A Moveable Garden

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

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• Weather

My week was all rain as I followed a nor’easter up the coast: While I was away this week, from Monday through Thursday, it was rain (showers or sprinkles) and high winds (20-35 mph) every day in coastal Delaware, and when I returned (travelling all day on Friday), it was to rain at home on Sat. and Sun., though here we didn’t have any precip on the days I was away. This weekend we received 1.09 inches of rain, with more to come early next week. And it’s been chilly. Overall the high this week was 62.4°F, ranging from 66.2°F on Thursday to 59.0°F on Sunday. The lows ranged from 37.2°F on Thursday to 52.9°F on Saturday, averaging 44.5°F.

I miss summer already, but then I always do. I was checking back through the daily highs since June and noticed we had only three days (the first three days of July) that reached the 90°Fs (the low 90°Fs at that). New England is not my body’s innate home.

15-sec video of wind & rain from Rehoboth boardwalk on Wed. morning:

• Beginnings/Firsts

Lots of little firsts on my trip this week, including spending an hour or two in town in Lewes, DE, visiting the bookshop/cardshop (Biblion) and the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church graveyard; eating at Chesapeake & Maine, a Dogfish Head restaurant in Rehoboth that features seafood from the Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Maine; eating at the down-home Po’Boys in rural Milton, DE; and seeing a peregrine falcon, a short-billed dowitcher, and a rough green snake in the wild, all at Gordon Pond in Cape Henlopen State Park.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church cemetery, Lewes, DE

first animals:

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

** Most wild things this week are shown in the Wandering section.**

These are wild things from home:

These are wildish things from Baltimore:

• Wandering 

I wandered, as mentioned last week, to Rehoboth Beach, DE with college friends (RVN&ChN) and my sister last Saturday through this Friday. My friends and I also visited Lewes, DE (one of their favourite places), on our way back to Baltimore on Thursday, my friend RVN and I walked on Thursday evening in their Charles Village neighbourhood, and then on Friday I returned home by train and bus. I did a lot of walking while at the beach and not much walking at home (due to rain and catching up on things).

Rehoboth Beach, DE – boardwalk, beach, and ocean – a tad grey, yes?

Rehoboth Beach, DE – in town

Cape Henlopen State Park / Gordons Pond trails

➡️ Monday

➡️ Tuesday (our outing was aborted, but that was the day we saw the peregrine falcon and the green snake)

➡️ Wednesday

Merlin heard birds from Monday to Thursday at Rehoboth / Cape Henlopen

Lewes – The Point beach (Thursday)

Driving back to Baltimore over the Bay Bridge on Thursday:

• Curiosity & Discoveries

Neither really, but a funny surprise: Anderson Cooper sat diagonal from me (facing me across the aisle) on the train from Baltimore to NYC on Friday!

Also, this sign in Rehoboth. Women’s bathing suits made it difficult to leave the surf without help. Huh.

• Creating

To quote almost every home buyer on House Hunters, my friends, sister, and I created (more) memories this week! 😜

All of us worked on the 500-piece Dolles jigsaw puzzle and completed it in from Tuesday to Wed. morning.

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

Human: No work outs and only one short meditation session (15 mins) this week. It was a true vacation from my routine. I did walk a lot, more than 9,000 steps on six days, more than 16,000 steps on four days, more than 21,000 steps on three days, and a high step-count day on Wed. of 33,555. And I biked with my sister and my friends on Monday, between rain showers and before the winds got too bad.

I savoured every moment with my friends and my sister at the beach, walking and riding bikes on the boardwalk, town roads, the beach, and wooded and marshy trails, listening to the sounds of the ocean and shorebirds, listening to the wind roaring and howling, sharing good food together, having interesting and connecting conversations and discussions in various permutations, working on a beachy jigsaw puzzle, and just having fun. I got wet and windblown all week and I enjoyed it. (I would have enjoyed sun, mild breezes, and more warmth too but we can’t have everything.)

Once home, I treadmilled both Saturday and Sunday, 50 mins and 3 miles on Sat. and 1 hour 7 mins and 4 miles on Sunday.

Cat: My husband took care of the cat while I was away and all was well. He (the cat) has continued to use to guest bath litter box, eschewing the litter box that he’s used 99.99% of the time that he’s lived here (almost 9 yrs). I cleaned his other (primary bath) litter box and switched the two on Saturday and so far he’s remained loyal to the new guest bath box, though it’s now actually the freshly cleaned primary bath box.

Cars: A friend (ED) took my husband to pick up the BMW on Tuesday after it had its A/C and other bits and bobs replaced at a local shop.

