A Moveable Garden

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

• Weather

This was a cold spring week here in New Hampshire, with high temperatures ranging from 42.8°F to 26.2°F, averaging 35.8°F, and lows ranging from 19.9°F to 32.5°F, averaging 27.4°F.

We went to the NH seacoast from Tuesday through Thursday and it was just about as cold there, plus a stiff (20-30 mph) wind. We also received some light wintry mix here on Monday, 2 inches of wet snow on Tuesday, and 5 inches of more wet snow on Saturday. I don’t see myself planting peas on 21 April as would be traditional here (Patriots Day/Boston Marathon Day) but we’ll see what transpires and how cold the soil is then.

This was Tuesday morning, when we left for the coast:

And this was Saturday:

• Beginnings/Firsts

We took our first trip to the seacoast this year! Hope to go again soon. Saw our first of several species of birds this year, including greater yellowlegs, great blue heron, snowy egrets, killdeer, mockingbird, various gulls and ducks, and so on.

We visited the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord NH for the first time ever on Friday.

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

Some birds heard at the beach and motel in Rye, NH on Wednesday:

• Wandering 

Wandered to Hampton/Rye/Portsmouth NH and Salisbury MA from Tues-Thurs, and to Concord NH on Friday. Took walks on Monday, Tuesday, Wed. (a four-hour walk around Odiorne Point State Park in Rye NH), and Thursday.

I’ll do a bigger post on the seacoast trip but here are a few pics from that:

and some from running errands and visiting the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord NH:

• Curiosity & Discoveries

On Friday we made our first ever visit to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (Concord NH). It was OK, a bit shabby and not that professionally displayed, I thought, with quite a few broken exhibits. It is definitely geared toward kids but there is a lot of interesting information and many experiential activities for visitors of all ages packed into the fairly small building. I learned much more about astronaut Alan Shepard than I’d known, as well as about ocean life, NH rocks, what it’s like to live in a small space capsule, etc. My favourite part by far was the infrared imaging, and I had fun reading the posted newspaper front pages that involved space travel but also revealed much about other things (including, largely, the Vietnam War) going on in the 1960s and 1970s.

• Creating

um no

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

Body/Mind: I worked out only 2 times this week, what with our travels, and walked over 8,000 steps on five days, including three days over 13,000, and one day of 16,785 steps. Treadmilled once: 20 minutes, 1.5 miles. I attended Dharma Sunday via Zoom for two hours with Lama Liz Monson leading chanting and meditation and talking about “greening” (invoking the Buddhist archetype Green Tara, and the concept deeply explored by Hildegard of Bingen, viriditas).

Cat: I updated Bumble’s info on Monday for the cat-sitter (DO), who visited him seven times between 5 pm Tuesday and 2 pm Thursday.

• Gardening/Yard 

Snow, snow, snow.

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: Watered houseplants on Monday and did clothes laundry on Friday. Cleaned the shower niche on Sunday. My husband’s key fob wasn’t working consistently with my car so we bought new batteries for it while on vacation.

Financial/Admin: Called Social Security and visited them in person on Friday to get a document scanned, and also returned a shirt to Land’s End via Staples (and bought a ream of paper).

Supplies: My husband stocked up on cereal and coffee on Friday at Market Basket. Ordered and received more cat treats this week.

Food: We had leftovers on Monday, ate out for lunch/dinner at Seaglass, overlooking the Atlantic ocean, in Salisbury MA on Tuesday, had breakfast at The Golden Egg diner in Rye on Wed. and dinner at Atlantic Grill in Rye (using a very generous gift certificate my husband received for his birthday from his brother & sister-in-law). Thursday we had lunch (savory crepes for each) at La Maison Navarre in Portsmouth, a wonderful find. We picked up takeout Indian in Concord on Thursday, which was our dinner that night through Sunday (and beyond).

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Similar to last week, my sleep times varied quite a bit, from 6 hours 44 mins to 9 hours 7 mins per night, but again my average was very much about what it usually is over a week’s span: 7 hours 41 mins. Sleep scores (Fitbit) ranged from 82 to 92 (92 twice, and 90 one night), averaging 86.7 out of 100. REM accounted for 13-1/2 hours and deep sleep for about 8-3/4 hours.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

New Words

I learned some new words during Dharma Sunday this week, including spros bral, a Tibetan phrase meaning, in its simplest sense, simplicity. Lama Liz described it this way: “It means simplicity. But what it actually means is that it’s a spreading out. It’s a spreading out. That the field of simplicity is very vast. And that one just is what one is. And one doesn’t have to work hard to be something else. A kind of very simplistic and non-fabricated way of being in relationship to oneself. So we can just say simplicity.” It’s a spacious and relaxed awareness that’s free from fabrication, mental constructs, and conceptions.

