A Moveable Garden

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

• Weather

Caveat: weather station is encountering electrical interference whose cause we’re investigation but haven’t determined. We had no weather data reported on Wednesday this week, and all rain amounts and high & low temperatures are suspect. I’m working with what I have, but don’t quote me.

We hit a new high for the year this week but by Sunday temps were trending chilly again. The highs ranged from 82°F on Friday to 59.5°F, averaging about 70°F for the week. The lows ranged from 40.8°F to 64°F, averaging 50.9°F. We had at least 1.75 inches of rain this week, including a very heavy inch of rain during one hour on Saturday evening.

We’re not in a drought or abnormally dry at the moment.

• Beginnings/Firsts

Many firsts!

• Bought the two hanging baskets of annuals on Monday, the same as last year’s (“Beachside Drive” by Proven winners), which we hung on the shepherd’s hooks that my husband staked to the ground (those baskets are heavy!). I love the combo, which lasts all season, especially the scaevola: Tropical Sunrise Calibrachoa; Supertunia Honey Petunia; and Whirlwind Pink Fan Flower Scaevola.
• My husband mowed the lawn for the first time this year on Wednesday.
• We went to Bedrock Gardens in Lee, NH on its members’ opening day on Tuesday.
• My husband worked at the car museum on Thursday for the first time this year.
• We spied the first ants in the house on Thursday and my husband set ant traps inside and out. He also got our burn permit for the year from the fire station on Tuesday.

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

The hummingbird pair has been enjoying the Olga Mezitt rhododendron flowers in the garden but the male never sits still.

Peepers (frogs) heard on an evening walk (13-sec video):

• Wandering 

We wandered to Lee, NH to visit Bedrock Gardens on Tuesday — I hope to create a Field Trip post for that visit soon but I’ll insert a few pics here too. I also walked in town twice on Monday, after dinner on Wed., for an hour on Thursday, and took a longer walk on Friday.

in town

Some Merlin heard birds in town:

Bedrock Gardens, Lee NH

Some Merlin heard birds at Bedrock:

• Curiosity & Discoveries

We came across this red eft — the juvenile stage of the eastern newt — on the road near a high curb on Wednesday; my husband moved it to the marshy/woodsy area nearby.

This insect was new to me, seen Monday in my own back lawn. It’s a bumble flower beetle (Euphoria inda). They pollinate flowers and decompose organic matter.

This ad on my Instagram feed is deliciously curious and the shoes cost more than $300. I would love them with crabs.

• Creating

I created a collage this week of photos of my Uncle Tom, who died on Wednesday. I also got back into creating a Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post for this month on Saturday.

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

Body/Mind: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week, strength training and flexibility. I walked more than 9,000 steps every day, more than 12,000 steps on six days, and more than 14,000 steps on three days, including 17,451 steps on Monday. I walked on the treadmill for an hour (4 miles) on Sunday. My skin biopsy report on Thursday was negative, whew. I attended Dharma Sunday on Zoom this week, with Olivia Hoblitzelle leading meditation and talking about “Cultivating Courage and Compassion in a Tumultuous World.”

Cat: The cat was forced to cultivate courage on Friday when he visited the vets for a nail trim.

• Gardening/Yard 

We had rain on Thurs, Sat., and Sun., and we were away on Tuesday, which left not a lot of gardening time among other obligations and meetings. I spent three hours in the garden on Wed., mostly planting the eight small butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) plants I bought at the farmstand a week or two ago, three annual Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia diversifolia) I bought at Bedrock Gardens on Tues. and two of the four white turtleheads of a new variety to me (Chelone glabra ‘Black Ace’ with dark red foliage) that I picked up in Concord on Tuesday from the Merrimack County Conservation District plants sale. I also moved a volunteer dogwood shrub (red twig maybe? or possibly silky or grey? I’m not sure) from the side yard to a (sort of wild) front island. And I tore out some bittersweet and did some weeding.

Not yet planted are the rest of those MCCD plants — two more of the white turtleheads, three marginal wood ferns, five bearberries, two Rose of Sharon starts (gave away three others to friends), and 19 gladiolus bulbs (“First Blood” and “Donatella”).

Also awaiting planting are three native perennials, a cardinal flower with dark leaves (Lobelia cardinalis ‘Black Truffle’), a swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), and a mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum); plus a bunch of annuals — six packs of nasturtiums, zinnias, calendula, gazania, and coleus, as well as larger singles of another coleus, two pinkish scaevola, and a begonia — all from the Grantham Garden Club plant sale on Saturday. Not to mention the little dwarf Juniper ‘Gnom’ that was our living Christmas tree and some hosta, astilbe, and sedge I saw in the lawn that need to find new homes. I gotta get crackin’.

I posted a May Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day piece on Saturday with photos of what’s blooming in the garden. I’ll drop a few here, too.

Merlin heard birds in the yard — 29 species, plus the hummingbirds, who haven’t had a lot to say yet:

The shelling peas are coming along!

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did towel laundry on Monday and clothes laundry on Wednesday. I vacuumed the family room, sitting room, and kitchen after we found some ants in the sitting room on Thursday. My husband set ant traps inside and out on Thursday. I cleaned up and cleared out the plastic cups shelf (half-shelf) in the kitchen on Wednesday. My husband bought and installed new LED lighting to replace our overhead fluorescents (which hummed, annoyingly) in the kitchen, hallway, and laundry room this week; he also put in two dimmer switches for them.

