LIMINAL LIVING #82: 21 JULY TO 27 JULY 2025

Birds, Books, Edible Gardening, Food & Drink, Gardening, Harvest, Insects & Arachnids, Liminal Life, Meditation & Mindfulness, Pollinators, Slow Gardening & Living, Sound & Music

LIMINAL LIVING #82: 21 JULY TO 27 JULY 2025

July 27, 2025

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

Weather

Weather started out fairly cool this week, then got warm, then cooled off again. The high temps ranged from 86.9°F to 68.9°F, with an average high temperature of 78.4°F; the lows ranged from 48.4°F to 61.9°F, averaging 55.5°F. We got a bit less than 1/4 of an inch of rain this week, unfortunately.

Beginnings/Firsts

On Saturday, I harvested the first of the bush beans (Mardi Gras mix), which I planted pretty late.

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

Merlin heard these birds in our area this week:

Wandering

I walked in town every day this week except Saturday, when we walked at the lake, and I also walked with a visiting friend (CTW) on trails on Tuesday morning before she left. We went to a nearby town for breakfast and other things on Sat., and a friend (RL) and I went to another nearby town for lunch and to visit a mutual friend (LW) for an hour or two on Thursday.

in-town

out-of-town

lake and trail

Curiosity & Discoveries

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this before, sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), at a private-public garden in a nearby town.

Creating

I hope I created a welcoming place for our out-of-town guest who was here early in the week, including meals, activities, and an inviting and clean space. I had some help from this one.

Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)

Body/Mind: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week and walked more than 10,00 steps every day, over 14,000 steps on six days, and over 20,000 one day this week. I attended Dharma Sunday for more than 2 hours on Sunday, with Dan Clurman (via Zoom) leading meditation and taking us through some exercises in the Feldenkrais Method, which I’ve done before and from which I always feel I benefit. I got my hair cut on Monday.

Gardening/Yard

I forgot to write down some of my gardening time, but I know I was out there weeding, cutting back, and, mostly, watering for at least four hours this week.

some pics from the garden this week

Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I vacuumed the sunroom on Monday and did clothes laundry on Thursday and Sunday. On Wed., my husband hemmed a hand towel that had unraveled.

Financial/Admin: I checked and recorded bank transactions from the website to the checkbook on Sunday.

Food: I made a tortellini salad (with peppers, olives, peas, sautéd artichoke hearts, our basil & local parsley) for dinner outside on the patio on Monday with our out-of-town guest (CTW), and we had s’mores later that night with her and two local friends (ED&SD). It was leftovers for us on Tuesday, then we ordered pizza (the usual spinach, artichoke, and olive) and salad, which I heavily augmented with mostly local veggies, from a local pizza place for dinner on Wed. and Thursday. Friday was (beef or soy) grilled hot dogs, local corn on the cob, and local squash sautéed with onions. I made a local squash, local spinach, garlic and onion frittata on Saturday for dinner, with raw local veggies and tapenade, and we had that again on Sunday with local corn on the cob. We had sliced local cucumbers with almost every dinner. Summer is here!

Sleeping & Dreaming

My Fitbit band broke this week, so I didn’t get any sleep data for Monday night into Tuesday. I decided to buy a Samsung Galaxy Fit 3 instead of another Fitbit, and it arrived on Tuesday morning. I’ve found that, so far, it records sleep in particular quite a bit differently than the Fitbits I’ve owned over the last decade or so. For instance, my deep sleep when wearing Fitbits has almost always been more than 45 mins per night and often more than an hour. So far, using the Samsung, I’ve received no deep sleep on two nights and much less than usual on the other nights. I’ll have to see if this changes over time but I’m wondering whether Fitbits were significantly overcounting or Samsung is unable to accurately sense deep sleep. Samsung is also unable to tell when I’ve awakened unless I click on the sleep symbol. One morning I woke up and for a half an hour used my Samsung phone — on which the Samsung Health app resides, which is synced with the Samsung Fit 3 watch — and the watch had no idea I was awake during that time. So I’m feeling a bit distrustful of the capability of Samsung to measure things accurately.