Lama Liz also spoke of viriditas, something Hildegard von Bingen explored quite fully in her lifetime. Here’s what Lama Liz said about it:

“There’s a sense that spring is revealing this kind of deep time awareness of the life force of the planet, which is not different from the life force of our own innermost being. … And what I want to point our attention to this morning is this notion of a green force or energy of life that is carrying us. That is enlivening and awakening and encouraging us. And one of the ways this green force has been described historically is through the notion of what’s called viriditas, derived from the Latin word that means greenness, it’s describing a kind of divine force that brings life and growth and healing to all of creation. It’s referring to the power actually of plants to bring forth, to push forth leaves and flowers and fruit, but it’s analogous to this deeper intrinsic power in beings sentient beings to grow and to heal and to awaken physically and spiritually.

And this term viriditas, it was I don’t know if popularized is exactly the right word, but it was used extensively by an early 12th century mystic, female mystic, Hildegard of Bingen. Maybe some of you have heard of her. Her writings are really quite remarkable. She was the abbess of a Benedictine nunnery And she was also an herbalist and a medicinal plant doctor who became well known for her healing powers. And she used this term viriditas to signify this greening power or from her perspective, the life-giving force of divinity, which with an emphasis on vitality and fecundity and growth in both the physical and the spiritual realms of our being. So viriditas as a concept is capturing this notion of the living light that breathes in all beings and that flows through everything that is alive.

“And so, you know, when we get caught up and dragged down by all of the challenges and the heaviness of what is unfolding in our world, this notion of viriditas can help remind us of this living presence that is breathing in us and through us and that moves us from within. So just in the same way that in spring nature is constantly renewing itself, so too our innermost being has this capacity to blossom. It has this greening power of renewal. And there’s some ways you could say maybe it’s a way of understanding the energy of human flourishing. Or really the flourishing of all beings. And, you know, Hildegard’s concept of viriditas, it’s teaching a kind of holistic understanding of the universe where we’re being asked to recognize how both the inner and the outer worlds are interconnected. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm and vice versa, that there’s really no difference here — when we tune into the way that we are already, coterminous with the universe, then we start to feel that when the energy of life force is moving in the earth also it is moving in us.”

Reading

BOOKS: I finally finished There’s No Turning Back (1938/2025) by Alba de Céspedes, set in Mussolini’s Italy from 1934 to 1936, when a handful of girls from different backgrounds arrive at the Grimaldi, a boarding residence in Rome run by nuns, to study various things and in some cases to escape their previous lives. Over these two years they begin to become adults and make momentous decisions about their futures. It didn’t engage me nearly as much as Forbidden Notebook by the same author. Next up is Orbital (2023) by Samantha Harvey, which won the Booker Prize.

OTHER

Watching

Watching episodes of “Vera” (on BritBox) most nights, and golf (The Masters) on the weekend.

Listening this week

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Bought several items at the local farmstand on Monday. Ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at local spots in Salisbury MA, Rye NH, and Portsmouth NH on our trip, and stayed in a local independent motel. Got takeout from a local Indian restaurant on Thursday. Bought one of my sisters a birthday gift at a local gift shop in Salisbury, MA, on Tuesday. I bought a box of French jasmine green tea from La Maison Navarre in Portsmouth after we ate lunch there Thursday.

Here’s The Golden Egg diner, where we had breakfast on Wed. morning:

At Seaglass in Salisbury MA, we had a front row seat not only to the Atlantic Ocean but to window washing!

Relationships: We walked over on Monday to our friends (N&TD) with the trickle charger on their car (mentioned last week); my husband disconnected it as she took notes and we were given chocolate croissants she’d made. Permaculture was off this week and I skipped Salon on Friday because I wanted to catch up on some things here at home.

• Endings 

I was pleased with the ending of The Masters this weekend, glad Rory won and enters the golf grand slam pantheon. I have to say that whoever handles The Masters’ social media did a fantastic job on Instagram this week, with iconic, beautiful, and relevant focuses and photos, posted continuously and in a superbly organised and thematic way.

This is the cat in a Jim Nantz-induced golf trance Sunday afternoon.

• All This Useless Beauty

these sepia photos on a brick wall in a Portsmouth alley

fanciful shadows made by sunlight through old glass