A Moveable Garden

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.) As always, click photos for larger images.

• Weather

Weather on the cool side this week, a foretaste of things to come. The average high temperature was 69.3°F, ranging from 74.3°F to 64.6°F, and the average low temp was 55.2°F, with a range from 50.5°F to 57.2°F. We got at least a little rain on five days, totalling .89 inches for the week.

Leaves be fallin’

• Beginnings/Firsts

A monarch began its new life as a butterfly on Sunday; the chrysalis under the sunroom window was intact on Saturday afternoon and empty by Sunday afternoon. I’ve seen a number of newly minted monarchs — they look sort of wet, their colours very saturated — flying around the yard this week.

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

The sounds and sight of the common yellowthroat was everywhere in the garden this week.

🐛🦆🦋🐻🐸

🦆🦅🦃🐦‍⬛

Merlin heard, mostly in our yard — the whip-poor-will was a sweet surprise! Haven’t heard one in over 25 years, when we lived in rural Maine and heard them frequently at about 3 a.m. right outside our bedroom window …

and Merlin heard these birds at the lake on Saturday

• Wandering 

Not much wandering afar this week but I walked in town each day from Tues. to Sat., around the lake on both Monday and Saturday, at the bog on Monday, and at The Fells on Sunday.

in town

lake

bog

Fells

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I found a volunteer willow gentian in the back border by the fence and among the sweet cicely, maybe five yards from the one I planted years ago.

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The Holiday Inn on Jekyll Island (GA) is running a “Hidden Jekyll” feature on Instagram in Sept. I don’t think I’d heard of the dairy silo before this, though I may have seen it without realising what it is.

• Creating

I harvested more basil from the Vego raised bed garden and made another batch of pesto from it, on Tuesday.

I also made three more loaves of peach cobbler bread on Tuesday, using the last 4 cups of our peaches + 2 cups of our friend Larry’s peaches. I apparently didn’t take photos of the loaves.

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

Human: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week, using the Body Electric streaming program. I walked more than 10,000 steps each day, more than 14,000 steps on four days, with a high step-count day of 16,273 on Friday. I meditated on six days, for a total of 3 hours 10 minutes. I scheduled a 2026-2027 Covid vaccine online on Sunday for next week.

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: I watered the houseplants on Friday. I thoroughly cleaned the gas stovetop and kitchen counters on Tuesday (45 mins). On Thursday I vacuumed the kitchen, laundry room, both hallways, sitting room, and family room, and I spot-cleaned the carpet in the family room. I also did a load of clothes laundry that day. My husband continued repairing some door frame rot this week.

Financial/Admin: I paid a medical bill for me online on Thursday.

Supplies: I ordered some nuts (pine nuts and pecans) from Amazon on Tuesday. A friend gave us some large plastic shelving on Wed. that we’re going to use to organise the sports & outdoor games closet in the sunroom.

Food: On Monday my husband had grilled salmon & leftover mac & cheese, and I had leftover orecchiette with chickpeas, kalamatas, and garlic, on arugula, and we both had grilled shishitos and cukes. Tuesday it was grilled/air fried hot dogs (beef/soy), gemelli pasta with homemade pesto, and local corn on the cob. Wednesday my husband had grilled salmon again, and we both had leftover gemelli with pesto to which I added red beans, plus local green beans sautéed with shallots. He had grilled salmon again on Thurs., with our tomatoes, and I had egg-fried veggie rice and cukes. We both had leftover egg-fried rice, with shrimp added, on Friday. Saturday we went to a potluck party for dinner. I’m not sure what we did on Sunday — we attended a potluck lunch birthday party from 12:30-2:30 that day, so probably not much.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I also made pesto from our basil and peach cobbler bread from our peaches (and a friend’s). And I made a tortellini salad for one potluck and 20 deviled eggs for another.

• Garden

I spent only 2 hours 45 mins in the garden this week, mostly observing, taking photos, and harvesting since we had a fair amount of rain for the week, reducing the need for my watering (I think I watered only on Sat.).

Here’s a one-minute video of a bumblebee in the turtlehead flowers, for which they are uniquely designed (and vice versa).

some garden pics this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Sleep was not stellar this week. Sleep score (Samsung Fit 3) was only 84.1, with a daily range from 77 to 95; most scores were in the low- to mid-80s. I slept an average of 7 hours 42 mins per night this week, with 12 hours 45 mins of REM (and a lot of vivid dreams, a few of which I wrote down) and 7 hours 25 mins of deep sleep.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished Happy All the Time (1978) by Laurie Colwin this week. I’d characterise this novel as a cozy read: nothing bad happens. It’s the story of Guido Morris and Vincent Cardworthy, wealthy New Englanders, third cousins, and best friends who move to New York City in their 20s. By then Guido has already met and married the very self-contained, laconic, and pragmatic Holly Sturgis, and soon Vincent will meet Misty Berkowitz at his work “in garbage” (he designs and gives talks on sophisticated composting devices). Misty is a woman unlike all the other horsey set, outdoorsy girls he’s spent his life lightly entangled with; she comes from a family of Communists and union leaders, émigrés from Russia, and she views life as a struggle, while Vincent expects everything to turn out well. The couples become best friends and some of their extended families are part of their orbit as well. I enjoyed reading the story, though the “endless surprises” promised by The New Yorker review did not come to pass. The writing is amusing in many places. I appreciated the nuanced interactions among and within the couples, and Holly’s penchant for disappearing for weeks to think about things. But when the book ended I didn’t feel any sadness that it was over nor a sense of missing the characters.

