Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
Warm week! Wet week! The average high was 65.7°F, ranging from 76.3°F to 45°F. The average low was 44.3°F, ranging from 31.3°F to 51.8°F. About 3″ of rain fell this week, plus about an inch of snow/mix (on Sunday). We’re still in a severe drought, though.
- Beginnings/Firsts
On Friday we walked at the bog for the first time this year; the last time was 27 November. (The parking area is snow-covered throughout the winter.)
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
- Wandering
We were in southern Maine for the first three days of the week, spending time at our favourites — Laudholm Farm/Beach, Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Parson’s Beach, the trails at St. Anthony’s Franciscan Monastery — and we explored a new spot this time, the Mousam River Marsh trail in Kennebunk. We also ate at a new restaurant, Casa Seventy-Seven Seafood Shack on the dock in Cape Porpoise, which was fabulous (food, service, ambiance).
Once home, I walked in town on Thurs. and Sat. and at the bog on Friday.
a few Maine pics
ST ANTHONY’S FRANCISCAN MONASTERY
MOUSAM RIVER MARSH TRAIL
PARSON’S BEACH
OTHERS IN KENNEBUNK
RACHEL CARSON NWR
LAUDHOLM FARM/BEACH
bog
- Curiosity & Discoveries
We “discovered” the Mousam River Marsh trail on Tuesday, in Kennebunk, though we’ve noticed it many times driving by over the years. It was a great find, with tree swallows, bluebirds, and a greater yellowlegs!
✨✨✨
This was the sky one night at home (thru window), kind of curious:
- Creating
Not creating per se but I started and finished puzzle this week, the first I’ve done in a few months, called “Seas the Day,” a beachy theme. It made me feel happy.
- Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars
Human: Walking in the woods and on the beach all day for several days in southern Maine is a balm to the soul and mind for me. I also managed to work out three times (3 hours) this week, and treadmilled once (1.5 miles, 23 minutes). I walked over 11,000 steps on six days, over 15,000 steps on four days, and over 20,000 steps on two days, with a high of 26,365 on Tuesday. We didn’t play ping pong at all this week. I participated in Dharma Sunday on Zoom with Lama Willa leading meditation and teaching on “Resistance to Meditation,” very helpful. May is going to be Meditation May for me.
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: I watered the houseplants and did clothes laundry on Thursday. On Saturday I vacuumed the kitchen, living room, dining room, hallways, and entry way and did food and space prep for guests coming over that evening for drinks and snacks.
Financial/Admin: We approved and signed the estimate from the landscaper on Thursday. I paid a medical bill online on Friday.
Food: Monday through Wednesday we ate out, with each breakfast included at the motel (usually homemade oatmeal, oranges, homemade muffin — a new one every day) plus lunch (lobster roll and fries, amazing house salad with crabcake) at Casa 77 and coffees and snacks at Mornings in Paris on Monday, crêpes and coffees at Mornings in Paris for lunch on Tues. and dinner at the Boathouse (monkfish stew, Brussels sprouts, blackened shrimp tacos), and lunch (lobster roll, tater tots, and pan-seared haddock sandwich) at Stonewall Kitchen in York on Wed.
food while away
Casa Seventy-Seven
Mornings in Paris
Stonewall Kitchen
On Friday we had grilled hot dogs (beef or soy), sautéed spinach and garlic, and black beans with corn, avocado, and salsa. Saturday we just had the appetizers we served our guests, and Sunday I made Old Bay roasted cod, pine nut couscous, and sautéed spinach and garlic.
- Garden
I worked in the yard for about 4 hours this week, including two hours gardening on Thursday — pruning back the sand cherry, honeysuckle, elderberries, lilacs, and generally checking for how plants fared over the winter — and two more hours on Saturday, clearing the brick front walkway and cement front stoop of debris, weeds, overgrown shrubs, etc., to make it look more welcoming. My husband helped with that project and he also discarded most of my pruning/weeding piles on Thursday. I’ve also spent a lot of time puzzling over all the transplanting, planting, removal of plants (one tree in particular, but also judicious editing of perennials that have overspread), bed edging and enlargement, raised bed design and materials, selection of seeds for seed starting, and other garden projects that we’re hoping to get done this year. We walked over to a friend’s to look at her raised beds on Sat.
