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

All high temps were in the 70°Fs this week, ranging from 79.5°F to 73.0°F and averaging 76°F. Lows ranged from 49.5°F to 68.4°F, averaging 57°F. No A/C needed this week! We received .69 inches of rain, on Wed. and on Thurs., when we had a thunderstorm in the wee hours.

storm clouds on Thursday afternoon

• Beginnings/Firsts

We ate the first peach from our tree on Sunday, which I’d picked 9 days earlier. Yum! I’ve picked a few more, which will be ready quicker. It’s almost time for the peachening! (a much smaller affair than in past years with our peach trees dying/waning.)

Saw my first milkweed tussock moth caterpillar, a small one, on common milkweed in the yard this week.

I saw my first monarch chrysalis this week, from the caterpillar in its J-shape on Wed. to the finished creation on Thurs. On jewelweed, just under our sitting room window.

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

• Wandering 

We walked on some local wooded trails on Monday (which we hadn’t walked since last year), where we definitely smelled stinkhorns and spent about 15 mins trying to locate them but were unsuccessful; around a pond in Hanover NH on Wed.; and I walked in town every other day. We went to Hanover for an appt. (and co-op shopping) on Wed. and I went to Hooksett for my Salon group on Friday. And we were at an ER vet in Lebanon late on both Fri. and Sat. nights.

wooded trails

in town

Hanover

• Curiosity & Discoveries

We had a difficult weekend and the least of it was my discovery of a large hornet’s nest in the ‘Ivory Halo’ dogwood (Cornus alba “Bailhalo’) alongside the patio, found when I attempted to pull out some bittersweet and gave their home a walloping smack. I recognised what is was in a split second, screamed, raced away, and somehow got only one sting, on my shoulder. It’s hard to see and we didn’t want to get closer, but the thing was basketball sized and very active. We’ll be having it destroyed next week by a professional; I hate to do it but it’s just too dangerous where it is. 😞

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Another surprise discovery was a mama bear and three small cubs crossing in front of us while we were out walking on Monday night around 8 p.m. (mama is on the far left, partly obscured by the sign)

• Creating

Honestly, I was relieved to get through this week without falling apart. The cat’s situation created many opportunities for working with uncertainty, despair, and grief.

• Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars

Humans: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week, using the Body Electric streaming program. I walked more than 11,000 steps on six days, more than 14,000 steps on four days, with a high step count day of 20,204 on Tuesday. I meditated 5 evenings this week for a total of 2 hours 40 mins; I did not meditate on the nights we had the cat at the ER vet. My husband had a hair cut on Tuesday.

Cars: My husband worked on sewing and stretching the vintage car’s tonneau cover this week.

Cat: We came home from being out of the house for 2 hours on Friday evening to find the cat walking oddly, quite subdued yet restless, and not willing to eat anything, which is a big red flag for him. We ended up taking him to the ER vet in Lebanon, NH, at 11 p.m., where they examined him, did blood labs, theorised as to what the cause could be (an injury to soft tissue in his hindquarters or back leg(s)?), gave him injections of an opioid pain medication and an anti-inflammatory, and sent us home at 2 a.m. with more anti-inflammatories and a different oral pain medicine. On Saturday we kept a close eye on him but if anything he seemed worse, not himself at all. He was eating, avidly, thanks to the meds but not drinking at all (and he loves to drink), not using his litterbox or having any interest in it, not grooming, not talking (and he’s a big talker), and he was staring into space most of the day, lost in his own world. So at 6 p.m. we took him to the ER vet again, where he was examined, given sub-q hydration, and had three abdominal xrays taken, which ultimately did not shed any light on what the problem was. We got home at 11 p.m. No real change on Sunday (still no water-drinking, no peeing/pooping, no grooming or talking), but on Monday we’ll see our regular vet.

I took a bunch of photos of him the day before all this happened — here’s one:

And here he is during his ordeal, in pain and drugged.

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: I cleaned the guest shower, toilet, sink, floor, etc., and vacuumed the kitchen and hallway on Wednesday. Apparently that’s it this week. I think I forgot to water the houseplants.

Admin/Financial: I backed up my laptop on Friday. We spent a boatload of moola at the ER vets this weekend (racking up points on the Amtrak credit card).

Supplies: I ordered apricots, healthy snack mix, and peanut butter pretzels from Nuts.com on Tuesday.