OTHER

Interesting essay: “The reaper came early this year” by Aliaksandra Shymanskaya &, Liene Lūsīte in The European Correspondent: “Bales of hay were always a sign that summer was ending. This year, however, biking through the fields in western Germany, I had to double-check my calendar – wheat was already harvested by mid-July. It turns out this pattern is repeated throughout much of Europe.”

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I found this deep-dive article by Eric Topol fascinating! “The Coronary Artery Inflammation Controversy: How Two Large Outcome Trials Based on Surrogate Metrics Failed” by Eric Topol in Ground Truths. It’s worth reading in its entirety but if you want to skip to the take-home message, scroll to the bottom (line), which includes

“We can’t count on surrogate blood markers to guide the results of cardiovascular clinical outcome trials. We’ve seen this multiple times over past decades with interventions that raise HDL or lower triglycerides. It’s not so simple a translation from a blood test to reducing heart attacks and strokes as worked, in general, for lowering LDL cholesterol.

“The ‘inflammation hypothesis’ is not a hypothesis. It has been rigorously proven by multiple modalities, pathology, and clinical studies to be a critical component of atherosclerotic coronary artery disease and its propensity to result in heart attacks and clinical events. What hasn’t been adequately established is a safe potent intervention to reduce the arterial inflammation. … [T]here are many patients who have completely normal lipids but have coronary inflammation and develop heart attacks. Our undue emphasis on abnormal lipids as the only culprit misses this subpopulation of people at risk.

“Fortunately, we do have a non-invasive method to identify and quantify coronary inflammation …. Trials of future anti-inflammation drug candidates will be able to get a low cost chest CT and enroll participants who actually have evidence of coronary artery inflammation. That has exciting potential to help catalyze our hunt for safe and potent drugs.”

Listening

some Shazam’d songs this week

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered for a local museum for nine hours this week. We ate outside at a local café/bakery on both Wed. and Friday, and we shopped at the farmstand on Wed. and Friday as well (4 corn on the cob, green beans, summer squash, 2 small Asian pears, 2 red peppers). We bought a card for a friend at the local gift shop. We participated in the Friday evening arts stroll, visiting three galleries. I bought a shirt at the local consignment store on Thurs.

Relationships: It was a busy week of socialising, so much so that I skipped both my monthly bookgroup on Thurs. and my weekly Salon on Friday to take a breath (and make potluck foods). We attended a permaculture potluck gathering at a friend’s cabin on a lake on Saturday for three hours — there were 14 of us in a screen porch overlooking the lake, some who’d driven from Vermont, Maine, or an hour away in state — and the next day we spent two hours at the big birthday celebration of a friend (ND) who just turned 90 years old.

On Monday friends from upstate NY (AV&DF, SV, and family) visited us at home for a half-hour while in town to bury their mother’s ashes in the local cemetery — it was great to see them! I had flowers delivered from a local florist to our 90-yr-old friend on Wed. and we visited her and her daughter for 40 mins that day too. Also on Monday, while at the lake we ran into a friend (NR, a lake host) and her great dane dog Stella and chatted with her (NR) while patting Stella, who likes to lean her heavy body on a person, for 10 mins or so. We ran into a friend (AS) while eating out on Wed. and caught up for a half-hour on the patio of the café. I got my hair cut on Thursday morning and caught up with my stylist/friend (GV) then. On Friday I ordered a food gift to be delivered to my niece turning 40 soon. During the arts stroll on Friday, we chatted with acquaintances/neighbours KZ and SS&BT at a couple of the arts locales. During a walk on Sat. we ran into friend/neighbour LT and chatted for 10 mins, then friend LD and his visiting daughter (JD) and chatted a bit. Our friend CF dropped off peaches from their trees for us on Wed. Our friend ND gave us some shelving.

• Endings/Harvest

Endings: The ashes of our friend Nan V. were buried by her family (also our friends) on Tuesday in a town cemetery, next to her husband (both were in my poetry group and they were neighbours). May she rest in peace and love.

Harvests: This week I harvested four cups of basil to make pesto, 36 sweet millions tomatoes, 9 Matt’s wild cherry tomatoes, 6 sungold tomatoes, 3 Amish paste tomatoes, and 3 cucumbers. (I forgot to mention last week that I harvested some rosemary from the garden for the orecchiette dish.)

• All This Useless Beauty

this shimmery copper screen door