LIMINAL LIVING #85: 11 AUGUST to 17 AUGUST 2025

August 17, 2025

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

Weather

A nice warm week here, with over an inch of rain! The average high temperature was 87.3°F with a range from 91.2°F on two days to 81.0°F. My kind of summer weather! The average low temp was 59.9°F, ranging from 54.5°F to 63.7°F. We had the bedroom A/C on from Monday evening through Thursday morning to make sleeping more comfortable. We had bit of rain on Wednesday and then a lot more on Sunday, adding up to 1.06 inches this week. The gardens sure need it, and much more. But this week’s rain was enough to move the town fire warnings from “very high” back to “high.”

Beginnings/Firsts

Picked the first ripe peach from the trees on Tuesday and on Thursday started picking peaches for us and neighbours/friends.

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

wild things at home

wild things on the coast

Wandering

We wandered over to Rye, NH on Sat. for few days. Enjoyed visiting Fuller Gardens in North Hampton on Sat., known for its roses and dahlias, and birding and walking at Odiorne Point State Park a bit on Saturday and a few hours on Sunday. We also birded at the marshes near Odiorne. We checked out Wallis Sands Beach briefly on Sunday, as it was almost across from Kook’s, where we had both breakfast and dinner that day.

Saturday night we ate on the outside deck at Ray’s Seafood after about a half-hour wait (at 5 p.m.). The wait is not painful, as they’re on a marsh and across from the ocean. Their fish and chips are one of my favourites — they’re really several large haddock nuggets, perfectly fried, which I prefer over a damp slab of fish, often badly battered, dumped on top of undercooked fries. Ray’s French fries are excellent, some of the few we get in restaurants that I don’t want to take home to cook and crisp. I mean, look:

Fuller Gardens, North Hampton NH – Sat.

Odiorne Point State Park, Rye NH – Sat & Sun

Kooks Café & Beach Bar – Sunday

Wallis Sands Beach, Rye – Sunday morning

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Before that trip, we walked at the lake on Monday, the bog on Wednesday, and I walked in town Tues., Thurs., and Friday.

lake

bog

in-town(s) photos

Curiosity & Discoveries

Not really either a curiosity or a discovery but I was sort of surprised to see this Dogfish Head Cocktails banner trailing a plane over the ocean along Route 1A in Rye, NH.

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this large fluffy-tailed house cat turned up on our motion camera one night … the photo’s not very clear but people sure chimed in on iNat to identify it (also visible in the photo are the peach limb supports)

my husband is testing and fixing some solar lights … I think it looks like an audition on our lawn (note garlic drying on patio table)

Creating

We carved out time and created space to get away on very short notice, even in the midst of peach season!

Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)

Body/Mind: This week I walked more than 12,000 steps on six days, more than 14,000 on five days, and 18,590 steps on Sunday (at Rye). I worked out three times (3 hours).

Cat: Booked the cat visits for our Rye trip and typed up notes for the catsitter.

Gardening/Yard

I spent 4-5 hours in the garden this week, watering and harvesting — cherry/pear tomatoes, last of the Mardi Gras blend bush beans, basil, garlic, and peaches.

I completed the garlic harvest with 16 heads, in addition to the 6 I’d already picked in prior weeks checking on their status; about half were nice and large, the others ranged from medium to small. I think a few were too close to each other and also possibly didn’t have quite enough sun once the lilac leafed out.

Peaches are starting to ripen and fall off the trees so we started picking them Thursday and offering to others via an email list. My husband mowed the lawn on Friday, the 7th time this season.

garden pics

Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Thursday and vacuumed the kitchen, hall, and laundry that day, too. I watered the houseplants on Saturday before we left. My husband made the dump run on Wednesday.

Admin/Financial: I made hotel reservations for the rest of our October wedding stay in PA this week. I also got the catsitter’s availability and on Thursday made a motel reservation for Rye, NH, with our stay there starting on Saturday. I backed up my laptop, which has been acting badly, on Wednesday, and I looked over the bank account transactions that day.