Food: I made a shrimp egg fried rice dish on Monday, which we also had on Tuesday, along with our cukes and tomatoes. We got takeout Indian food while in Hanover on Wed. (aloo paratha, chicken saagwala, dalmakhani, shrimp biryani, and mint chutney) which we had that night, Thursday (with leftover steamed green beans and potatoes, plus cukes and tomatoes), Friday (with cukes and tomatoes), and Sunday, with cukes. We got home after 11 p.m. from the ER vet on Sat. so we just had hard boiled egg and toast (him) and cheese in jasmine rice (me) before dropping into bed.

• Garden

I spent 6 hours in the garden this week — at least a half-hour every day — watering, harvesting (see that section below for details), pruning the tomatoes, fertilizing the cucumbers and tomatoes, cutting back the comfrey leaves and hosta flower stalks, trying to weed invasives before knocking into the hornet nest. My husband mowed most of the lawn on Saturday.

some garden pics this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Due to extenuating feline circumstances, sleep was poor this week. I averaged 6 hours 48 mins of sleep per night this week, with a score of 83.3 (range from 63 to 93). REM sleep accounted for 12.5 hours and deep sleep for 8.5 hours.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished The Anthropologists (2024) by Aysegül Savas this week. This slim novel was recommended as similar to Vincenzo Latronico’s work Perfection (2022/2025) and it is, though lighter in feel, I’d say, than Latronico’s book, but the central thrust is quite the same: as Asya, who narrates the book, comments, “…from time to time we worried that we weren’t living by the correct set of rules, that we should be making our lives sturdy. … All this time, we were waiting. For the news of some momentous change; that we were being summoned to serve in real life; that the time for playing games was over.” Asya and Manu, both non-natives of the city in which they now live (all places are unnamed), met in college and married a few years ago. Asya is a filmmaker and she also teaches documentary technique; Manu works at “a non-profit on the other side of the city.” They are trying to create a life, build a family of friends as mildly odd as they think they are, which so far includes Ravi, with whom they drink, go to coffee shops, bookstores, flea markets, walk around the city, and have meals. The chapters are short — I don’t think any is longer than 4 pages — with titles (Principles of Kinship, Future Selves, Courtship, Table Manners, The Drinking Spirit, Ways to Live, Fear of the Old, et al.) drawn loosely from anthropology study, recording snippets of their daily lives as well as Asya’s thoughts and feelings about their life, including being foreigners in the city; their interactions with their parents, a sibling, a grandmother, an older upstairs neighbour, a new friend; the documentary Asya is currently making about daily life in a nearby park, part of her quest to understand how people really live; meetings with friends and acquaintances and going to dinners and parties; their enumerations of activities and objects that bring them joy, that they feel they want; and their ongoing search for an apartment to buy and why each place doesn’t feel right. Very readable, delicately nuanced in its exploration of happiness and relationship, and I enjoyed it.

OTHER

start a seasonal memoir side quest #04: because one day you’ll want to remember more than just the big moments, by Hannah Bay in her newsletter midnight crumbs. Some of it is for paid subscribers only (which I’m not) but there is a lot of good stuff before that.

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perhaps helpful?

Watching

Death in Paradise, house hunter shows, pre-season football on Thursday night, and an I Love Lucy. Oh, and at the ER Vet it was American Pickers on The History Channel, the same show on Sat. night as the one we saw on Friday night there. If I could have turned it off, I would have.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered for about 4.5 hours for the local museum this week. I bought some treats and an ice tea at the local bakery/café on Wednesday and we ate outside there on Sunday. We bought takeout food from a local-to-Hanover Indian restaurant and I shopped at the regional co-op on Wednesday. Listened to music (African jazz) on the green on Friday night for an hour.

Relationships: Chatted with neighbours (JL and dog O) on Monday. Salon met on Friday for 2 hours with five of us (four of whom also drove an hour each way together). Had tea at a friend’s (ND) on Friday night after listening to music on the green. Reacquainted with our old vet (LBK), now at the ER Vet, on Saturday night. Friend RVN sent catch-up email on Wed. We took three cukes to a neighbour (BF) on Thursday and two more to neighbours (BT&SS) on Sunday.

Donations: Renewed our membership with Longwood Gardens (with early-bird 10% discount) on Tuesday.

• Endings/Harvest 

Ending: The final driveway daylily bloomed this week, on Wed.

Harvests: Harvested the last third of the garlic and these heads were the largest. I also processed the other two batches. Also harvested a bout 15 sweet millions tomatoes, 5 sungolds, 5 Matt’s wild tomatoes, 7 cukes, and two peaches.

• All This Useless Beauty

evening light and weathered wood

motion camera pic at night