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

This week was much drier than last week (only .12 inches of rain) and quite a bit cooler as well, with highs ranging from 63°F (lower than last week’s average high) to 39.2°F, averaging 50.7°F, and low temperatures ranging from 21.7°F — we were wondering whether to cover the lilacs — to 35.6°F. Spring is nothing if not variable. Sure wish we’d get more rain, though. I’ve been watering the newly planted vegetable seeds daily.

• Beginnings/Firsts

First sighting for us of the loon pair on the lake on Tuesday (and we heard one on another lake on Wed.). We walked for the first time on the King Arthur trails in Norwich VT on Friday.

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

The wild things are disbursed among the other sections but here are a few more, mostly from The Fells, a loon from the lake, and bees from my veg garden. TOP row: mining bee (maybe Clark’s), primrose, trillium foliage. MIDDLE row: heath; Japanese pachysandra; common loon. BOTTOM: orange-belted bumblebee under leaves (I know it’s an orange-belted because I saw it fly in).

• Wandering 

This week I walked in town on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; around the lake on Tuesday; at The Fells on Wednesday; and on the King Arthur Trails in Norwich VT on Friday while we were in the area for the Five Colleges booksale that morning.

in town

lake

Fells

King Arthur trail and cafe/store

• Curiosities & Discoveries

This sign on a road compactor at The Fells

and the drainage/erosion control work they’re doing there — this is one of several new drainage ditches and drains

• Creating

We’re adding a raised bed kitchen garden this year and to that end I started seeds (96 of them!) at the local farmstand on Saturday morning; they’re keeping and tending them for about six weeks when they’ll be returned to me for hardening off and planting into the new raised bed (aka “kitchen garden”) and the (non-raised) vegetable garden. I chose some of the seeds they offered for this purpose and brought some I’d ordered earlier in the year from Botanical Interests. Vegetables/herbs: Genovese basil, Vierling dill, borage, Santo cilantro, Little Gem romaine, Marketmore cucumber, Sweet Millions tomatoes. Annuals: gazania ‘New Day,’ Mexican sunflower, zinnia ‘State Fair,’ gaillardia (blanket flower), alyssum ‘Oriental Nights’ (dark purple), and calendula ‘Zeolights.’

• Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars

Human: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week and walked on six days; my step count was over 10,000 every day, over 12,000 on five days, and over 14,000 on three days, with a high this week of 16,048 steps. I also got a good workout gardening for about 8.5 hours this week. I treadmilled for nine minutes one evening (.75 miles). We ping-ponged for 50 minutes this week. I participated in Dharma Sunday via Zoom with Lama Gursam leading meditation and teaching (and Q&A) on the Seven Branch Prayer (also called Seven Limb or Seven Line Prayer, and related to the King of Aspiration prayer).

Cars: My husband spent much of Saturday and Sunday working on two of our three cars. One had what is probably (hopefully) a battery issue, the other was a points/condenser issue. He also took the other car to get its snow tires removed, on Tuesday.

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I cleaned out the canned-goods and jars part of the pantry for the first time in maybe five years, on Tuesday. More to do in there but it’s a good start. I also cleaned the microwave that day. I watered the houseplants on Thursday and did a load of clothes laundry on Sunday. My husband made the dump/recycling trip on Thursday,

Financial/Admin: Nothing.

Supplies: My husband stocked up on coffees and cereals on Tuesday, I stocked up on dried fruit and nuts from Nuts.com on Wed. We finally replaced the chair mat I use at my desk —the old one had a big jagged gash that caught on my socks and wasn’t doing the carpet beneath it any favours. We bought some used books, videos, and some CDs (husband) at the Five Colleges booksale on Friday. My husband dropped off household items and clothes at the local consignment store on Saturday.

