A Moveable Garden

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

• Weather

We managed almost half an inch of rain this week, almost all on Monday (we’re still in moderate drought and the county we adjoin is in a severe drought). Temps were cool, with most of the nightly lows in the 40°Fs. Overall, lows ranged from 43°F to 58.6°F, averaging 48.9°F. High temperatures ranged from 73°F to 66.2°F, averaging 69.3°F for the week. We brought the ficus out in the day and took it in every night. I guess we can remove the A/Cs from the two bedroom windows.

• Beginnings/Firsts

We walked at a local nature park on Sunday and got our first look this season at the bottle gentians there, just in bud and rapidly being overtaken by cattails and other plants around the pond. Hope to get back to see them in bloom in a week or so.

We’ve seen these Eastern tiger swallowtail complex (Complex Papilio glaucus) caterpillars around town in past years but this is the first this year, on a side street in town, and what a gorgeous animal it is.

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

A monarch pumping lymph into its wings soon after eclosing (emerging) from its chrysalis on Saturday. (I like its shadow.)

• Wandering 

I walked in town on Monday, Tues., Wed., Fri., and Sat., and at the lake on Thursday and the nature park on Sunday. Saw more than the usual number of friends and neighbours while out and about.

in town

lake

nature park

• Curiosity & Discoveries

Several curiosities this week.

Large piece of green glass on a rock at the nature park? How? Who? Why?

In a local dentists’ office parking lot …

In our yard, mole holes I think, and is it scat outside one?

• Creating

Walking around in town creates opportunities for coming across both friends and curiosities/discoveries. Offering peaches in the garage creates more opportunities for interacting with neighbours and friends.

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

Body/Mind: Worked out four times (4 hours) this week. Walked more than 11,000 steps every day, more than 14,000 steps on six days, and more than 16,000 steps on two days. Attended Dharma Sunday via Zoom for 2 hours with Lama Liz Monson leading meditation and teaching on “What the River Knows.”

• Gardening/Yard 

We were both harvesting peaches all week, and now the season, at least for us, is almost over. We had at least 22 people coming to get peaches over this week (in addition to those last week), with a few repeats.

I also harvested cherry tomatoes and basil this week, and I finished processing the garlic (22 heads) on Thursday.

I’m refilling the (heated) birdbath pretty much daily now, with many bird visits and lack of rain depleting it quickly. I also spent a couple of hours cleaning up a bit, mainly clipping the spent hosta flowers and cutting out the crispy brown stems of several perennials, as well as pulling out gobs of grape vine, Virginia creeper, and bittersweet from the raspberries. On Sunday I spent an hour watering the back border, which is mostly shrubs and perennials, something I don’t think I’ve done since it was first planted about 15 years ago. Desperate times and all that.

some other garden photos this week

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Monday and Friday. I cleaned behind the kitchen sink/counters on Thursday. We had a cord of dried firewood delivered and we stacked it in less than an hour on Wednesday. We made a dump/recycling run on Sunday.

Financial/Admin: I backed up my laptop on Sunday.

Food: I made tuna Niçoise salad on Monday, orzo salad on Tuesday (to which my husband added grilled chicken for himself), and we had that Wednesday as well. We went out to dinner with a friend on Thursday, both of us ordered swordfish, which we had left over on Friday along with corn on the cob, cukes, and leftover steamed small potatoes and green beans from making the Niçoise salad earlier in the week. Saturday was veggie burgers with arugula, corn on the cob, and cukes, peppers, and tomatoes. And on Sunday we ate out again, on the patio of a local restaurant (my husband had grilled salmon with mango, which interested the yellow jackets, and I had nachos with olives added).

My husband dehydrated peaches on Sat. & Sun, with more to do next week. I made three more loaves of peach bread this week, on Friday, and remembered to take a photo this time before they went into the freezer.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

A pretty good sleep week. I got about 7 hours 35 mins sleep per night on average, with an 89 average sleep score. REM accounted for 13 hours 45 mins but deep for only 6 hours, which is not really enough.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS: I finished two books this week, Murder Takes a Vacation (2025) by Laura Lippman and Perfection (2022) by Vincenzo Latronico.

