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

Fairly chilly this week, for August, though the average high doesn’t really reflect how it felt most days, skewed a bit by two days that reached a little below and a little above 80°F. High temps ranged from 59.9°F to 81.7°F, with two days in the 60°Fs and three in the 70°Fs. Lows ranged from 45.9°F to 55.9°F, averaging 50.7°F. We were away on the 45.9°F night so the ficus tree (a houseplant most of the year) remained outside, and it seemed to have come to no harm. We got almost no rain this week, a scant .07 inches on Wednesday, though it was cloudy all day. So much clouds, so little rain.

• Beginnings/Firsts

Not a first at all but something we hadn’t seen in the yard since May, a black bear, running by the peach trees early on Sunday morning.

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

wild things in Rye NH

Merlin heard birds in Rye NH

Not too sure about that great horned owl and pectoral sandpiper …

wild things at home

• Wandering 

We were in Rye, NH on Monday and Tuesday, in Portsmouth on Monday for lunch, and briefly in Salisbury MA for lunch on Tuesday, finishing up our seacoast getaway. Back at home I took walks in town on Thursday and Friday and we walked at the bog on Saturday.

Wallis Sands Beach, Rye NH

Odiorne Point State Park, Rye NH

Other Rye pics

Portsmouth NH – lunch at La Maison Navarrre

Salisbury MA

We had a problem with our reservation. We made it for 12:30 but got there early, at noon, and told the hostess we were early for our 12:30 reservation; she seemed to look at a list and understand what we were saying. She seated us right away, though not at an oceanfront window as I’d requested, though several were open, but we figured others reserved before we did and we could still see the ocean just fine anyway. As we were leaving, I noticed a missed call at 12:45 … from the hostess standing 20 feet from us telling us our reservation was cancelled for failure to show up. There were two hostesses, both there when we arrived and when we left, and neither seemed to understand what had happened when I asked them about it after listening to the message. Weird. Anyway, the food and drinks were good, as was the service, and the view was perfect as always. We walked around the town afterward and noticed it’s rather down at heel. I think the Seaglass Restaurant might be the nicest place there.

in-town

bog

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I’m always excited to see black earth tongue fungi (probably Trichoglossum hirsutum but possibly Glutinoglossum glutinosum) when out on a walk in the woods (woods alongside the bog, in this case). It’s just strange.

• Creating

I baked! Three loaves of peach cobbler bread, with more to come.

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

Body/Mind: I worked out three times (3 hours) this week; being away for two days throws the workout schedule off. I walked more than 11,000 steps on six days, more than 14,000 steps on four days, and on Monday walked 19,289 steps. On Sunday I participated in Dharma Sunday (through Natural Dharma Fellowship) via Zoom for two hours with meditation and teaching led by Ji Hyang Padma on the topic of “Meditation for Transformative Times,” which was helpful. (She published Living the Season: Zen Practice for Transformative Times in 2013.)

• Gardening/Yard 

Most of our time in the garden this week was devoted to picking peaches, maybe 300-400 of them. I also harvested tomatoes on a couple of days and watered a few days.

And I cleaned the heated (though not at the moment) birdbath thoroughly on Friday and it looks so much better. A chickadee was chattering at me as I scrubbed. Since then, the cardinal pair has been seen together on several occasions bathing in it.

some more pics in the garden this week

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Wed. and towel laundry on Saturday. I apparently cleaned nothing else in the house this week.

Food: We ate well on our seacoast trip. This was breakfast at Kooks on Monday morning.

This was dinner at The Atlantic Grill on Monday night.

Once home, my husband had leftovers from the Seaglass lunch and I made my concoction of egg noodles, peas, and cheese, a favourite after eating restaurant food for a few days. Wednesday we had grilled hot dogs, mac & cheese, and local corn on the cob. I made cacio e pepe with local spinach, artichoke hearts, and shrimp in it on Thursday night, with local cukes and our tomatoes, which we had again on Friday, with local corn on the cob, plus local red peppers, local cukes, and our tomatoes. Saturday was bucatini with sautéed local summer squash, Vidalia onions, local green beans, and local green peppers, to which my husband added sausage. We had cukes & tomatoes on the side. I think we had the leftovers from that as a side dish with a veggie burger (with local arugula) on Sunday but I forgot to note it.

