A Moveable Garden

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.) Click photos for larger view.

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• Weather

We had our first hard frost and our first freeze this week, on Sat./Sunday, with Saturday night’s low reaching 28°F and Sunday morning’s low of 26.1°F, with a dew point of 20°F. Prior to this, my coleus and Mexican sunflowers were mostly unscathed by the weather but by Sunday morning not only were they dead dead dead but also lots of perennials had shriveled up, turned brown, deliquesced, and otherwise said sayonara to life above ground for the duration.

We had brought and are bringing all the annuals in containers (hanging baskets, begonias, Firecracker cuphea) into the garage at night whenever the forecasted low is below 40°F, along with the mum and perennial aster (in containers) and the pumpkin, to keep them from getting damaged.

We could leave the latter three out but they would suffer some injury from the cold, or so I’ve read; until this year, I’ve always left the “fall annuals” and gourds out, no matter the predicted low.

• Beginnings/Firsts

The monarch we brought inside overnight on Sunday flew off between 10:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Monday (when the temp was over 60°F and it was sunny). May it fare well.

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

Merlin heard birds in the yard from Mon-Friday

Wandering

I walked every day, in town from Mon-Fri and at the bog on both Sat. and Sun. (and in town on Sun. too). My husband took his little British car for a ride on Wed. and went fishing. I went with a friend to a nearby town for breakfast/lunch and to visit an art studio on Sat. Otherwise we stayed close to home.

in town

bog

• Curiosity & Discoveries

It’s funny to me how often I see abandoned goldfish crackers on pathways all over town, along roads and in woods and wetlands. These were seen on Sunday on a boardwalk at the bog.

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I guess earwigs like to chomp on old monarch butterfly chrysalises?

• Creating

Still thinking about November project.

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

Humans: I worked out using the Body Electric streaming programs four days (4 hours) this week. I walked more than 11,000 steps on six days and more than 14,000 steps on five days. We ping-ponged on five evenings, totalling 1.5 hours. No formal meditating.

Cat: Appt. made for his annual vet visit + nail trim next week. My husband and I took photos of him from our respective positions on the sofa one evening:

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did two loads of clothes laundry (Monday and Friday) and towel laundry on Thursday. I vacuumed the kitchen and watered the houseplants on Wednesday.

Financial/Admin: Updated the checkbook this week.

Supplies: I ordered Taylor Christmas Spice tea and Dandies vegan marshmallows this week. My seed garlic from Filaree Farm arrived this week!

Food: My husband made applesauce on Friday (from friend LD’s apples, which were languishing) and he made two loaves of honey wheat bread on Saturday. We ate out for lunch on Monday and I ate lunch out with a friend on both Wed. and Sat. Dinners were leftover roasted veggies with egg noodles and Old Bay shrimp on Monday; potato-herb risotto (Martha Stewart recipe; using our parsley, rosemary, and thyme) on Tuesday with raw veg (including our last cucumber) and humus; same on Wed. but with sautéed local summer squash, onion, green pepper, and local green beans; Thursday I made celery-zucchini-white bean soup which we had with ciabatta (bought); soup again on Friday, with leftover sautéed veg; I made corn-pepper-shrimp risotto on Saturday, which we ate with homemade wheat bread and air-fryer Brussels sprouts my husband made; and Sunday was the same risotto but with sautéed local spinach.

• Garden

I spent about 4 hours in the garden this week, half of it planting garlic (prepping the beds, aargh) and the rest harvesting herbs and tomatoes, bringing in patio furniture, spreading six wheelbarrow loads of wood chips as edging/mulch, and taking pics. My husband drained the two rain barrels, drained the hoses, disposed of a weed/cuttings pile, and got the heated birdbath sorted (some wood rotting, so he flipped that part over).

garlic planting

other garden pics this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

The vivid dreams never stop! Without realising it until afterward, I dreamed about our bulldogs C&P on the night of P’s birth (in 1989). The next night I dreamed about some of my family, including a nephew (who told us of buying pleats and other housewares) and one of my sister’s dogs (who was avidly licking sunscreen from my skin). My (Samsung Fit 3) sleep scores were all “excellent” (85-94) except one 77, averaging overall 87.6. I slept an average of 7 hours 45 mins per night, with 14 hours 22 mins of REM this week and 9 hours of deep sleep.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading

BOOKS: I finished two books this week, both fiction: When She Was Ours (2026) by Anna Nordberg and The Palm House (2026) by Gwendoline Riley. I enjoyed both.