The sleep scores are also different on Samsung. Using Fitbit, 90 and above was excellent, 80-89 was good, 70-79 was fair. With Samsung, it seems that 85-100 is excellent, 75-84 is good, 65-74 is fair. And if you get more sleep than your target amount, your score plummets, which seems odd to me, as my target is the minimum I want to get — more is welcome!

The only sleep data I can report with any accuracy this week is that in the six days I was wearing a device at night, I got about 7 hours 45 mins per sleep per night, which is pretty typical. And I can also say, with no device needed, that I had a very dreamy week.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading

BOOKS

This week I finished A Nearly Normal Family (2018) by M.T. Edvardsson and My Friends (2025) by Fredrik Backman. I was pretty disappointed by the Backman, which was a poignant and often funny story set both in the present and 25 years ago, featuring four 14-year-olds one summer, but Backman absolutely bludgeons the reader with his “live, laugh, love” views, which significantly detracted from the story for me. A Nearly Normal Family wasn’t that great, either, but it did get better as it went along. It’s set in Sweden and it’s about Stella, 18, who’s being held for the murder of her 33-year-old sometime boyfriend, who may or may not be a psychopath, and Stella’s parents, a pastor and a lawyer, as well as her close friend Amina, as they all try to protect Stella. It’s told from the perspectives of each parent and Stella herself. I have six or seven books I’ve interlibrary loaned to read next!

I did like this very much, from My Friends:

OTHER

This poetry reading (via Threads) by Andrea Gibson.

This 6-min YouTube video with Andrea Gibson reading their poem “My Dog Knew I Had Cancer Before I Did.”

A favourite genius of mine, Tom Lehrer, died on 26 July 2025. Here’s a gifted NYT link to Lehrer’s obituary.

More:

✨✨✨

Watching

We watched the fourth and last episode of “Maigret” (with Rowan Atkinson starring) this week and otherwise it was House Hunters, I Love Lucy, and a British comedy or two.

Listening

some things I listened to and Shazamed this week:

Connections & Community

Local Support: Shopped at the local farmstand a few times, for local cucumbers, local corn on the cob, local blueberries, local spinach, local squash, and crackers, and we also took their Farm Tour on Tuesday night for two hours, learning more about how the farm works and their particular struggles with a variable climate and unpredictable weather, small and large pests, weeds, etc.

I bought some items (tapenade, black beans, lemons) at the local co-op on Sunday. We had breakfast outside at another localish farm stand/café, on Saturday …

… and I bought some carrots and a couple of to-go food items there for the coming week’s lunches and breakfasts. My husband volunteered for more than 10 hours at the local car museum this week, where someone (JMcK) brought veggies from their garden to share; we got a couple of summer squash and some zucchini (gave the zucchini to a friend, RL).

Had lunch with three friends (CTW, CF, MAB) at a local restaurant in town on Monday and lunch with another friend (RL) at a localish restaurant on Thursday. We ordered pizza and salad from a local pizza place on Wednesday.

Relationships: We had our friend (CTW) staying here on Monday until Tuesday noonish. She and I had a long lunch out at a local restaurant with two other friends (CF & MAB) on Monday, and she went paddling with my husband on a nearby lake that morning. As mentioned elsewhere, we had a couple of friends (ED&SD) over for a fire and s’mores that night. On Tuesday she and I took a short trail hike before she left. My sister called on Monday night. My husband took a friend (LD) to pick up his car after its inspection on Tuesday. I chatted with a friend (ND) while on my walk for about 15 mins on Tuesday and we chatted with her again at her house on Wed. for another 15 mins. On Thursday, a friend (RL) and I went over to another friend’s house (LW) to discuss an upcoming event she’s hosting (and get a tour of her interesting house); and after that my friend and I went to lunch at localish restaurant on a lake, then to a local art gallery. Salon met on Friday at a friend’s house (DH) on a lake, with five of us attending. My husband and I chatted with some neighbours (SS & BT) for 5-10 mins that day.