Murder Takes a Vacation is a light romp (with a few serious topics touched on), set on a riverboat cruise full of wealthy people — and Muriel, a widowed woman in her 60s from Baltimore who has recently won a lottery jackpot with a found ticket. Before she’s even on the boat, she meets a gentleman, Allan, in the airport who helps her with her flight and her layover in London; when Muriel gets to Paris, where she’s spending a few days before the cruise, she learns that Allan, whom she thought was back in England, has been found dead in Paris, a fall from a hotel window. A self-styled stylist (or maybe an FBI agent?) takes her under his wing somewhat against her will in Paris and tells her that Allan was transporting a piece of stolen art, and perhaps Muriel knows its whereabouts? They both end up on the cruise, where Muriel tries to enjoy her vacation with her friend Elinor, who is infatuated with Marko, whose sister (?) Pat is friendly with Muriel, and goodness, how things go awry.

Perfection is another animal altogether. It’s a novella (124 pp) without a novelistic voice about two “digital nomads,” a couple, Anna & Tom, in their 30s, who work remotely — as creative professionals, “web developer, graphic designer, online brand strategist. What they created were differences” — predominantly from Berlin (then later other places) and who would like their lives to resemble the best Instagram images of themselves but objects, extraneous items, clutter, misgivings, feelings of dissatisfaction and unease keep intruding; they continually feel that they have missed out on something (born too late, they wonder?) and that they are trapped in a version of life that they could have avoided. As one of the reviewers puts it, the story will be “uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has tried to resist the flattening effects of whatever life is now.” Loved it!

And from the first page I was looking up unfamiliar words and terms, like petrol blue.

Perfection‘s introductory inscription and acknowledgements nod to the novella’s inspiration drawn from Georges Perec’s Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965), which is my next read.

OTHER:

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Also:

Let’s Talk About Pesto [a lot!] by Monica Schwartz in her blog Life Out of Bounds. All about basil, various pesto recipes, and tips for good pesto. I can smell pesto when I look at this blog post.

I haven’t tried this but it looks good, by Martha Rose Shulman.

Listening

some of what I heard this week

Watching

We’re up to Season 4 of “Death in Paradise” on BritBix now. Also watched a bit of the LSU-Clemson football game on Friday evening.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Had dinner out with a friend at a local restaurant on Thursday and we had dinner out on the patio at another local restaurant on Sunday. I bought some treats at a local bakery on Thursday. Shopped at the farmer’s market a couple of times this week (Tues. & Thurs.), for cucumbers, corn on the cob, arugula, lemon, crackers, and chocolate wafers. Bought capers and a red onion at the local co-op on Tues. Bought a skirt and a top at the consignment store on Thursday. My husband volunteered at the local car museum for 11 hours this week.

Relationships: On walks, in stores, and in the driveway/yard, I/we waved at or chatted with several friends/neighbours (BB, SE, DO, LM, JS, RL&BP, JBx2, M?, WDx2, ED, and AS). A friend (a different AS) came over, got peaches, and hung out, mostly with my husband, for an hour or so on Saturday. We had dinner out with a friend (LD) on Thurs. night. Salon met on Friday with five of us for 2.5 hours. A friend (KKT) emailed a long note on Sat. We also chatted on Wed. while on a walk with the American Leak Detection folks who were here (from Florida, Oklahoma, et al.) to check for leaks in the town’s water system, as part of a longer and larger New Hampshire visit they were making.

Donations: I renewed our Seacoast Science Center membership on Sunday.

• Endings/Harvest

Besides peaches, harvested cherry and pear tomatoes this week.

• All This Useless Beauty

sunlit cat at rest

this hornbeam at the nature park, planted in memory of someone, is looking as good as it has in years in this beam of sun

willow gentian always slaps

this light in a dogwood (Cornus florida)