Financial/Admin: I updated our assets info on Sunday.

Supplies: I ordered more Trader Joe’s pine nuts via Amazon on Friday. I want to stock up on 50%-less-salt roasted macadamia nuts from Nuts.com but they’re not available on the website and via email I learned that they are having difficulty getting them.

Food: I just keep making the penne-asparagus-pine nut dish that I LOVE and cannot resist making when there is fresh local asparagus to be had, and there is quite a lot of that asparagus right now, and soon there won’t be. The recipe also uses chives (I increase the called-for amount of 4 tsp to about 2-3 T) and those are steps away from my back door. I’m also adding fresh edamame to it when I can get them, for fiber and protein. We have the penne dish either with corn or with raw carrots and cukes with olive tapenade. One night we grilled hot dogs (beef or soy), with mac & cheese, and raw veggies.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

A rather meh sleep week. Sleep score (per Fibit) averaged only 82.7, and time asleep per night averaged 7 hours 21 mins. REM sleep accounted for 13 hours 12 mins and deep sleep for only 7 hours 13 mins. So many dreams on Wed. and Thursday.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS I finished reading The Eights (2025) by Joanna Miller, historical fiction focusing on the first year of college for four young women who are among the first to matriculate at Oxford (St. Hugh’s College), in 1920. Like everyone else, the women have just been through the first world war — performing difficult nursing, transportation, and administrative jobs related to the war effort, losing family members and others close to them — which has left them with scars, losses, and secrets that only add to the challenges of being the first women at Oxford, where many men disparage and heckle them, and where they must abide by very strict rules concerning their dress, their conduct, their schedules, and of course their studies. The women — Otto, Dora, Marianne, and Beatrice — are housed together and quickly become close friends though they come from different stations in life. Well-written, with lots of historical detail about an era that was vibrant, chaotic, and ultimately hopeful.

Now I’m in the middle of Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922) and finding it rather tough going. What is it about short stories? I’ve liked a few, skipped one entirely, got very confused reading another one, and in all am just barely finding it satisfying enough to continue. I keep thinking Anita Brookner and Barbara Pym did it better (in novels).

OK, but this bit was amusing, in the story “Bliss” —

A fried-fish interior decorating scheme!

OTHER

maybe handy chart

The early insects in our yard have been all over the dandelions.

I liked this essay, “Crip Climates Cultivating Wildness” by Gayla Trail, posted in the Radicle newsletter, which includes these thoughts: “As the garden taught me to relinquish control, respect wildness, and find my place in what poet Mary Oliver called, “the family of things,” I have unlearned my conditioning so I can be in right relationship with myself as a wild, untamed body. In illness, the garden is showing me how to inhabit and survive in a body that is unpredictable and often teetering on the edge of vulnerability in a world that relies on predictability and abhors perceived weakness. Bodies like mine have something to teach all of us about how to create a more resilient, untamed, and relational human world so that we might survive and perhaps even turn the tide on the increasingly erratic and unpredictable road ahead as climate collapse accelerates.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this poem before but why not post it again?

Watching

Still watching “Vera,” up to season 10 now. Also threw in two “I Love Lucy”s, both from when the Ricardos and the Mertzes visit Hollywood/Palm Springs CA, which I love. These were aired almost 70 years ago!

Listening

Shazam’d this week:

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Bought hanging baskets, cookies, crackers, and veggies at the farmstand in visits on Monday and Thursday. Shopped at the local co-op on Thursday. I bought a pink Talbots linen jacket at the local consignment store on Friday. My husband and I had lunch at a local restaurant in Epping, NH, on Tuesday. Ordered flowers for my cousin’s birthday from a wonderful local florist in Maryland on Thursday. My husband volunteered at the local car museum on Thursday for three or four hours, getting it ready for the season.

Relationships: Sent my cousin (BG) sympathy and birthday cards and ordered flowers for her this week (my uncle was her father, and her birthday is next week). Quite a bit of family texting following my uncle’s death. Friends (RL, ED) came over on Wed. and Friday to pick up extra Rose of Sharon starts I had. I hosted the permaculture meeting on Zoom this week, with seven of us talking about the chapter on sound in Ed Yong’s An Immense World. Salon met with five of us in a friend’s lovely gazebo on Friday, when it was warm. Ran into our catsitter walking dogs while we were on a walk on Monday and chatted a bit. A friend in Florida (CW) emailed after her defibrillator surgery on Monday. Another friend (MAB) sent a nice email on Thursday, and another (KKT) a catch-up email on Sunday. A neighbour (LP) from decades ago in Maine (now living in Nova Scotia) sent me a FB message around 11:15 Wed. night and we wrote back and forth for a half-hour, catching up.

Donations: I made a donation to iNaturalist on Monday.

• Endings/Harvests 

My Uncle Tom, recently widowed spouse of my mother’s only sister, died on Wednesday. May he rest in peace and love.

My friend’s (CW’s) dog Walker died this week. He had a good life with her at the beach.

I harvested more chives this week from the garden for a few more batches of that penne-asparagus-pine nut dish.

• All This Useless Beauty

These is something beautiful about having a crop of chives (just starting to bloom those densely-formed purple flowers) right at hand.

magical marsh

this parrot tulip with raindrops — can you feel it?