When She Was Ours, a bit of a coming of age story, is set mostly in the NYC area in 1995 and 1996, continuing through to 2002, with short chapters that bounce a bit in time. This novel is a sweetheart, and I mean that in the best way. It’s not sentimental, in fact it eschews sentimentality as it honours the good, the ambivalent, the flawed, the regretful, the effortful parts of its characters, primarily Thea, a cardiologist who’s dying, Astra, her youngest daughter, soon heading off to college, and Nick, a long-time family friend, the son of Thea’s good friend Penny. Astra tries so hard to be a good and dutiful girl, her mother’s clear vision for right and wrong her northstar – though sometimes an icy star, without her mother’s experience and self-compassion. She can’t forgive herself or others easily, if at all, but through time she grows, learns, leans on those who wisely and thoughtfully support her (her father, older sister, and friends), and becomes better able to discern her own path. The nuanced psychology of the relationships and the careful but not too careful wording of the dialogue are superb.

The Palm House is told from the point of view of Laura Miller, a part-time journalist, 40ish and single, living in London. We meet her now, in conversation with her long-time friend Edmund Putnam, also a journalist, also in his 40s, who is retiring from his position as deputy editor at a magazine after 25 years; and then in following sections we learn more about Laura’s life from childhood with her mother and grandmother, through teenage years in thrall to a 29-year-old dissolute comedian, and into adulthood, her relationships with men, with her mother, with Putnam. Basically, it’s a sharply perceived and tightly controlled observation of how one person’s life evolves, gets stirred up, coalesces, and rejiggers, dotted in memory with sporadic occurrences, things people have said, how something began or ended, decisions made or not. At one point she describes a boyfriend as passive, and there is a certain passive quality to the novel, a sense of time carrying Laura down a stream where she is momentarily snagged before being released to flow on. Nothing particularly remarkable happens. People have feelings yet a glaze of numbness overlays their described experience. I especially enjoyed her conversations with her mother.

OTHER

What the heck. “Why Men Are Risking Their Vision for ‘Hunter Eyes’”: A narrow, angled eye shape (think Robert Pattinson) has become a gold standard in some online communities. Some plastic surgeons are charging up to $40,000 for the “very dangerous” procedure,” by Charlie Sosnick at GQ. And some men are DIY’ing it!

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Watching

This week we mostly (re) watched the Poirot “The Hallowe’en Party” (2010, with the always-welcome character Ariadne Oliver) and the Agatha Christie adaptation “Ordeal by Innocence” (2018, starring Bill Nighy), packed with insufferable, cold, and psychologically damaged characters.

Listening

A favourite song, so sweetly performed: René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War (Live from Copenhagen, 2018), performed by Paul Simon with a chamber ensemble.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered (for the last time this year) for a local museum for three hours this week. He and I ate outside at a local restaurant for late lunch on Monday. A friend and I visited a local art gallery and had lunch together afterward at a local bakery/café on Wednesday. The same friend and I had breakfast/lunch at a localish farmstand/café, followed by a visit to an art studio, on Saturday. I shopped at that farmstand and at another local farmstand this week, buying Brussels sprouts (twice), 6 or more pears/Asian pears, one apple, three parsnips, beets, shallots, and three Yukon Gold potatoes.

Relationships: As mentioned, a friend (RL) and I had breakfast/lunch at two different cafés together twice this week and visited two different art shows. Salon met on Friday with 5 of us for 2-1/4 hours (I brought a friend some garlic cloves to plant and I came home with some useful garden supports and a bread book from our host). I did a homemade painted jigsaw puzzle this week, which was given to me by friend RL months ago. Chatted with friends I ran into in various places this week (LM, L&T, SL, BT&SS, et al.) and met some new folks (JW, MW, WC) at the Saturday art show. In the last couple of months my sisters have taken to sharing Instagram reels/posts a few times per week and I enjoy it.

• Endings/Harvest

Harvest: About 75 small tomatoes (sweet millions, Matt’s wild cherry, sungold), 4 Amish paste tomatoes, 2 large yellow tomatoes, bunches of thyme and parsley, stems of rosemary, and I brought one of the two rosemary plants in to overwinter. We also foraged lots of big red raspberries and a quince fruit.

Endings: My husband volunteered his last hours for the local museum this week, until it re-opens next spring.

• All This Useless Beauty

I love this bog shot

Japanese painted fern and yellowing hosta foliage

tulip poplar in its autumnal grandeur

a serious guy (who doesn’t like his photo taken)

the movement of the sun & air through the bathroom blinds in the morning is sometimes mesmerising (20-sec video)