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

Continuing dry, with only .08 inches of rain this week; there were red flag warnings in many places in the state and our local fire department’s fire danger sign was at its highest warning, which is “Extreme” Fairly seasonal temperatures, with high temps ranging from 59°F to 40.1°F, averaging 49°F; lows ranged from 20.7°F to 43.3°F, averaging 30°F. The full moon, a beaver moon, was gorgeous.

• Beginnings/Firsts

Iiiiiiiiiiiit’s Advent Calendar season! I ordered and sent 20 Advent calendars from Jacquie Lawson for myself and friends on Monday. It’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas. Advent hasn’t started yet of course but puzzles, games, and decorating are available now, and it’s a very relaxing activity for me (and many of us). Here’s how I’ve decorated part of my Parisian apartment (for now);

• Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post

Deer, antlered deer, skunk, and CHICKADEE, all on motion camera.

• Wandering 

We walked at the bog on Monday and I took a longer walk afterward; we walked for an hour around town on Tuesday; we walked around the campus and on some wooded trails near Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center on Wednesday; I took a long in-town walk and a shorter one on Thursday; we took a long in-town walk on Saturday; and I took an hour-long walk in town on Sunday. The only day I didn’t walk was Friday, when I was feeling the effects of the shingles shot the day before and when this week’s Salon took 4 hours, 2 hours there and 2 hours driving to our host’s house.

The medical library at DHMC is great, with lots of graphic medicine books (novels, memoirs, et al.), medical journals, and digital access to paywalled medical articles. It’s open to the public for browsing, using digital resources, and checking out books. The trails, which we’d tried to walk before without success (snow covered), were also quite extensive, with interesting features like brooks, hills, boulders, various ferns, and more.

the bog

in-town walks

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I spent a couple of hours on Monday researching live birdfeeder webcams around the world for a Maine Audubon Zoom series we’re participating in. Saw lots of birds and terrains that are unusual for me.

We enjoyed exploring the medical library at DHMC on Wed., recommended to us by our friend, as well as the trails there.

And of course I am enjoying discovering all the (unfolding) features of the new Advent calendar!

Oh, this was a curiosity I found online through a newsletter this week; what — as they so rightly ask — even is this?

• Creating

Continuing to create items on Snapfish for Xmas gifts.

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

Body/Mind: I walked more than 10,000 steps on five days this week, with two days over 14,000 steps. Worked out three times (3 hours) this week. I got my first shingles shot on Thursday. I got my hair cut on Monday morning early (masked). Had a negative Covid test on Friday.

Vehicles: My husband washed his little British car and the BMW on Monday. On Friday afternoon he took the BMW and Jeep to be inspected (both passed).

• Gardening/Yard 

My husband staked out the driveway for snowplowing and cleaned out the gutters on Monday. I think that might be it for this week?

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Thursday and a small load on Sunday. Again I’ve forgotten to note anything else.

Food: Leftover bucatini, eggplant, artichoke heart thingy on Monday and Tuesday. Takeout pizza (spinach, olive, artichoke heart) and garden salad (most of the salad homemade) on Wed., Thurs., and Friday. Old Bay pan-cooked cod, garlic & herb rice pilaf, and broccolini on Sat. and the same on Sunday except peas instead of broccolini. My husband made pancakes for breakfast on Sunday.

Supplies: Some Snapfish Xmas gifts that I designed and ordered began arriving this week. I ordered (and received) more Archway Bells & Stars cookies, and I ordered my 2025 Planner and some crispy Chinese noodles I have not been able to find anywhere locally.

Financial/Admin: My husband changed our cell phone plan and got a new cell phone on Tuesday. I updated our financial/investment info on Saturday and sent an email to our financial guy on Sunday.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Large variance in my sleep hours this week due to some early appointments and some sleeping in. One night I slept a little more than 9 hours and on three nights I slept less than 7 hours. I didn’t even get a sleep score one night, which has happened maybe once before in the many years (10?) that I’ve worn a FitBit. Overall, I got an average of 7 hours 44 minutes sleep per night this week, with an average score of 82.7. My REM sleep was 12.5 hours, deep was slightly more than 7 hours.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished one novel this week: Tell Me Everything (2024) by Elizabeth Strout. If you’ve read other novels by Strout, you’ll recognise many of the characters in this one: Olive Kittridge, Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William, and others. Over the course of a year, Bob Burgess and Lucy Barton meet often to talk and listen to each other, something neither of them does much with their spouse (his) or live-in ex-spouse (hers); Lucy also visits Olive at her retirement community and they exchange stories about people and the “unrecorded lives” they lead; Bob’s brother Larry, living in Park Slope (Brooklyn), undergoes losses and a bit of redemption; Bob, acting as defense attorney, takes under his wing Matt Beach, a socially awkward man and a proficient self-taught painter who may be arrested for murdering his mother; Bob’s ex-wife Pam goes on the wagon and plans to leave her husband Ted; and so on. As always in her novels, there’s a through-line of warmth that comes from understanding the suffering and hopes of human beings and the complexity of their backgrounds, their emotions, and their motivations.

I also started a library book I had to return prematurely, Charlotte Runcie’s Salt on Your Tongue, about women and the sea, and I loved this bit:

OTHER

Handy bird beak/bill chart found online (click on it to open a larger version):

Listening

Watching

We watched a really bad movie this week, one we recorded from some movie channel: A Guide For the Married Man (1967), starring Walter Matthau, with cameos by lots of famous movie stars. It’s very much a product of its time. Also watched a good Poirot, Murder on the Links, which we hadn’t seen in a while.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Shopped at the regional co-op, ate lunch at DHMC cafeteria, and got takeout pizza from a local pizza place on Wednesday. Picked up a Too Good To Go bag from a local café/bakery on Thursday and bought treats there on Sunday

Relationships: A friend (ED) brought us some homemade apple cake on Tuesday afternoon. Fruitcake arrived on Sat., sent by a friend (CHJ) as a Christmas season gift. We took a friend (JSc) to Dartmouth for labs, oncology appt., and chemo on Wednesday (from 8-4), and we exchanged some gift items with each other on Thursday. Attended Salon on Friday afternoon with six others — four of us carpooled together to the host’s house, which is about an hour away. We always have good conversation and a lot of fun.

Donations: I renewed our Wells Reserve-Laudholm Farm (Maine) membership on Sunday.

• Endings 

The end of not being (at least partially) vaccinated against shingles!

• All This Useless Beauty

from our walk on the DHMC trails

I liked my criss-crossed shadow

and the colours of this pond