LIMINAL LIVING #78: 23 JUNE to 29 JUNE 2025

Books, Collector Garden, Community, Edible Gardening, Flowers, Food & Drink, Harvest, Insects & Arachnids, Liminal Life, Pollinators, Slow Gardening & Living

LIMINAL LIVING #78: 23 JUNE to 29 JUNE 2025

June 29, 2025

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

Weather

We had our hottest day so far this year this week, 95.9°F on Tuesday. Then on Saturday the high reached 60.6°F. Overall, the high temperature average was 78.7°F, which sounds sort of seasonal until you realise that two days were in the 60°Fs and three days were in the low- to mid-90°Fs or high 80°Fs. The low temperatures also varied widely, from 49.8°F to 70.2°F, averaging 59.5°F. We got about 3/4 of an inch of rain this week and there’s not much forecast in the week ahead so it’ll be back to watering the vegetable garden, annuals, and new perennials.

Beginnings/Firsts

First pea pod on the shelling pea vines on Monday! By Thursday, there were a bunch. First bell pepper nub on any of the three plants on Sunday.

First daylilies (the ones planted by someone else in a straight line alongside the driveway) bloomed on Sat., two of them. Hundreds to go. These are Sunday’s three, and their reflections:

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

Wandering

Walked in town every day but Saturday. On Sunday we went to a garden center/nursery a little ways away.

in town

garden center

Curiosity & Discoveries

I discovered that one of the perennial arugulas a friend (MC) gave me a few years back, all of which I thought had died out, not only survived but looks good.

Creating

Negatory.

Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)

Body/Mind: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week and walked more than 10,000 steps on six days, including five days over 13,000 steps and two over 14,000. I had a negative Covid test on Wednesday, before visiting the dentist that day for a cleaning, some xrays, and a visual exam. I was back at the dentist on Thursday (thanks to someone else cancelling) to get two painless preventive resin-based composites (set by laser) and one painless resin-based composite to replace an amalgam filling (last filled 35 years ago) that had chipped off, all on back molars. No numbing needed!

Gardening/Yard

I wasn’t in the garden a lot this week except to look at how things — like the peas, the tomatoes, the beans, and the peppers — were coming along, and of course to stalk insects. We had enough rain recently that I only watered once or twice, and by this time of the year I don’t have much to plant, though I did get a few basils dug into the vegetable garden on Friday. I also harvested some parsley, basil, and chives for dinners, plus some kale and garlicscapes for a friend (LM). My husband repaired a large pottery bird bath whose stand I broke while trying to clean it. He also sprayed a small but active wasp(?) nest that was located very inconveniently just above the garage doors.

in the garden this week

Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: My husband made the dump/recycling trip on Wednesday. I did clothes laundry on Thursday and watered the houseplants then, too.

Financial/Admin: I paid my dermatology bill on Tuesday (by phone; only other choice is to mail it to them in an envelope!)

Food: We finished the penne-edamame-asparagus-pine nut thing on Monday. Tuesday, I made a veggie-heavy tuna salad early in the day so it was cold when we had it on a bed of cold arugula at dinner (we hit almost 96°F that day). I had tuna salad leftovers on Wed. while my husband had the leftover spicy garlic fusilli, with grilled chicken, and (local) cukes.

Thursday we went to friends (RL, BP) for apps and dinner, which was a veggie burger (on homemade sourdough roll or on arugula) and a pasta salad with veggies. Yum! Friday my husband finished the tuna salad and I made that egg noodles, scrambled egg, artichoke hearts, & Asiago dish I like, along with those yummy local cukes. Saturday I made a (local) Swiss chard and onion&garlic frittata, from which we’ll have leftovers next week, and Sunday I got some great local asparagus again, so of course I made the penne-asparagus-edamame-pine nut dish again (with, of course, local cukes on the side), which also yields leftovers.

(If you’re wondering, I know lots of other things to do with asparagus, and I have done many of those things over the years, but none of them seems as worth the trouble and as tasty to me as this one dish.)

Also on Sunday, same friend (RL) brought us some of a black-eyed pea salad she’d made and a homemade burger roll my husband wanted to try.

Supplies: I placed an order for 1# of Georgian Crystal garlic and 1/2# of Czech Broadleaf garlic (new to me) from Fedco on Tuesday, for delivery in the fall (for planting, along with the best cloves from this year’s crop). I ordered a pound of salted macadamias from Nuts.com on Friday (salted is not my first choice but the ones I prefer have been on backorder for months).

