Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
High temperatures ranged from 87.3°F to 69.4°F, averaging 79.6°F. Lows ranged from 54.3°F to 63.3°F, averaging 58.7°F, so we had the A/C off this week. We didn’t get much rain, only .18 inches over three days.
- Beginnings/Firsts
Saw my first monarch butterfly of the year in town, nearby, on Thurs., and the first in our yard on Friday.
My husband caught (and released) his first fish of the year, a brook trout, on Monday.
The red bee balm and ‘Lucifer’ crocosmia both had their first blooms this week.
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
- Wandering
Wandered quite a bit this week, comparatively. We had close friends from Baltimore come to visit on Friday afternoon, staying into this coming Wednesday. We took them to Windsor VT, to The Path of Life and Harpoon Brewery (to watch the World Cup game) on Sat. and on Sunday we trekked to Walpole, NH, to dine at The Restaurant at Burdick’s (brunch menu; see Nesting – Food section for pics), and on the way home we walked at the bog — where my husband and I had also walked on Tuesday. Otherwise, I took in-town walks every day (and some evenings).
Path of Life
bog– Tuesday and Sunday
Tuberous grasspink blooming at bog this week:
in town
- Curiosity & Discoveries
I learned 95% of what I know about soccer (football) this week from our friends, who are avid fans, as we watched a couple of World Cup games together. (The rest of it I learned over the years from Darby Conley’s “Get Fuzzy” comics.)
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A curiosity/rarity in the car world, a Bugati (1920s or early 1930s), participated in a local cars & coffee event on Saturday.
- Creating
I made some food that’s not part of my usual rotation to serve our visiting friends.
- Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars
Human: I worked out three times (3 hours) this week, with weights, stretching, dancing. I walked more than 11,000 steps every day, with five days over 15,000 and two days over 19,000, with a high step count day of 26,062 on Friday. I meditated from Mon-Thurs. but not on Fri., Sat., or Sun., for a total of 2 hours 10 mins this week. My mammogram report came in on Thursday: negative!
Cars: My husband took the BMW into the shop on Wed. because the repair made last week was showing signs of failing. Turns out there was something wrong with the part, so they will order a new one and install it (no charge).
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: My husband installed a special latch Monday on the bedroom door so the cat can waltz in and out — as he likes to do when we have the bedroom A/C running — without leaving the door open. Clever! He did the dump/recycling run Wed. I cleaned the refrigerator shelves on Tuesday and on Wed. I cleaned the shower niche, tidied and cleaned my kitchen desk, vacuumed the kitchen rug, and ran a load of clothes laundry. We found places this week for all the artwork my husband had framed for me for Christmas.
Food: I made tuna Niçoise salads on Monday for dinner, with corn on the cob. I made a pine nut salad on Tuesday (husband added grilled chicken) and I finished that on Wed. while my husband had a little of it as a side, plus grilled salmon, and we both had sautéed summer squash, onions, and green beans. On Thursday my husband had the rest of the grilled salmon and I made tuna salad for myself, which we ate with corn on the cob. That evening I also made a Swiss chard frittata and my husband made naan bread (using atta flour) for when our friends are here.
Friday we ate outside on the patio with our visiting friends, enjoying the frittata I’d made as well as a cowboy caviar (fancy salsa) I’d made that afternoon, with pico de gallo chips, raw veggies and dip and other appetizers, plus S’mores by the campfire after dinner.
On Sat. we ate dinner at Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT, watching the World Cup. Sunday we had brunch at Burdick’s in Walpole, NH around 2 p.m., as mentioned above, and I can’t recall what we did for dinner that night — probably snackage?
Burdick’s brunch pics:
- Garden
I worked for 9 hours in the garden this week, a lot of it watering, but also weeding, picking up weed piles, harvesting (peas, parsley, cilantro, basil, arugula, romaine lettuce), mulching, and planting some new things + transplanting a cucumber from the raised bed to another spot. My husband constructed a support for the flailing early figworts, who were intruding on the space of other plants.
We also found places in the backyard for the metal fox sculpture he gave me as a gift and for the big bird bath.
My husband mowed part of the lawn on Friday afternoon and power washed the patio table and chairs (again) on Thursday. He also spoke with someone who was grinding stumps in a neighbour’s yard this week and we arranged for him to come on Monday to remove our blue spruce tree that’s involved with the utility wires; he’s the third person we’ve tried to engage to do this since mid-May (and with by far the best price), so 🤞.
garden pics (besides harvests) this week
🌱🌱🌱
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Sleep was good this week, with an average per-night sleep of 7-1/2 hours and an average sleep score (Samsung Fit 3) of 90, including one night with a 96 score. I had 14 hours 33 mins of REM sleep (more vivid dreams) and 9 hours 45 mins of deep sleep, which is more than usual.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS
I finished Go Gentle (2026) by Maria Semple this week. It’s an interesting novel, set in NYC and focusing on a divorced woman in mid-life, Adora Hazzard, who’s a philosopher (of the Stoic variety) and mother to Hannah, a 16-year-old. Adora has also convinced her closest female friends to move into her apartment building and to contribute to shared amenities (dog walker, parking spot, cleaners, arts subscriptions, etc.). One of Adora’s jobs is instructing two tween boys in philosophy, the sons of wealthy Lionel and Layla Lockwood, who own the Lockwood Library on 5th Avenue. Her life is good, and then she meets Digby Beale at the opera; the two fall for each other hard, or so she thinks, until he involves her in some kind of nefarious intrigue in which the Lockwood Library plays a role. The novel is part romance, part caper, often funny, full of Stoic aphorisms, and I enjoyed it, though I felt vaguely as though the dialogue was scripted, too well-rehearsed to sound natural.
