LIMINAL LIVING #34: 19 AUGUST to 25 AUGUST 2024

Birds, Books, Collector Garden, Community, Edible Gardening, Flowers, Fungi & Lichen, Harvest, Insects & Arachnids, Liminal Life, Pollinators, Public Gardens & Parks

LIMINAL LIVING #34: 19 AUGUST to 25 AUGUST 2024

August 25, 2024

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

Weather

We received about 1.5 inches of rain this week, most of it on Monday. High temperatures ranged from 76.3°F to 60.6°F, averaging 69.5°F. Lows ranged from 48.6°F to 56.5°F, averaging 52.9°F. Summer is waning.

Beginnings/Firsts

Made Amtrak reservations on Tuesday for a weeklong Sept. trip to the beach with my sister and a couple of good friends.

Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi

So much!

Fungi

Insects

Other Animals

Merlin heard birds this week, at home, The Fells, the lake

Wandering

I wandered, with most of my Salon group, to our recently relocated Salon member’s house in Hooksett (about an hour away) on Wednesday for a house tour and two-hour meeting. I drove and it was a new area for me, but I had a good navigator and good car conversation to aid me.

I took in-town walks on Monday and Tuesday, a short one on Friday, and we walked at The Fells (gardens and trails) on Saturday and around the lake on Sunday.

in town

The Fells

lake walk

Curiosity & Discoveries

A rather unhappy discovery on Lake Sunapee on Sat., a snapping turtle in the loon nesting platform.

Creating

I’m throwing together pasta dinners like nobody’s business.

Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)

Body/Mind: I walked more than 10,000 steps on 4 days, with another two over 8,000. I worked out three times (3 hours) this week. Ordered (and received) a wrist brace for my wrist and thumb, which are bothering me occasionally. I had a negative Covid test on Wed. Made appointments for my husband and myself to get the new Covid vaccine (Pfizer) at a CVS next week.

Gardening/Yard

Mostly, we are picking, sorting, offering, and using peaches right now. The dehydrator is drying them as fast as my husband can slice them. I’ve now made nine loaves of peach cobbler bread and given a few away. My husband made both peach pie and peach scones this week. It’s great to see friends picking them up day after day for eating and cooking/baking and sometimes getting to chat with them while they’re here.

Harvested quite a bit this week, see that section below for more.

in the garden this week, aside from harvest pics and most but not all fauna pics (see Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi for those)

Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: Towel laundry on Wed. and clothes on Friday. Now that the cat is using the guest bath litter box most of the time, that floor is being swept, and rugs shaken, at least once per day.

Food: My husband made peach pie on Monday and peach scones on Sunday. I made three more loaves of peach bread on Thursday. I tried a new recipe on Tuesday, shrimp pasta with corn, herbs, and arugula, which was really good (I made some changes to it). I had skate wing (grenoblois) for the first time on Wednesday at a French restaurant with friends (please clap for my bravery).

Supplies: Placed a Nuts.com order on Tuesday (macadamias, lapsang souchong and gunpowder teas – for husband, tricoloured orzo, + free caramel apple snack bars), which arrived on Friday. Ordered two kinds of parrot tulip bulbs (10 of “Amazing Parrot” and 10 of “Parrot King”) from Fedco on Tuesday. And also on Tues, ordered a backup food puzzle for the cat, as his “egg” puzzle is starting to crack (as eggs will do). Received Amazon subscribe & save this week, over three days, almost all health & beauty items, plus tea.

Sleeping & Dreaming

I averaged 8 hours and 8 mins of sleep per night this week, varying from 7 hours 24 mins to 9 hours 5 minutes. My sleep scores (FitBit) were almost all quite good, including a 93, a 92, and a 91, but Tuesday’s sleep was rough and garnered only a 75, so the average for the week was 86.6.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading: I finished three books this week: The Wilds (2024) by Sarah Pearse, a creepy book about a gaslighting stalker set in Devon UK in 2018 and a national park in Portugal in 2021; Exteriors (1993/2021) by Annie Ernaux, a very short book of brief observations made from 1985-1992 of living in Cergy-Pontoise, a sort of anonymous suburb 40km from Paris, mainly things she notices on the metro or other trains, in grocery stores and malls, and on or in media (TV, papers, radio); and Enlightenment (2024) by Sarah Perry, which is lovely, and I recommend Scott Simon’s interview with Sarah Perry to really get the feel of it.

Watching: Season 5 of “Shetland” on dvds from the library.

New Word: Florilegia, found in The Ariadne Archive. It’s the plural of florilegium, “an anthology of short literary pieces and poems and ballads etc. synonyms: garland, miscellany. anthology.” It was formerly a “lavishly illustrated book on flowers”

Connections & Community

Local Support: Ate at lovely French restaurant in NH on Wed. with two friends.

Ordered Too Good To Go from local bakery on Saturday.

We had breakfast and bought some items at a semi-local farmstand/cafe on Saturday morning; also bought some items at our more local farmstand later on Sat.

My husband volunteered at local car museum on Tues. and Thurs, totalling about 9.5 hours.

Relationships: Texted back and forth with my sister on Mon. and Tues. re beach plans. Chatted with neighbour (BSF) for about a half-hour in our driveway on Monday, and for 10 mins with other neighbours (RT & SS) on Wed. morning, and quick chats with ND, LD, WD, and others who came for peaches.

Had a fab lunch at a French restaurant about 1.25 hours away on Wed., with a friend from town (RL), and a college friend (RLJ) who met us there — the college friend lives about .75 hours in another direction from the restaurant.

Permaculture group met via Zoom on Thursday morning (7 of us), and Thursday night, my husband and I had dinner (make-it-yourself taco dinner, from a yacht club!) at a friend’s (LD) house.

Salon met on Friday afternoon at the new home of one of our members, which is about an hour away now, so 4 of us drove there to get the house tour and meet with her and another member who came to us upside-down from Colorado on Zoom. A tad surreal.

Endings/Harvest

Harvested kale, basil, sungolds, and one cucumber on Monday, some for a neighbour. Basil and parsley on Tues. for a dinner I was making. Sungolds most every day, and a few “bloody butcher” tomatoes, too.