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I didn’t do any cleaning at home this week, being absent most of the week, though I did do a small load of laundry at the beach cottage on Tues. and shared the planning, cleaning, and packing/unpacking while on our trip. My husband, at home with the cat, ran a load of clothes laundry, made a trip to the dump (scoring a few plastic hangers from the swap shop), and vacuumed the kitchen and bedroom floors while I was away. We also had the chimney sweep come on Thursday to check and clean the woodstove flue before we start having fires again this year.

Food: I had breakfast with my sister at her hotel Mon-Wed. (small buffet – I mostly had oatmeal, a few tater tots, and fruit each day, and also a small omelet one day). Monday I had lunch outside at Obie’s by the Sea (it’s on the boardwalk) with my friends & sister (crabcakes, fries, corn salad) and dinner with them at Salt Air , which we unfortunately realised afterward is part of the Atlas restaurant group, so not a true local spot, though it was delicious, fun, with a good menu and attentive service (I had crab cake, grilled asparagus, shared grilled artichokes and crab deviled eggs, plus a Dressed to Empress cocktail).

Tuesday I had (second) breakfast with my friend RVN at the Robin Hood restaurant, a longtime diner in Rehoboth (oatmeal with nuts and raisins for me; eggs with toast, home fries, and scrapple for her) and we all ate lunch-dinner at Henlopen City Oyster House, a favourite of all of ours for decades (hot peel & eat Old Bay shrimp, shishito peppers, shared tomato fritters, and Oyster House punch for me; lots of raw oysters, a clam chowder, and other things for everyone else).

Wednesday my sister checked out after breakfast to get a few days at home before heading back to work. My friends and I had lunch at Obie’s again, but inside because the winds were a-gustin’ (we shared hushpuppies, and I think I had crabcakes again; reminder to self that their Sober Sips Grapefruit Seltzer drink with agave and salt was refreshingly delicious) and dinner at Chesapeake & Maine, a Dogfish Head restaurant (I loved the grilled swordfish, the special that night, served with corn purée, fennel salad, roasted squash, and apple gastrique, with a side of delicious green beans, and my drink was the Salt & Pepper Cup, made with Dogfish Head whole leaf gin, fresh lime juice, and cucumber simple syrup, and yes, salt & pepper).

Thursday we stopped on our drive home at one of my friends’ favourites, Po’Boys Creole restaurant in Milton, DE (I had bayou shrimp, which was an appetizer ($13) because I wasn’t very hungry, and possibly the best crispy Brussels sprouts I’ve ever had anywhere ($5!), and I got three beignets to go! ($2!); the unsweet iced tea was also good, not a given when eating out); my friend RVN had the Zydeco Plate, which was a cup of gumbo that looked perfect, crawfish etouffee, and red beans & rice, and ChN had, I think, the Zydeco Po’Boy with crawfish, shrimp, and oysters + gumbo).

For dinner we were back in Baltimore, where we spent a nice long time (past 10 p.m.) at Tapas Teatro with one of my friends’ kids whom I adore (not really a kid, they’re just about 35, but I’ve known them since before they were born). It was tapas and I can’t remember all the things but one was shishito peppers and I got a hot one! Also papas cambray, gambas al ajillo, miticrema (I think?, which is sheep’s-milk cheese on crostini with Pajarero fig and a sherry reduction), and others also had boquerones (white anchovies), berenjena asada (roasted eggplant with minted yogurt), and pollo a la brasa (grilled chicken with cumin aioli). My drink was a negroni.

On Friday I had breakfast (shrimp & grits; I removed the bacon) and lunch (cheese and fruit plate) on the train.

I was home on Fri. night, Sat., and Sun. and we had takeout Chinese all those nights (scallion pancakes and shrimp lo mein, with sautéed broccoli one night, and our cukes and humus).

While I was away, my husband made a peach pie (from friend LD’s trees) to take to friends (ND&SS) with whom he had dinner on Tuesday night.

Supplies: I bought a bar of the Wavertree & London sicilian orange soap I like from Browseabout, a fun and friendly local bookstore in Rehoboth with lots of staff recommendations. I also bought a jigsaw puzzle and some postcards there; I looked for a Shakespeare play, on my friends’ behalf, but there was no Shakespeare to be found! I stocked up on dark greeting cards at another bookstore, Biblion, in Lewes, DE, on our way home. I ordered some elderberry syrup gummies from Maine Medicinals during their 20%-off sale on Sunday.

