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

Warmish this week. Average high temperature was 79.5°F, with a range from 87.1°F to 74.3°F, and average low temp was 53.5°F, with a range from 45.3°F to 61.2°F. We had rain on Tuesday, .41 inches. It was quite lovely.

• Beginnings

Saw my first two swallowtail butterflies of the year this week (not in our yard). Saw my first snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis) of the year while weeding on Wednesday. I disturbed it, but after it rested a while it flew off. I also saw my first American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) of the year during the same weeding session, another unintentional disturbance.

We grilled out for the first time this year on Thursday evening, swordfish. Over the weekend, my husband power washed the patio furniture and set it out on the patio.

I changed the bed comforter on Wednesday from the purple winter one (that we’ve had for decades) to a lighter weight seafoam one I’d bought a few months back from The Company Store.

• Wild Flora, Fauna, Fungi

I watched a sleek brownish mole zip out of the base of a miscanthus grass when I went to remove the old grass stalks on Saturday! I checked around for young or a nest but didn’t find any, and I think any nest would be underground anyway. Still, I’m leaving the grass alone for a while.

The wild things photos this time are scattered around this post depending on where they were seen. But here are some birds Merlin heard in the garden on Sunday, at noon and six p.m.:

• Wandering 

As mentioned last week, we took a trip from Sunday to Tuesday to the coast of southern Maine with a stop both ways at Bedrock Gardens in Lee, NH. I covered Sunday in last week’s post.

On Monday, we spent the morning at Laudholm Farm (and Beach) in Wells, had lunch outside at Mornings in Paris, spent an hour at Parson’s Beach (private), then went back to Laudholm to walk on wooded and meadowed trails for the rest of the afternoon before dinner on the (mostly) enclosed deck at The Boathouse in Kennebunkport, with a short walk around town after that.

Laudholm Farm in Wells, ME

Some birds at Laudholm … though possibly several of these 25 or so species are actually the northern mockingbird, which was very vocal near the parking lot. It’s funny that Merlin IDs a mockingbird but then also IDs what I think are mockingbird mimicry as other birds. Like, what song is it using to ID the mockingbird? We did see quite a few of these birds, like the towhee, most of the warblers, nuthatch, robins, geese and terns, goldfinches, red-winged blackbird, and others not heard by Merlin (like the bluebirds, cedar waxwings, brown thrasher, et al.), but I have my doubts about the killdeer, cowbird, purple martin, and others.

Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk, ME

A few birds at Parson’s at 12:30pm; there were also herring gulls and piping plovers here:

Kennebunkport

Before heading home on Tuesday, we walked around St. Anthony’s Franciscan Friary in Kennebunk (had hoped to go into the church, which has very unusual architecture and decor, but there was a funeral being held then), had a late breakfast outside at Mornings in Paris, and then spent two rather warm hours (87°F!) at Bedrock Gardens again before finishing our trip.

St. Anthony’s Franciscan Friary

Some birds at St Anthony’s around 9 a.m.; I’ve never heard or seen a Wilson’s warbler before so can’t vouch for it. We also saw/heard mallards, cormorants, and probably others.

Bedrock Gardens (reprise, Tuesday visit)

Some birds at Bedrock Gardens this Tuesday around 1 p.m.; someone at iNaturalist thinks we also saw blackpoll warblers, based on some bad photos.

Once home, we walked in town on Tues. evening, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evening, and at the bog on Sunday, and I walked with a friend in Newbury, by Lake Sunapee, on Thursday, on a road with scads of jack-in-the-Pulpits alongside it.

Bog

A few birds at the bog at 1-ish on Sunday:

Newbury Walk

Around Town

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I’d never seen, to my knowledge, a great spangled fritillary caterpillar before this week! It was on the edge of the patio, which has lots of violets in and around it, and I understand violets are their only host plant.

• Creating

At the request of a friend, I created a shared digital photo album this week of flower images taken during May and June at the local bog, using photos I’ve taken over that last 13 years. She’s going to use it to help another friend identify what she sees (or has seen) there this spring. It was fun.

• Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard) 

Body/Mind: Only one workout (1 hour) for me this week, on Friday, between being away, catching up from being away, and gardening. But I walked more than 12,000 steps every day, and more than 15,000 steps on four days, including 25,546 steps on Monday. Took a Covid test (negative) on Friday before Salon group met since we’d been away and had eaten inside once. Participated in Dharma Sunday this week, an interview with Zen Buddhist Konrad Ryushin Marchaj about meditation, plant medicine, and the body.

Financial: I called the dermatologist to pay a bill on Wednesday (they don’t do online). I renewed my online subscription to The Atlantic on Sunday for a year.

Supplies: Received a small Amazon Subscribe & Save delivery on Wednesday.