in the garden this week
- Sleeping & Dreaming
I slept an average of 7 hours 40 mins per night this week, with an average (Samsung Fit 3) score of 89.6. Pretty good for sleeping in a motel room on three of those nights. I had 13 hours 51 mins of REM sleep and just about 9 hours of deep sleep — and for the first time I can recall, I got an hour or more of deep sleep on each night.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: This week I finished a book I found at the motel we stayed at in Maine — there’s a little book and puzzle/game library in the laundry room there. It was A Slow Fire Burning (2021) by Paula Hawkins, which is a suspense novel, I guess, though not all that suspenseful. A young man (Daniel) is found murdered on a London houseboat by a nosy neighbour who likes keeping secrets, after he’s spent the night there with a young woman who has impulse control issues as a result of severe injuries from a motor vehicle incident when she was a teenager. Daniel’s aunt, to whom he’s close, has recently lost her sister, Daniel’s mother, and all of them plus the aunt’s semi-estranged husband (Theo) were enmeshed in a tragic and consequential event years ago. We also learn that the nosy neighbour was caught up with a friend in a significant assault when she was young. An older woman, Irene, has a role to play with almost all of these folks, as the police investigate possible motives for Daniel’s murder. The plotting is overly complicated but it was an interesting read, with resentment at its heart.
OTHER:
Some articles/essays I found interesting or important this week:
Japan’s Cherry Blossom Database, 1,200 Years Old, Has a New Keeper (Hiroko Tabuchi/NYT – gifted) “Slowly, the snippets of everyday life became records of the changing climate. Cherry blossoms need a period of winter cold to break dormancy, followed by warmer days to trigger blooming. His data showed that, for roughly 1,000 years, peak bloom dates tended to fall around mid-April, with fluctuations in response to natural climate variations. But starting around 1820 to 1830, cherry trees began to bloom earlier, as Kyoto urbanized and humans burned more fossil fuels, releasing planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. That trend has accelerated sharply in recent years. In 2021, the peak bloom in Kyoto happened on March 26, its earliest arrival in 1,200 years. That represents a shift of nearly three weeks compared to the historic average.”
‘After all the horrible things we’ve been through,’ he said to me, ‘if I die of cancer, it will make a bad story’: Siri Hustvedt on losing Paul Auster (The Guardian) “From the beginning, the doctors confessed that Paul’s “case” was “difficult”. A “tumor board” met to evaluate his situation. Except for his history of smoking, the doctors never asked about his life story. I feel confident they didn’t know what he had suffered the year before he started having fevers. Despite the fact that the immune system, which regularly kills cancer cells in everybody, is highly sensitive to the assaults on a person now widely known as “stress”, the standard biomedical model in the United States excludes these narratives from the clinical picture.”
So What if They Have My Data? Who’s buying our personal information, what they’re using it for, and how the system works behind the screen. (Hana Lee Goldin/Card Catalog) “The question isn’t whether we can avoid data collection entirely, because for the vast majority of people who participate in modern life, the answer is no. The question is whether we can make more informed decisions within the constraints we’re operating in, and whether the system can be pushed – through regulation, through market pressure, through better tools – toward something more transparent.”
TRAILER: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (Pieshake Pictures), a 2-1/2-min video.
And some other things
on hardening off seedlings (from Fedco):
recipe:
Watching
We didn’t watch anything at the motel this week. After we got home we watched a ‘House Hunters’ on Thursday and then devoted a few nights to ‘Gaudy Night’ (another Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novel).
Listening
- Connections & Community
Local Support: Stayed at family owned motel and ate at only locally owned restaurants/cafés Sun-Wed. Signed up for an Ultra 1K that’s a fundraiser for the local food pantries (“This is a 1-kilometer race, 0.62 miles, 3,280 ft of powerful walking, jogging, running or shuffling all in the name of raising money and awareness for three incredible local charities.”) May is going to be Minimarathon May for me!
Relationships: Brief phone call with my sister on Monday morning. Permaculture group met in person on Thursday for about two hours with six of us and some yummy potluck. Salon met in person on Friday for over two hours with four of us attending, and I walked there and back with a friend (ED). We had two friends (LD, LM) over for drinks and snacks for a couple of hours on Saturday evening. Chatted with neighbour (JL) for a bit on Saturday and we took his yard-cleaning debris (fallen tree limbs) to use for our raised bed.
Donations: Renewed our Bedrock Gardens membership on Friday.
- Endings
None comes to mind, except the end of our Maine trip of course.
- All This Useless Beauty
Leave a Reply