A Moveable Garden

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.) Click on any photo to enlarge it.

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• Weather

Temperatures started out fairly warm, got chilly, then ended up warm again. The high for the week was 79.3°F, the low was 34.5°F. Overall, high temps averaged 69.6°F, low temps averaged 43.4°F, and we had NO RAIN. We’re in an extreme drought and fire danger is High to Very High depending on which town’s fire department you believe.

• Beginnings/Firsts

Saturday marked the beginning of the marriage of my nephew C and his beloved R. May they love and live well together, come what may.

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

• Wandering 

Lots of wandering this week. Most significantly, we drove about 9 hours on Thursday to Lancaster PA for a family wedding on Saturday, then drove an hour or so from there to Kennett Square to visit Mt. Cuba Center and Longwood Gardens on Sunday (continuing to Monday).

Before that, at home, we walked at The Fells on Monday and around the lake on Tuesday. We drove about an hour away to pick up the rental car and drop off a return at the UPS store and did some shopping (without buying) while in an area with many stores.

The Fells

lake

road pics

Historic Rock Ford – Lancaster PA (wedding venue)

Marriott Hotel – Lancaster PA

Central Market – Lancaster PA

Mt Cuba Center – Hockessin DE

Longwood on Sunday – Kennett Square PA

• Curiosity & Discoveries

While walking the trails by the lake at The Fells, we stumbled on yet another geocache. This is the 4th or 5th one in about as many years, all in different places.

• Creating

More memory creation this week 🤪, with lots of family interaction — nephews, niece, sisters, cousins, and all the significant others.

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

Body/Mind: I worked out three times (3 hours) this week, curtailed by our travels south and preparations for same. I walked more than 10,000 steps on six days, including four days over 14,000 steps, and one day of 22,111 steps. I had a “dry trim” at the salon on Monday early in the morning, tidying up for the wedding. Took a Covid RAT on Wed, which was negative. I took a lot of deep breaths on our nine-hour drive and when inevitable (mostly minor) tensions arose during our time with family.

Cat: I typed up and printed cat notes for the catsitter on Monday and Tuesday and got all his gear sorted and set out for her.

Vehicles: We rented a car from Enterprise for our road trip, which went smoothly. It was a Hyundai Elantra, fairly sporty looking, though with more storage space in the trunk than you would think, and with fewer than 9,000 miles when we got it. Its only major flaw (one that would keep me from buying it or anything like it) was constantly beeping as it flashed “Consider Taking a Break” on the dash — this could not be dismantled (believe me, I searched online and Reddit told me the sad news) and was very distracting and irritating.

• Gardening/Yard 

Fearing a frost or freeze while we were away, I harvested most of the basil (9 cups of leaves) on Monday and the rest, another 3 cups, on Wednesday, and made it all into 4 batches of pesto, using our garlic. (We did not actually get a frost while we were gone.)

We brought the three annual baskets into the house while we were away and arranged for the container mums to be watered by the catsitter. That’s about it.

some garden pics this week

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Tuesday, and I also cleaned some windows (inside only) on Tues., cleaned up the houseplant area in the living room, and watered the houseplants. My husband did the dump/recycling run on Wed.

Financial/Admin: I rescheduled my annual PCP visit on Monday a couple of weeks later with a different provider. I backed up the laptop on Wednesday, We were added to a friend’s (TD’s) emergency contact list on Tuesday. We picked up the rental car on Wed. and dropped off items for return to Amazon at the UPS Store on that same trip.

Food: While at home, we had leftover pizza and leftover french fries plus carrots, cukes, and bell peppers for dinner on Monday; either pizza (him) or veggie burger on arugula (her) with bucatini with roasted cauliflower and pesto on Tuesday; and the bucatini pesto thing with either sausage added to it (him) or another veggie burger (her) on Wed., along with carrots, peppers, and our cherry tomatoes.

While away, so much yummy food, including an 8 p.m. dinner at The Plough in the hotel in Lancaster on Thursday night (shared crab and summer squash soup, crab beignets, a green goddess salad); breakfast outside at Rachel’s Crêperie & Café in Lancaster with my sister, nephew, and niece on Friday morning (we all had some version of crêpes); the rehearsal dinner at a nice restaurant that night from 7:30-10pm; (menu included arancini, little gem lettuce salad, baked stuffed shells, and more); breakfast on the patio at On Orange in Lancaster on Sat. (just us), which was delicious (baked oatmeal for me, and scrambled eggs) and the Swedish pancakes which were so very large; dinner at the wedding (outside); breakfast at Two Kings in the hotel, with a buffet including an oatmeal bar, smoked salmon and fixins, fruits, meats, et al. and lunch-dinner at our old Kennett Square standby, Two Stones Pub, on the patio (roasted Brussels sprouts for us, oven roasted crab cakes for her, fish tacos for him). Some pics of the food, of course:

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Sleep continued fantastic if the Galaxy Fit 3 can be believed. I’m not convinced. I slept an average of 7-1/2 hours per night, ranging from 6 hours 7 mins to 8 hours 58 mins. My average sleep score was 96.4, with four 99s and all the rest also in the 90s. REM sleep accounted for 13-1/2 hours, deep for 6 hours. The hotel bed in Lancaster was very comfortable, I have to admit.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished I Might Be In Trouble (2024) by Daniel Aleman this week. The conceit is a little cutesy, Daniel Aleman writing a book whose main character is David Alvarez who’s a writer writing a thriller about a writer named Daniel. The plot is wacky: David, a young gay man whose first book was a great success and whose second was not, and his agent (and perhaps best friend), Stacey, move a dead body from his apartment into two taxis, through parks, her office building and elevator, and Times Square to a hotel room. David only met the man, Richard, the evening before, when they drank and had sex all over the city for many hours, and he felt they had a special connection and perhaps a future together; but when David wakes, Richard is dead in bed beside him. Turns out that Richard was not what he seemed and his husband, a CNN anchor named Corey, is suspicious that although the police have ruled Richard’s death a stroke, David is involved. Besides living in fear that he will spend the rest of his days in prison, David is also trying to make some money writing, which means coming up with a smashing idea, and he perennially suffers at the hands of an unpleasant father and rather nasty step-mother who live a short train ride away. As one reviewer put it, “darkly comic and painfully relatable.”

OTHER

An article, Beneath the GDP, A Recession Warning (28 Sept 2025, WSJ). (Should be a gifted link.) “Dig into the numbers … and you find the trade war is in fact wreaking economic havoc. … For the first time since the financial crisis of 2008, we’re seeing a huge gap between consumer and business spending. While consumption is still robust (up a real 2.6%), business is pulling in its horns, largely due to higher tariffs and the uncertainty of the trade war.”

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And … snakes in NH!

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Also (sorry this is so difficult to read!): “To love someone is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be….”

Listening

Some songs Shazam’d at the wedding, at restaurants, etc.

Watching

Not much, some football in the hotel rooms.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: We supported several local restaurants while away in Lancaster and Kennett Square, PA. We also supported several (four?) Uber drivers in Lancaster. My husband volunteered at the local car museum this week for a little more than 4 hours.

Relationships: Lots of time spent with my family on this trip, which was for my nephew’s (C’s) wedding. My sister and another nephew (W) and I and my husband spent some down time with him and his then-fiancée (RS) (and their dog, and her father and his dog) at their condo on Friday for an hour or so. We (husband and I) had breakfast on Friday morning with my sister, nephew W, and niece R and in general we saw a lot of them throughout, including driving or Ubering places together. On Thursday night, my husband and I made a bit of a cameo appearance at a casual dinner of the two families (across the street from where we ate our late dinner after arriving at the hotel at 6:30 p.m.), which was the first time we met the bride’s family in person. On Friday night, we enjoyed chatting for a few hours during the rehearsal dinner with my other sister and her husband and my cousin A and her husband. Of course on wedding day, Saturday, we saw a lot of all the aforementioned and also another cousin, D, and his wife. We enjoyed meeting and getting to know (a little) the bride’s parents, siblings, and others.

Before all that, at home, I talked on the phone with a friend (ND) on Tuesday and then we spent 1-1/2 hours at her house on Wed., admiring her hard work clearing out the basement and taking a scroll saw, no longer used by her husband (TD), home with us. And I saw my friend/hair stylist (GV) on Monday morning and emailed a friend (KKT) on Tuesday. Sunday night exchanged a flurry of texts with a friend (RVN) whose father was (is) in hospital.

• Endings 

A friend (DA) whom we’ve known for 15 or so years died this week at the age of 93. His wife (ND), also a good friend, died a little over two years ago. They were both active outdoors people, avid hikers, and philosopher poets who were in my poetry group (or, more accurately, I was in theirs). May they both rest well.

Harvests: The basil (made into pesto), mentioned and shown above, and continuing cherry/pear tomatoes.

• All This Useless Beauty

I posted some above but I love these evening meadow shots from Longwood so much.

these wildflowers in vases on a bridge near Longwood’s meadow

Longwood’s new West Conservatory pools just before sunset

morning light in the family room