• Gardening/Yard 

Husband mowed the lawn, 2nd time this year, on Sunday. He worked on the second rain barrel and the rain gutter it uses on Thursday. As mentioned above, he also cleaned the patio furniture. I weeded, pruned, cleaned up, and raked for 3 hours on Wednesday, for an hour on Friday evening (including replanting calendula seeds), and for 3 hours on Saturday, including planting cilantro seeds, one parsley seedling, and six kale seedlings.

Garden photos:

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry and sheets laundry on Wednesday. On Sunday, I spent almost an hour cleaning the master bath shower niche and floor tiles. My husband took in two pairs of my pants and sewed up the slits on a summer shirt I’d bought from eBay over the winter.

Food: We ate out on Monday (shrimp tacos for me, lobster roll for my husband, and roasted Brussels sprouts for us both) in Maine. Good ole veggie burgers on arugula with mac & cheese and steamed asparagus on arriving home Tuesday. Wednesday we ate out on the patio of a local spot here in town (garlic-Parm fries and a rocket salad for me, fish & chips for him). Thursday we grilled swordfish outside + leftover fries and asparagus.

Friday was leftovers for my husband and tuna salad on arugula for me. We grilled hot dogs (beef or soy) on the grill on Sat., with corn and more leftover fries. Sunday, we had grilled hot dogs again, plus a salad of arugula, baby kale, green olives, carrots, red bell peppers, red onion, black beans, and leftover cooked corn. My husband made sourdough pancakes for breakfast that day.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

This week I managed an average of 7 hours and 17 minutes of sleep, with an average FitBit sleep score of 82.4. I’m having trouble staying asleep beyond 7 or 8 in the morning, between the sunlight, the birdsong, and, least of these, the cat. And I really can’t fall asleep before midnight-ish. I did have some wild dreams but didn’t record them.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

I finished reading End of Story: A Novel (2024) by A. J. Finn this week. It’s a slow-paced story about what happens when Nicky Hunter, a young woman and crime fiction buff, is invited to the San Francisco home of crime fiction novelist Sebastian Trapp, whose wife and son disappeared 20 yrs ago, to write a biography of sorts about him. I enjoyed it.

I appreciated reading Dr. Jeremy Faust’s “I finally got Covid. Here’s what I’m doing” in his Inside Medicine newsletter his week. He’s an ER doctor and this was his first Covid infection. (Requires a paid subscription to read.)

I liked this little poem:

This struck a chord (found in a newsletter I read but I can’t recall which one):

• Connections &  Community 

Local Support: While away, we ate at local independent restaurants for dinner and at Mornings in Paris for breakfast/lunch in Kennebunk twice. At home, bought items at a local bakery/café on Wed. and picked up a Too Good To Go bag from them on Thursday. We got dinner outside on the patio at a local restaurant on Wednesday evening.

On Saturday we picked up seedlings I’d ordered previously — 3 tomatoes, 2 jalapeño peppers, a zinnia, 5 nasturtiums, 2 cucumbers, plus a parsley, 6 kale, and a wild indigo (perennial) I added on impulse — from a small independent grower, Ayn Whytemare’s Foundwell Farm, near Concord NH; I’ve known her for 10 years and always buy veggie and annual seedlings from her.

Relationships: Gave a gift on Tuesday to my nephew who graduated from high school. Thursday, we didn’t have permaculture group, but I visited a friend for three hours for a light lunch (and ice cream!) and a nice long walk by the lake. Friday we met for Salon from 12-2 in a friend’s screenhouse on a perfectly lovely day; all six of us locals were there in person, plus one from Portland, OR via Zoom. It was fun seeing Ayn again (and her mellow dog) at Foundwell Farm on Saturday when we picked up the seedlings she’d grown.

Donations: Donated to the Alzheimers Assoc. in honour of my cousin’s birthday on Monday.

• Endings 

A friend, my boss when I worked in development for 5 or 6 years, died on Saturday. Robin Garland Bair (7/27/62 – 5/25/24) was a good friend and a very good boss — fair, a receptive and patient listener, took responsibility as well as initiative, understood my strengths and weaknesses and worked with them effectively — and she was unfailingly kind, a rare trait. One of the conversations I remember most occurred over lunch after I’d resigned (retired, early) and she was curious what I was doing with my time and how my sense of identity changed without paid work to define it (mine didn’t change, but she knew hers likely would). Though I had only followed her on Facebook in recent decades and then on CaringBridge for the last couple of years, this hits hard. Her obituary is here.

• All This Useless Beauty

Did you look at that spathe (pulpit) and spadix (jack) of the Jack in the Pulpit, up above?

The smell of lilacs is so heady.

This cat.

This gorgeous dead lobster on the beach at Laudholm in Wells, Maine. Those colours, those intricacies.