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

Nice warm week. Average high temperature was 77.6°F, with a range from 87.8°F to 62.2°F. Lows averaged 58.1°F, ranging from 50.4°F to 64.9°F. We had about 1.25 inches of rain between Tues., Wed., and Sunday. No rain fell on Saturday for the first time in several months! Really windy on Friday. More heat forecast for early next week.

• Beginnings/Firsts

First garlic scape appeared this week (photo in garden section).

My husband saw the first monarch butterfly in the yard on Sat.; I haven’t seen one yet. I saw the first black swallowtail caterpillar on parsley in the veg garden on Saturday, and I saw a black swallowtail butterfly flitting around some parsley (or other carrot-family plants) on the patio this week; I think it was laying eggs.

The first day of summer arrived on Friday at 10 p.m. Now the days become shorter again.

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

Finally, I saw this in the garden and did a double-take; it’s forget-me-not flowers popping up into the center of a Pink Pewter lamium (dead nettle). The combo makes for a pretty flower, doesn’t it?

• Wandering 

I walked in town on Mon., Tues., Wed., and Thurs. and we walked at the bog (and I walked another couple of miles more) on Friday, around the lake on Sat., and at The Fells on Sunday.

in town

bog

lake

The Fells

also at The Fells, the loons on Lake Sunapee — you can see how far away we are in the first photo, and the second is the male flapping wings after bringing food to the female on the nest.

• Curiosity & Discoveries

On Tuesday evening I watched a lovely Zoom presentation (actually, hybrid, with live audience in Maine) with Shawn Carey about birding in Iceland, particularly on the small islands of Grimsey (the northernmost inhabited — 61 people — island of Iceland, part of the Arctic Circle) and Flatey. He also talks quite a bit about photographing birds — the equipment, the camera settings, how to compose a shot, how he catches these birds in poses he’s hoping for, etc. You can watch the video here if you want to be transported to isolated Iceland islands full of mostly seabirds, learn about birding photography, and see gorgeous bird and landscape photos. A few pics to give you a sense of it (all photos © Shawn Carey):

Not really a discovery but more a rediscovery when we stumbled on these showy lady’s slippers at The Fells this week. I sort of remembered they were there but we weren’t looking for them.

• Creating

I’ve been creating a little more time for reading and relaxing in the late afternoons and again in the evenings after dinner in the sunroom, but at the expense of working on projects like this and field trip posts, which are where most of my creativity shows up in recent years. Below, my sunroom companion feeling the heat this week.

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

Body/Mind: I worked out three times (3 hours) this week and walked over 10,000 steps on six days, including five days over 12,000 steps, three days over 14,000 steps, and two days over 15,000 steps. I had a negative Covid test on Tuesday (before poetry group with my friends in their 70s, 80s, and 90s).

• Gardening/Yard 

I spent over 8 hours gardening this week, some time every day but one. That included weeding; watering veg and new/container plants; pulling bittersweet, Virginia creeper, glossy buckthorn, and multiflora rose from part of the wild strip behind the backyard (found yet another Jack in the Pulpit and a false Solomon’s seal back there); planting three large pink/red zinnias; pulling out the spent forget-me-nots and a few self-seeding inula to create a way to walk into the shade garden; and fertilizing (using Neptune’s Harvest) a couple of the tomato plants that were a bit yellow or wilty.

My husband collected the piles of brush I made and took them to the brush dump after drying them on the driveway for days. He also mowed the lawn on Monday for the 4th time this year.

some pics from the garden this week (besides those in “wild things”)

Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I vacuumed the kitchen, hallway, and laundry room on Monday and the family room, kitchen again, and another hallway on Friday. I did clothes laundry on Tuesday and Sunday and towel laundry on Wednesday. My husband cleaned the stovetop burner igniter on Thurs. (it was having trouble firing and now seems much better) and also installed the window A/C into the master bedroom window that day. He took both yard brush and a metal item to the metal/brush dump on Sunday.

Supplies: Amazon subscribe & save arrived on Sat. and Sun. with food and health & beauty items. My resupply of 12 jars of Kitchen & Love artichoke hearts from Cucina & Amore still has not been delivered and does not have a delivery date assigned yet, and Nuts.com has not managed to get the 50%-salt macadamias back in stock (since early May); their latest guess is the end of July but I’m not holding my breath.