Food: Monday’s dinner was the leftover Old Bay cod with the leftover pine nut couscous and another batch of sautéed spinach and garlic. Tuesday I made the herbed tortellini with artichoke hearts, tomatoes, kalamatas, and white beans and we had that Wed. as well. We grilled hot dogs (soy and beef) on Thursday, with mac & cheese and corn. I made the penne-asparagus-pine nut thing on Friday, to which my husband added roasted chicken, and we also had carrots and radishes with humus. Same on Sat. with added artichoke hearts and shrimp. Sunday we were invited to a friend’s for dinner (gnocchi, green beans, red pepper, tofu or chicken).

• Garden

I gardened for about 10 hours this week, cleaning up the veg garden, planting the rest of the shelling peas + arugula and parsley seeds, clearing out several weedy areas in the backyard and sheet mulching a weedy bed in the front yard. My husband put up the vegetable garden fence on Sunday. We walked together around the yard planning bed extensions and transplants on Saturday. We had a tree guy here on Thursday to look at a tree we want taken down.

in the garden this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

I slept an average of 7 hours 25 mins per night this week (on the low side) for an average sleep score (Samsung Fit 3) of 90.3. REM sleep accounted for 13-1/2 hours, deep for 9 hours. Had many of those moments on waking up when I watched my dream float off like a vapor.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Words/Ideas

I knew a bit about rigpa but wasn’t familiar with the word shamatha when someone used these two concepts in a question to Lama Gursam about the importance of returning to the breath in meditation to help maintain the mind’s “natural state.”

Reading

BOOKS: This week I finished Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009 / transl. 2019) by Olga Tokarczuk. I liked it. Janina Duszejko is an older woman living alone (her two dogs missing for months), a part-time schoolteacher and a caretaker of summer people’s homes in a rural Polish village near the Czech border, where she has few neighbours — and when one of them finds another dead in his cottage and brings Duszejko with him to see what’s happened, she discovers a shocking photograph in the dead man’s house. Duszejko’s main passions in life are animal rights and astrology, and she’s fervid about both. She develops a theory that animals might have taken revenge on her neighbour and killed him, which she explains to all who will listen, including the local police; and when the police commander is subsequently found dead near his car on a remote road by Duszejko and a former student of hers, the area imprinted by deer hooves, she doubles down on this idea. The novel is termed a mystery but it’s not really crime fiction; its mystery lies in its ambiguity, its murkiness, its enigmatic quality; the substance of the novel is rather Duszejko’s philosophical ruminations, her ideas about living, suffering, and dying.

OTHER: NH just had one of the driest first-quarter-of-year on record, by David Brooks on 20 Apr 2026 at Granite Geek.

Listening

Didn’t Shazam much this week.

Watching

We watched a couple of House Hunters/International House Hunters and Waiting for God episodes this week, two eps of Death in Paradise, and one Wallander.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Shopped at the local farmstand on Monday (spinach, crackers, humus dip) and Sat. (seed starting event; spinach), at the local co-op on Sat. (penne, stock), and at the regional co-op on Friday. Had lunch with a friend at a local bakery/café on Thursday after we visited a local art gallery, and my husband and I had lunch at the King Arthur café on Friday. I ordered a friend flowers for her birthday on Wed. from a local (to her) independent florist.

Relationships: Sent a friend (RVN) flowers for her birthday this week. Chatted a bit with an acquaintance (TD) at the farmstand on Thursday and with a neighbour (LT) and her dog (E) for about 10 mins on Sat. We had dinner at a friend’s (LM) with another acquaintance (JvB) on Sunday night. A friend (RL) picked up a few chives I was weeding out on Sat. and that same friend and I went to a local art gallery and had lunch together on Thursday. The usual texting, social media, emails, etc.

Donations: I donated to a neighbour’s fundraiser for BikeMS on Tuesday.

• Endings 

The Boston Marathon began and ended on Monday.

• All This Useless Beauty

sure looks like an alligator but it’s the moment after a loon dove under the lake’s surface

the light dancing on the lake on Tuesday (9-sec video)