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

RAIN! We got rain! Over 3.5″ on Thursday and and .66″ on Tues & Wed., so overall about 4.15 inches! And it was mostly light to moderate, and even the heavy bits fell sporadically, so permeable ground was able to absorb it. Our fire danger went from extreme to low overnight and then increased to moderate later in the week. The U.S. Drought Map still shows us (as of 23 Sept) in extreme drought, though.

Temperatures were mostly warm, quite nice. The high temps ranged from 78.8°F to 62.6°F, averaging 70.1°F. The lows ranged from 39.7°F to 56.8°F, averaging 52.8°F. No widespread frost yet.

NOAA says this was the driest summer in NH on record (since 1895).

• Beginnings/Firsts

The permaculture group is going to start reading and discussing a new book next month, Your Natural Garden: A Practical Guide to Caring for an Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden by Kelly D. Norris. I’ve got the book but haven’t started it yet.

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

• Wandering 

We walked at the lake on Monday, the bog on Sunday, and I walked in town every other day, even Thursday during a lull in the rain.

My husband was in Pittsburg, NH, near the Canadian border, fishing on Wed. and Thursday, and quite successfully (catch & release). This is a photo he took there ——

in town photos

lake

bog

• Curiosity & Discoveries

My husband made this interesting discovery when he flipped over a board that’s been laying on the lawn since peach season (it was used to support a ladder). It’s hickory tussock moth caterpillars in larval (caterpillar) and pupa (in cocoons) states.

• Creating

I feel like I kind of know how to create or recognise a hanging basket of annuals that will last from May through September. It’s this one (two of them, actually), which is the same one I chose last year. As I mentioned in a May Liminal Living post, it’s called “Beachside Drive” by Proven winners and it contains Tropical Sunrise Calibrachoa, Supertunia Honey Petunia, and Whirlwind Pink Fan Flower Scaevola. The petunias are still attracting bumblebees and the scaevola last and lasts. This photo was taken on Friday.

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

Body/Mind: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week and walked more than 11,000 steps on five days and more than 14,000 steps on three days. I participated in Dharma Sunday for two hours via Zoom, with Lama Liz leading meditation and teaching on “Forest Wisdom: What the Trees Know.” I took three Covid rapid tests and one FluA/B test this week and all were negative. I’m not sure if I have a cold or allergies but I think it’s allergies as Zyrtec seems to have vanquished it.

Cat: The cat also meditated with me on Sunday morning and we read in bed together one night too.

He also meditated on his own one (every) morning.

• Gardening/Yard 

I gardened for a couple of hours this week, uncovering the basil, watering (on Monday), cutting some things back, harvesting tomatoes, beans, and a few apples, and pulling invasive plants from the rock wall.

some things going on in the garden this week

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did sheets laundry on Tuesday and clothes laundry on Friday. I vacuumed the kitchen and watered the houseplants on Friday, too.

Supplies: I ordered 6 boxes of Traditional Medicinals Herbal Cold Care tea this week and a 2026 planner (actually four 2026 planners, three of which will need to be returned 🤦‍♀️).

Food: Monday’s dinner was cacio e pepe with artichoke hearts & shrimp or grilled chicken, and cukes and carrots. Tuesday was leftovers. Wednesday, on my own, I made a concoction of red beans, rice, corn, black olives, bell peppers, onions, our garlic, cheese, and spices, plus cucumbers. We had that as leftovers on Thursday night. Friday we had some leftover bucatini with either shrimp or sausage and Pecorino Romano cheese, plus the sautéed local summer squash, onion, local green pepper, our green beans, our garlic, and new addition, local broccoli. Saturday we had lunch outside at a local restaurant and for dinner ordered out for pizza and salad, and we had leftover pizza (me) or leftover Reuben (him) and leftover French fries and salad (us) for dinner on Sunday.

The bean thing doesn’t look smashing but it hit the spot.

Financial/Admin: We resubscribed to Hulu this week, to watch this season of Only Murders in the Building.

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Something is going on with the Galaxy Fit 3 sleep scoring. Since I got the device a month or so ago, my scores have been roughly similar to those of the Fitbit Luxe I had prior, in the 80s predominantly, with a bunch in the low 90s and a handful in the high 60s to high 70s. Starting on Wednesday, my sleep scores seem to be inflated, though the underlying data (time asleep, restlessness, # of sleep phases, time in REM, time in deep, pulse, oxygen levels, etc.) looks pretty much like my data from the past month, and in fact my deep sleep was a little less this week. Every score since Wed. has been in the 90s, including two 99s. I doubt I am consistently sleeping any better than I was before, though I could believe a night or two with a high-90s score.