Food: Monday I made cacio e pepe with shrimp and artichoke hearts, which we enjoyed with raw veggies (all orange!), and we had the same on Tuesday except with peas as a side dish this time.

Wednesday was veggie burger on arugula, with spicy fusilli/garlic/Asiago side dish and raw sliced cucumber. I made a tortellini-veggie (black olives, artichoke hearts, red and orange bell peppers, peas, etc) salad on Thursday, accompanied by friend’s (RL’s) sourdough bread, toasted, and that was Friday’s dinner, too. Saturday, because I found local asparagus, we once again had the penne-asparagus-edamame-pine nut dish (leftovers saved for Monday), and Sunday we grilled soy/beef hot dogs, which we had with the fusilli-cheese-garlic dish and cukes (local) and cherry tomatoes (local).

The spicy garlicky cheesy fusilli recipe (I used instead of farfelle):

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Better sleep week this week than last, with an average 86.6 Fitbit sleep score. I averaged 7 hours 50 mins of sleep per night, with a low of 7 hours 13 mins and a high of 8 hours 46 mins. REM accounted for a little over 13 hours of sleep this week, and deep for just about 7 hours. Wed. night/Thurs. morning was particularly dreamy.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished The God of the Woods (2024) by Liz Moore this week. The story moves from summer of 1975 at Camp Emerson in New York State, when a camper goes missing, back through the 1950s to early 1970s as well as the couple of months before the disappearance. The missing camper is 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar, daughter of the wealthy owners of the camp; Barbara’s older brother, Bear, went missing in 1961 and her family has never been the same. It’s a complex novel with the story told very effectively through multiple viewpoints including that of a female NY State Crime Bureau investigator. Next up is The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) by Ruth Ware, A Killing Cold (2025) by Kate Alice Marshall, Bug Hollow (2025) by Michelle Huneven, and I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir (2025) by Keith McNally.

OTHER:

This was right up my alley: “Tech bros don’t get René Girard. Luckily, the Popes do.” By Alexander Douglas at UnHerd, 17 June 2025.

This was a wild ride! “Pirates of the Ayahuasca: That shaman stole my personality,” by Sarah Miller in the Spring 2025 issue of n+1 magazine.

Watching

As mentioned elsewhere, we watched the last “Vera” unknowingly on Tuesday. Other viewing included the third episode of “Maigret,” a couple of “International House Hunters” shows, and a few episodes of the BBC shows “Waiting for God” and “Keeping Up Appearances” that we have seen dozens of times before. Comfort TV watching.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: We had lunch outside at local bakery/café on Thursday, and we ate breakfast — spicy bean quesadillas, sourdough French toast with strawberries — outside at a farmstand/café (and bought local asparagus there) on Saturday.

Bought plants, produce, and other items at (another) local farmstand on Monday, Thursday, and Friday. I ordered flowers from a local florist to be delivered to a friend’s (RL) for her birthday next week. My husband volunteered at the local car museum for a little over 10 hours this week.

Relationships: No permaculture meeting or Salon this week. We did have poetry group in a member’s lovely sunroom (even in the rain) on Tuesday afternoon for 1.5 hours with six of us reading poetry and talking about lots of local stuff. Phone call with my sister on Wednesday (10 mins). Emailed back and forth with a friend (RVN) and sent an email to another friend (KKT), all on Monday. Chatted with friends/neighbours as I came across them walking or running errands this week (BB at the grocery, WD while walking, LL while walking, others for shorter greetings).

Donations: I made another Kiva loan with money that had accumulated from loan repayment in my account. I made a donation on Thursday to the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.

• Endings/Harvest

We watched the last episode of “Vera” on Tuesday, not realising it was the last one until we got to the end of the episode.

I’m on my last harvested garlic bulb from 2024. I harvested parsley, basil, and chives from the garden this week.

• All This Useless Beauty

this Caucasian geranium (cranes-bill) at The Fells

I’ll never not love the look and especially the fragrance of these Rodgersia flowers

swamp milkweed leaf beetle moving about on common milkweed (23-sec. video)