Food: I made tortellini salad on Monday, using our basil, local red peppers, artichoke hearts, olives, peas. We had that with toasted slices of the scrumptious jalapeño-cheddar bread I bought last week from the local bakery. Same thing on Tuesday, but I added shrimp to the tortellini salad. I made veggie burgers on both Wed. and Thurs. because we had local arugula we needed to use (and I love to pile arugula onto the burger), plus local corn on the cob on Wed. and the sautéed local summer squash, local green peppers, and vidalia onion on Thurs. Plus sliced local cukes and our cherry tomatoes. Friday I made an arugula salad with tuna, hard-boiled egg, local carrots, our bush beans, local cucumbers, kalamata olives, etc., which we had with the jalapeño-cheddar bread. Saturday and Sunday we were away.

veggie burger with arugula + sautéed veg

Sleeping & Dreaming

Sleep not great this week. I got an average of 7 hours 8 mins per night, with a average sleep score of 83 (including a 90, two scores in the 70s, and the rest in the 80s). REM sleep accounted for 12 hours 40 mins, fairly typical for me, and deep sleep for 6 hours 38 mins, which is low for me.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading

BOOKS

I finished The Ice Queen (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #3; ) by Nele Neuhaus this week. It had a very twisty plot — concerning elderly former Nazis who grew up in East Prussia (then Germany, now part of Poland) being murdered one by one in contemporary Germany — with several related side stories, and I enjoyed the misleading, lying, layering, and general complexity. But the names of the many (many) characters were confusing to me; for an English speaker, they are too similar.

Next up is Call Me Princess (Louise Rick #2) by Sara Blaedel, set in Copenhagen. Then I need to find more books.

OTHER

I like Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermons, including this recent one, “Fear is an attention hungry little liar,” at her newsletter, The Corners; from which:

“Maybe Jesus is saying, stop being afraid of what bad thing might happen because you’ll totally miss the kingdom of God thing that IS happening. So much of our Gospel reading today was about being alert not for imaginary danger but alert for God. But it’s not so easy…because Jesus told us the kingdom of God wasn’t flashy. It’s not going to arrive like an executive order or a military parade. Instead, Jesus kept comparing it to stuff that’s real easy to overlook. Hidden things. Things so ordinary they’re almost embarrassing. Like Seeds and Yeast. Like a Coin lost in the couch cushions. God’s kingdom grows quietly in the shade of small things. Maybe kind of like mycelium: the vast, hidden network under the forest floor that turns decay back into life. It spreads quietly, relentlessly, finding a way through even the hardest soil. And though you may not see it at first, one day you’ll look around and realize everything is alive because it’s been there all along.”

Also, James’ Fallows recent post, “What It Actually ‘Feels Like’ in DC.” It’s a paid post (you need a subscription) but there’s a lot of it before you get to the part that’s only for subscribers, and worth reading. (Happy to email you the full thing on request.)

If you’re not familiar with it the U.S. Drought Monitor is a handy way for those of us in the U.S. to know what’s going on ground-water-wise where we live. The Northeast iteration includes everything from the mid-Atlantic to northern New England.

Watching

We watched season 2 of Death in Paradise on BritBox this week.

Listening

Connections & Community

Local Support: Shopped at the farm stand on Monday and Wednesday, for crackers, chocolate wafers, red bell peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, summer squash, arugula, spinach, blueberries. Got a smoothie from a local restaurant on Tuesday and we went to another localish café on Wed. for coffee, smoothie, bagel, and brownie.

On Thursday I picked up some baked goods from the local bakery (we also tried to eat breakfast there on Friday but all the outside tables were taken both times we checked). Ate at local places in Rye (Ray’s, Kooks) on Sat. & Sun. and also shopped at LL Bean outlet on Sunday. My husband volunteered at the local car museum for 10.5 hours this week.

Relationships: Salon met on Friday for 2 hours, with six of us in attendance plus the host’s visiting daughter for a bit. You’d think we colour-coordinated our outfits.

My poetry group met on Tuesday on a friend’s deck overlooking the lake, with five of us reading poetry and talking about local politics and history.

A friend (RL) gave us sourdough starter on Monday after ours got moldy, and she ordered and delivered some flours for us from an online store she uses. We gave some cherry tomatoes to a neighbour (BF) on Friday and started offering peaches to a few dozen friends and neighbours on Thursday. Ran into a friend (CF) on Tues. during my walk and we talked for 10-15 mins. Some mini-donkeys that are used in a pre-vocational program for differently abled adults came to visit the senior center in town on Wed., and we walked up to see them; we also chatted with friends DLP and JW there.

Endings/Harvest

Our last driveway daylily bloomed on Thursday. They started blooming on 28 June and overall there were at least 2,093 flowers (and a lot of katydids attracted to them). The 5th of July was our high day, with 163 daylilies blooming at once, and we had 10 more days with flowers over triple digits.

I harvest all the garlic this week, for a total of 22 heads of garlic (16 heads in addition to the 6 previously pulled). It’s drying in the backyard. (photo above)

We started harvesting the peaches this week, on Friday, the 15th. Looks like a good but not excessive crop.

a couple of harvests this week