Sleeping & Dreaming

I got an average of 7 hours 20 mins of sleep per night this week, a bit low for me, with three nights less than 7 hours and only one night over 8 hours (and barely). My average (Fitbit) sleep score was 84.9. REM sleep accounted for 12 hours 20 mins and deep sleep for 9 hours 43 minutes.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading

BOOKS: I finished two books this week, The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) by Ruth Ware, was OK. Lo Blacklock, a young woman who writes for a travel magazine, is given the opportunity to take a PR cruise with a few select people on a small luxury liner in the North Sea, just after her flat in the UK has been burgled (with her in it) and she’s on edge. Things get off to a rocky start when not only does she find that an ex-boyfriend is also on the cruise but after borrowing mascara from a young woman inside Cabin 10 beside her, she soon learns that no one is staying in that cabin and it’s completely empty. Lo, being an investigative reporter at heart, is determined to root around and to talk frankly, accusingly, anxiously, and defensively to the cruise director, staff, and its wealthy owner to get to the bottom of this mystery. She’s also determined, it seems, to drink killing amounts of alcohol, eat almost nothing, and get a few minutes of sleep per night. The reader knows from the start it’s not going to go well for her, and it doesn’t, but the diversity of suspects and the entangled plot makes it worth reading.

I preferred A Killing Cold (2025) by Kate Alice Marshall, in which wealthy Connor Dalton brings his fiancée of six months, Theodora Scott, to his family’s sprawling mountain retreat, Idlewood, to introduce her to his family, but from the start the family makes it clear they don’t approve of the match and Theo receives multiple anonymous warnings. To be fair, her upbringing is not the no-skeletons-in-the-closet idyllic childhood that Connor’s family wants for him; her early life was chaotic, with the death of her parents and subsequent adoption by a harsh, strictly religious family that ended violently. When while snooping around in one of the cabins, Theo finds an old photo of herself with Connor’s (now deceased) father, she realises she’s been to the family compound before and slowly memories reawaken.

I realise that “snooping around in cabins” is a common theme for these two suspense novels. Other people tend to take a dim view of that kind of behaviour.

OTHER

I’m now reading I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir (2025) by restaurateur Keith McNally and liked this:

Watching: It was all House Hunters or International House Hunters and BBC comedies “Keeping Up Appearances’ and “Waiting for God” this week, when we watched anything.

Connections & Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered at the local car museum for a little more than 10 hours this week. I bought arugula, a heap of Swiss chard, some crackers, and a cucumber or two from the local farmstand on Tues. and Sat. I bought locally farmed asparagus from the grocery store on Sat. We ate outside at a local bakery/café for breakfast on Thursday. My husband bought a small item (rubber washer?) to repair an electric stapler from the local hardware store on Sat.

As mentioned above, we shopped at a regional garden center/nursery on Sunday, where I bought a plant and container for a friend (RL) and two cardinal flowers to replace the ones that didn’t come up in my garden this year (I read online that they are short-lived but they self-seed, and while they have self-seeded in the past, none seems to have sprouted anywhere this year). I shopped at the regional co-op while I was visiting the dentist this week. I also stopped in at Gardener’s Supply while in the area on Thursday and used a Christmas gift card to help buy some Darn Tough socks, a container of Neptune’s Harvest fertilizer, and two hanging baskets of lantana (one for a friend).

Relationships: I’ve mentioned these already, but: we went to dinner at friends’ on Thursday, I gave some garden produce to a friend on Friday, and I bought a couple of plant-related gifts for a friend this week.

I missed permaculture meeting (Zoom) this Thursday due to the suddenly available dental appt., but was glad to be at Salon on Friday — we had all seven of us in attendance for the first time in months. In addition, we were invited to view fireworks on Sunday night from a friend’s (DH) boat on the lake with another friend (LM) + someone I don’t know well but was glad to have an hour or so to talk with. I’m ambivalent about fireworks (the trauma to pets, to wildlife including birds and animals in the lake, to veterans, as well as possible other environmental damage) but I did enjoy seeing them and hearing them reverberate while sitting on a boat in a calm lake on a beautiful night. I won’t make it a habit.