Anyway. This week, according to the device, I got an average of 8 hours of sleep per night, with an average sleep score of 94.6. REM sleep accounted for 14 hours and 42 mins and deep sleep for only 6 hours 22 mins (not optimal).

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS

This week I finished Cold as Hell (An Áróra Investigation, #1; 2019/2021) by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, which is crime fiction set in Iceland. A pullout quote calls it “another bleak, unpredictable classic,” and I did find it bleak but also fairly predictable. The reader knows a lot that the main character, Áróra, doesn’t, and the only real suspense is in the details. Áróra returns to Iceland from Britain at her mother’s behest to try to find her older sister, Isafold, who is recently engaged to her long-time abusive boyfriend, Björn, but who hasn’t been heard from directly or through social media for a couple of weeks. Áróra, who is frustrated and irritated with her sister as well as anxious about her whereabouts and self-recriminating about her own refusal to try to save Isafold for the umpteenth time the year before, questions some neighbours — two of whom, Olga (sheltering a refugee from Syria) and Grímur (obsessed with being completely hairless), we follow through their own chapters — and she enlists the help of her detective uncle-in-law, Daniel; he’s 15 years older than Áróra but they instantly have feelings for each other, though she is also pursuing a recently released criminal hotelier, at first for sex but then also to track down his illegal funds. I mean, the characters are interesting (and I haven’t even mentioned Daniel’s neighbour, Lady Gúgúlú). Each chapter is 1-4 pages long, which makes the 260-page book (108 chapters) very digestible but at the same time a little easy to put down; it took me a whole week to read.

OTHER

I like this kind of essay, Gastrodome: C Is For Cioppino, Coq Au Vin, and Chili: Monday’s Child Was In a Mood to Cook, by Timothy Burke in his Eight by Seven newsletter; it’s full of facts, history, and detail as well as passion and humanity:

“Stews and soups on one hand were ‘immortal dishes’, e.g., many households kept a cauldron simmering to which new liquid and new bits and pieces of food could be added, and they were social dishes, made to serve families, workers, communities. Which again can collapse into functionalism, that they had to be thus — but I suspect many early modern households had local ideas about what not to put in the pot and equally shifting ideas about who exactly should be offered a spoon and a bowl.”

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This recipe looks worth trying, by Susan Nye. I actually make something very similar but without onions and with kalamata olives; I like the idea of green olives and onions.

Listening

Some songs I Shazam’d this week.

Watching

Watched some Only Murders (I rewatched episodes with my husband) and some of season six of Death in Paradise on BritBox. Watched a little college and NFL football this weekend.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Lots of that this week! Shopped at the farmstand three times, buying a white pumpkin, a funky gourd, and a mum for our fall driveway display, and chocolate wafers, their own farm-grown strawberries, red, orange, and green bell peppers, and cucumbers, and probably more but I forgot to write it all down. We ate outside at a local restaurant on Saturday afternoon and got food to go from a local pizza place on Saturday night. I got treats at a local bakery/café on Thursday. We or I shopped at a local consignment store on Wed. and Sat. and bought seven items (6 for me and 1 for him). I bought a bunch of things at a local independent gift shop on Sat., all items for my sisters and the bride-to-be at an upcoming family wedding. My husband volunteered at the local car museum for 4 hours this week.

Relationships: Salon met on Friday with four of us for three hours of some pretty intense talk. Chatted with my sister by phone twice this week, for a total of about 40 minutes. A friend (KKT) emailed on Sunday and I chatted briefly with several folks I ran into during the week (LM and DH at a restaurant, SD at the grocery, N at the library, etc). The usual texting and social apps messaging.

• Endings/Harvests 

The last buddleia bloom, on Saturday …

One harvest, the last of the Mardi Gras beans and the last little green pepper.

• All This Useless Beauty

stem of tiny red flowers on Persicaria virginiana ‘Painter’s Palette’

this is the kind of thing that’s not much, and untidy (if nature can be called untidy), but it catches my eye, the pinks of the almost heart-shaped epimedium foliage, oranges of the sword-like swamp milkweed leaves, the chunky bee balm seedheads, and a little blue-green rounded baptisia foliage creeping in from the side

the water pattern on the lake