Besides meals, we also rustled up some baked items this week, with a. the cooler weather and b. the peaches demanding to be used. My husband made three sourdough baguettes on Saturday (gave one away) and a peach cobbler (we’re eating it) on Sunday, and I made three loaves of peach cobbler bread on Sunday, which are in the freezer as we are in the middle of one of the nine loaves of the same bread I made last year and froze. I forgot to take a photo of my breads but here’s his cobbler:

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Mostly a good week, though with a bad night’s sleep overnight on Monday, with a sleep score of 67. I averaged 8 hours 7 mins of sleep per night, boosted by one night of exactly 10 hours and one close to 9 hours, and no nights less than 7 hours. My sleep score average was 85, but without the one bad night’s sleep it would have been 88, including two nights of 91 sleep scores. REM sleep accounted for 13 hours 15 mins of sleep (a dreamy week) and deep accounted for 7 hours 23 minutes.

I’m still unsure what all these numbers mean, having recently switched from Fitbit to Samsung. The very bad thing with the Samsung tracker is that you can’t edit your sleep time like you can with Fitbit, and as I’ve mentioned here, if I wake up, fully awake, but then stay in bed for more than 5 minutes doing word games or checking email and texts, it assumes I’m still asleep but it’s not considered “good” sleep, which reduces the sleep score somewhat dramatically. Even pressing the sleep button doesn’t seem to give the tracker a clue, nor being active the whole time on the actual Samsung phone, so I have taken to screenshotting my original sleep data when I wake up, then if a new set of sleep data/score replaces the original set deleting it and adding back in the time I went to sleep and the time I woke up from the screenshotted image. But unlike editing Fitbit sleep times, with Samsung the only data preserved when you add sleep data is the time asleep, but no sleep score and no data about REM, deep sleep, phases of sleep, oxygen levels, pulse, etc. It’s frustrating and a known issue with these trackers.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished Call Me Princess (Louise Rick #2; 2011) by Sara Blaedel this week. It’s crime fiction set in Copenhagen, Denmark, featuring homicide detective Louise Rick, who with her colleagues is investigating the brutal rape of a young woman named Susanne by a man she met on an online dating site — but they don’t know his real name, what he looks like beyond a general description of dark and tall, nor his email address or phone number. Soon another woman is brutally raped and subsequently dies, and though the officers think it’s the same perpetrator, he’s left little trace of himself online or at crime scenes. Rick eventually brings herself up to speed on the online dating scene so that she can find or lure this predator into broad daylight, but it’s at risk to herself. Meanwhile, her best friend Camilla, a reporter, is also working with Susanne to get her story, causing some friction between her and Louise, and Louise and her partner of six years, Peter, are having relationship problems. The ending was disappointing for me but I like Rick’s flawed and sometimes abrasive character, her irritations, frustrations, and ambivalence.

Next up: Murder Takes a Vacation (2025) by Laura Lippman; Perfection (2022/2025) by Vincenzo Latronico; Things : A Story of the Sixties (1965; 1967/ 1990; also includes A Man Asleep) by George Perec; and I Might Be In Trouble (2024) by Daniel Aleman.

OTHER:

From Dharma Sunday this week — this rings so true, how grief unprocessed becomes grievance:

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In health news: Alpha Gal Syndrome, an acquired meat and meat products allergy (more about alpha-gal here), may be moving more into New England with the spread of its carrier, the Lone Star Tick.

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Also, I came across this guide to Cape Cod native plants which might be helpful for those in other parts of New England and for naturalists making a visit there.

Watching

When home, we continued watching “Death in Paradise” (end of season 2, start of season 3) on BritBox. For the foreseeable.

Listening

Shazam’d this week

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: We ate at only independent local places while away in Rye & Portsmouth, NH and Salisbury, MA. I shopped at the local farmstand a few times this week, for blueberries, summer squash, cucumbers, green beans, arugula, red and green peppers, crackers, and chocolate wafers. I had a morning snack at the local café/bakery with two friends on Thursday morning and bought some goodies to go. My husband volunteered at the local car museum for 5 hours this week.

Relationships: As mentioned above, I hung out with friends (ED & SD) for a morning snack for 1-1/2 hours on the patio of a local café on Thursday. Chatted with neighbour (WD) on Thursday for a few minutes and with neighbour (BF) for a half-hour on Friday. Friends and neighbours came by for peaches every day and we talked with some of them if we were around. My husband gave a homemade sourdough baguette to our friend (ND). We took peaches and Covid tests to a friend with Covid (CF) on Sunday. Salon met on Friday with 7 of us for 2.5 hours. Chatted with my sister on the phone on Friday for a half-hour. The usual texting, etc.

Donations: Made a small donation to iNaturalist on Friday.

• Endings/Harvests

Harvesting peaches galore and lots of cherry tomatoes almost every day.

• All This Useless Beauty

roots, moss, grasses at the bog

this colour palette is irresistibly cheery

light & shadow, ancient & modern (Odiorne Point State Park)

the colours, light, glow, movement (Wallis Sands Beach)