OTHER
Articles I found interesting this week:
“What if We Accidentally Outsource the Real Work to AI? We must be mindful of the ways automation alters our habits of mind,” by John Warner in Inside Higher Ed. Especially the part about using AI to scribe medical appointments: “[Emergency room physician Helen] Ouyang was hardly concerned by the potential shift to AI scribes, seeing them ‘as the natural next step in this long evolution of the medical record.’ The doctor’s role ‘seemed simple: read the [AI] draft, correct what was wrong, sign it. So fast, so easy.’” But she says this process ‘began to discomfit me’ as she realized that she had eliminated an opportunity to think through her patient’s situation, no longer sorting through the material for meaning….’” For me, writing is thinking, and to scan and edit something written by AI instead of writing my own notes would mean less attention to nuances and patterns, less scope for recalling the details of the interaction.
“What Do We Actually Know About the Microplastics Inside Us? Pervasive plastic contamination and unreliable methods have clouded the science on microplastics in the human body“. This is an interview at Yale Environment 360 with Australian scientist Cassandra Rauert, who went to great pains to build a plastics-free lab to study human exposure. Basically, we cannot get away from ingesting microplastics, though the amount we ingest may be overestimated. To reduce our exposure in the home, vacuuming more helps, as does reducing plastics in the kitchen:
“e360: Is it a little bit disturbing to consider that plastics are so ubiquitous that you have to build a clean room from the ground up just to be able to study them?
“Rauert: It’s definitely made me think about my house a lot and all of the plastic consumer products that I have, and all the plastic stuff I have in my kitchen, which I have now been exchanging for metal and wood. You really don’t realize how much plastics you use in your everyday life until you start purposely looking for it. It’s just a given. You just grow up with it.
“e360: As far as we know, how does plastic typically enter our bodies?
“Rauert: We do know that, in terms of what’s in the air around us, we have higher concentrations inside our houses. We know a lot of these [plastic additives] end up in the dust in your house, so absolutely vacuuming more often is a great way to get rid of these. … But the biggest sources around your house are probably going to be what you’re preparing your food with. If you’re using a plastic chopping board, small pieces of plastic are being cut out of that and landing in your food. Using plastic kitchen utensils is probably not a good idea. I would change those over to bamboo or wood or metal. Heating your food in a plastic container will shed more of those plastics as well.”
Watching
Mostly we didn’t watch much this week except a couple of World Cup games.
Listening
Some Shazam’d songs this week
- Connections & Community
Local Support: My husband volunteered at the local museum for 9 hours this week, plus a few more on Sat. for a car event. I bought cukes and summer squash at the farmstand on Monday as well as two rosemary plants, eight white impatiens, one mildly hot pepper, another “Sedona Sunset’ coleus, and a red Gerbera daisy, all of which I planted on Tues. except the Gerbera, which is still potted and on the tiered planter with the Indian Pinks for now.
On Thursday I shopped there again, for four corn on the cob, a sweet potato, cukes, summer squash, two bunches of Swiss chard, and a Maine Harvest celeriac and red pepper humus. We had lunch at a local bakery/café on Wednesday. I bought a couple of bags of mulch at a local (small chain) hardware store on Thursday and also three shirts at the local consignment store that day. I got a smoothie at a local restaurant on Sat. morning and we ate, with our friends, at Harpoon in Windsor, VT that afternoon. We all attended the car event at a local museum that morning, too. Sunday we ate at Burdick’s restaurant and my friends bought chocolate at their store and then later some items at the local consignment store.
Relationships: My good friends from college are here! Yay! Lots of catching up, eating good food, walking, kayaking on our lakes (for them), and visiting other fun places. Speaking of kayaking, we were fortunate that a neighbour (KS, with whom my husband volunteers at the car museum) offered us his kayaks for our friends to use while they’re here. We picked them up Sunday morning and they used them for a sunset paddle on a local lake on Sunday night. More kayaking (and swimming) to come.
Otherwise, on Tuesday we visited with our friend ND for 45 mins after dinner. On Wed. I ran into a friend (ED) at the grocery store and chatted for a few mins, and then with another friend (MB) at the liquor store. Also chatted outside with our neighbours (BF&SF) for 20 mins that day as well as another visit while we were out walking with our friend ND for 20 mins (she was in her yard gardening). I chatted with our neighbour PB for about 10 mins on Thursday about his experience with the arborist we hired this week. Friday we ran into a friend (AlS) while walking and did a quick catch-up with her for 5 mins, then that evening we briefly attended, with our visiting friends, the music on the green event and ran into another friend (BB). On Sat. I took some of our harvested peas to our neighbours (J&SL) and my husband and I ran into friends (AnS, out for a drive in his vintage car) and MH (on a town float!) while on a walk.
All in all a pretty busy and stimulating week with friends and neighbours.
- Endings/Harvests
I forgot to take photos of all the other harvests!
- All This Useless Beauty
this gorgeous pairing of oranges
a wealth of orchids
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