoyed my hour with my dental hygienist, Asha!
- Endings/Harvest
As mentioned above, I harvested all those lovely greens (arugula and kale) and the garlic scapes on Tuesday, the first harvest of the season. The greens were the basis for a salad on Thursday.
- All This Useless Beauty
On Sunday, we had a very rare tornado watch most of the afternoon and into the night. No tornado touched down here, though an EF-1 tornado did touch down, about an hour from us, in Dublin, NH. But the sky above us was amazing!
And the quality of light in the yard and house was changed.
I’ve always like Childe Hassam’s “The Goldfish Window.” The Currier Museum has moved it to a new location since we last visited; I think I preferred the previous placement.
Also, dragonfruit (and pineapple) just stun me with their over-the-top alien spiky skin.
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