• Garden

Since I was away from Mon-Fri. and we got lots of rain Sat. and Sun., not much gardening occurred. My husband mowed and string trimmed on Friday. He finished the repair of the rotted sunroom door frame this week. This weekend I spent 1.25 hours in the garden, harvesting (see below) and checking on things.

a few garden pics

• Sleeping & Dreaming

While away, the high winds that blew incessantly all week at Rehoboth Beach shook the window frame and heavy shade right behind my bed, intermittently, varying the loudness of the clanging, waking me up throughout the night last Sat. & Sunday before I figured out how to stifle it (my friends had the same issue in their bedroom and we each came up with entirely different ways of effectively dealing it), and consequently my sleep score on Monday morning, a 76, reflects my wakefulness. Sleep scores of 80 and 83 on other nights are mainly due to “insufficient” sleep hours, per my app’s unsolicited assessment, each night about 5 hours 50 mins, because I set an alarm (something I rarely do) to wake up in time to walk the boardwalk or beach — both rather challenging in the rain and wind — with my morning-person sister and have breakfast together. I caught up on sleep on Friday in Baltimore at my friends’ and on the two nights after I returned home; I managed 7 hours of sleep and was awarded a 95 score in Baltimore for Thursday night, and I slept about 8.5 hours each night at home, which in the unsought opinion of my app is “excessive,” docking my score to an 85 for both of those nights.

Anyway, overall I slept an average of 6.9 hours per night this week, for a (Samsung Fit 3) average sleep score of 85.3. REM sleep accounted for 13 hours 54 mins and deep sleep for 8 hours 2 mins. I had so many vivid dreams this week, some of which are still floating around in my head.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOK: I didn’t finished any books this week. I brought a couple of my friends’ books to the beach but never opened them. I have a book I need to read in its entirely by Thursday at noon for a bookgroup but it was too bulky and heavy to pack. 😱

OTHER:

A couple of essays I liked this week:

Bare Ruin’d Choirs: On tinnitus, John Cage, and the impossibility of silence by Jonathan Gourlay in his Desire Paths newsletter.

Al fresco: Eating outdoors, Montana-style by Rosecrans Baldwin in Meditations in an Emergency.

Watching

While at the beach my friends and I watched the documentary about/with Martin Short on Netflix, Marty, Life is Short. I’ve been wanting to see it for months and was not disappointed — it’s lovely. My friends were skeptical and were entirely won over by it. We also re-watched the last episode of season 5 of Only Murders in the Building, to ready ourselves for the new season which hopefully will air in December (?).

Listening

some songs heard this week, including at Po’Boys and on our drive to Baltimore listening to WTMD, a non-commercial radio station out of Baltimore

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Listed under “Food” are all the local places I ate while away. I shopped at two local independent bookstores in Rehoboth and Lewes, rented bikes for my sister and me for the day on Monday from a local bike rental place, and my husband & I got takeout Chinese food from a local place here in town on Friday evening. My husband volunteered at the local museum for 8 hours this week. We paid a heap of money to the local car repair place on Tuesday.

Relationships: Being with my college friends and sister for the week was relaxing, fun, stimulating, calming, and cheering. It was great to spend time with one of their kids on Thurs. evening too. Those connections are so important for me. While I was away, friends gave my husband a ride to get the car (ED) and invited him over for dinner (ND). He also chatted with a neighbour (SF) for about 10 mins while they were both outside.

• Endings/Harvest

Endings: Well, the week at the beach came to an end and I’m already thinking of a. next year at the beach with them, hopefully; and b. my next beach trip (Maine? coast NH? the Cape? Jekyll?) before then; c. my next train trip before then; and d. the next time I’ll see them and my sister before then.

Also, summer came to an official end this week on Tuesday evening, and it feels like it. 😔

Harvest: Two Amish paste tomatoes; 1 pear tomato (from the sprawling strapping plant the compost grew); 1 large yellow tomato that appeared, with a few others, on a sweet millions plant; 9 sweet millions; 3 Matt’s wild cherry; and 3 sungold tomatoes; and a small arugula harvest.

• All This Useless Beauty

So much beauty this week: the waves and surf at the beach, the constant rearranging of the shoreline, the howling of the wind and the endless variations of grey sky; the birds in flight, calling, and sheltering in multitudes against the wind; the faces, voices, and hugs of people I love; the cheerful flowers in our cottage and the flowering plants in town; some lovely food, some happy music; the perfect size, layout, and location of our beach cottage (this is our third year there, I think); the colours of the marsh; time spent with my friends’ youngest; fields, cities, and shore passing by outside the train all day long on Friday; my person and my cat waiting for me when I returned; surprise and wonder at every turn, along with familiar favourite places and people. I’m still appreciating it all.

Monday afternoon beach – peak beauty

Bumble at 10:25 on the night I returned home around 7:30. I seem to be forgiven for my absence (so far).