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 has been mostly on the cool side but warmer on the weekend. High temps ranged from 79.9°F to 44.2°F, averaging 60.2°F overall, but the average for the first five days is 53.4°F and for Sat & Sun is 77.4°F, quite a difference. The lows ranged from 33.8°F to 56.7°F, averaging 43°F. We’re bringing in tender plants at night.

We got a lot of rain this week, though neighbours a street away had much different readings from their weather station/gauge. Ours read 5 inches overall, with 4.56 inches on Thursday (their Thursday reading was closer to 2 inches), when it rained all day, sometimes heavily. We checked our weather station and didn’t find any indication that it wasn’t releasing the rain as it received and measured it (usually we have the opposite issue where it gets plugged with leaves and doesn’t measure the full amount) or that it was recording it wrong, but who knows. Even five inches would not do much for our drought situation unless we received that amount, not falling too hard nor too gently, every week for two or three weeks in succession.

• Beginnings/Firsts

I put out the ficus houseplant on Saturday for the first time this year (bringing it in nights when the temperature is forecast to be under 50°F). I think it appreciates the change of scene.

I noticed the first Jack in the pulpit in the yard on Monday.

On Thursday afternoon, I started attending a local monthly bookgroup, one I had attended years ago and am now interested in again, if I can keep up with the reading, which is 95% non-fiction. This week seven of us discussed Rebecca Solnit’s The Beginning Comes After the End.

We visited Bedrock Gardens for the first time this year — the first day they were open, on Tuesday.

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

Birds heard by Merlin at Bedrock Gardens, Lee, NH, Tuesday:

Merlin heard birds in town and at lake on Friday and Saturday:

• Wandering 

I wandered to a nearby town for my 6-month dermatology appt (and co-op shop) on Monday; we wandered to Lee, NH to Bedrock Gardens for their members’ opening day on Tuesday; and we wandered a couple towns away for breakfast at a farmstand/café on Saturday. I walked in town on Monday, at Bedrock on Tuesday, in town again on Wednesday and Friday, and around the lake on Saturday.

in towns

lake

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I don’t know if this was an intentional planting or not at Bedrock Gardens (probably it was, with their artistic eyes) — but looking at these two trees from across the way and even closer, the one in the foreground gives the impression of being somehow a shadow of the other or a dark inner portion of a single tree, doesn’t it?

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I thought for a second that I was having a stroke when I looked at the corn bags in the grocery store.

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Hilarious. (The subtitles were in Icelandic when shown on TV)

• Creating

Carved out meditation time six of seven days this week, and I would have on Monday but I just forgot to do it!

The cat helping me

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

Human: I went to the dermatologist on Monday, my regular check-up, and only had four liquid nitrogen zaps — and no scrapes to send to pathology, which is a good visit for me. I worked out three times (3 hours) this week and walked more than 9,000 steps on five days, more than 14,000 on three days, with a high step count of 15,767 on Friday. I treadmilled on two different days for 2.5 miles (38 mins) and we ping-ponged for 1 hour and 45 mins on four evenings. I participated in Dharma Sunday via Zoom for two hours with Chris Berlin leading meditation and talking about “The Dharma of A.I.”

Cars: My husband spent part of Friday and Sat. working on replacing the battery ground strap on the BMW X3. The original had deteriorated, as you can see.

Cat: The cat saw the vet on Tuesday morning for a small growth we discovered on his neck. They took some material from it with a fine needle and looked at it under a microscope but couldn’t determine what it was (it’s not a tick but they already knew that). He can have surgery to remove and biopsy it or we can watch and wait. Right now we’re watching & waiting but we may decide to have it removed. There are known and unknown risks for each course of action. He seems fine otherwise. His litter box was cleaned by me on Wed.

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: Other than clothes laundry on Wed., towel laundry on Sunday, houseplants watered on Thursday, and both downstairs toilets cleaned at least once, the house languished as we wandered, walked, and gardened this week. My husband did the dump/recycling run on Sunday.

Financial/Admin: I paid an MGH bill I just received for my dermatology pathology … from November 2025. I revised my Advance Directive/Living Will document and plan to have it notarised and scanned into MyChart tomorrow. I emailed back and forth with Word Press on Wed. to make sure this blog’s media allotted storage space is grandfathered in (at a higher amount of space than is currently being offered) before I renew for another year (it is).

Food: Leftover pizza, fries, and steamed broccoli on Monday. Grilled hot dogs (soy or beef), rice pilaf & red beans, and carrots with humus on Tuesday. The recurring penne-asparagus-pine nut-shrimp dish on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday I made a new recipe, a quick and easy vegetable curry I saw in Julia Turshen’s newsletter (recipe below), along with papadums, which we also had on Sat. and which I finished on Sunday while my husband had a grilled hot dog, corn, and raw veggies with humus. My husband made three sourdough baguettes on Friday.

• Garden

I spent about three hours working in the garden this week, preparing for our hired landscaper who will be here next week edging and expanding gardens and transplanting and planting several smallish trees and shrubs. On Wed., I planted all 18 bare roots I picked up over the weekend: as mentioned previously, they are 6 black cohosh, 6 false Solomon’s seal, 3 royal fern, and 3 Virginia bluebells and while I was doing that I transplanted a heuchera that’s never been happy. On Sat., I cut a lot of dead wood from the elderberries and some limbs from the large honeysuckle shrub, weeded the front bed, and more. On Sun. evening, we painted white lines on the lawn to indicate edging/expansion locations for the landscaper tomorrow. My husband filled the Vego raised bed with a hugelkultur (thin layer of cardboard, cut limbs and branches, tall native grass clippings, plant waste that’s not too weedy, leaves) and finally organic raised bed soil to top it off.

garden this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Sleep was good this week. I recorded some dreams early in the week. I slept on average 7 hours 37 mins per night, with a (Samsung Fit 3) sleep score of 92. REM sleep accounted for 13 hours 45 mins and deep sleep for 9 hours 20 mins. We had the windows open near the bed on a few nights, which helps me sleep.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS

I finished two books this week:

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change (2026) by Rebecca Solnit for a bookgroup. On the plus side, the book was short (147 pp with endnotes) and there were small gems scattered throughout, e.g., concerning the authoritarian’s need to command reality and to define it in dogmatic terms, in terms of binary categories (“a politics of sequestration”), though actual reality is ambiguous and uncertain, with overlap and blur; and hyper-individualism’s rejection of systemic explanations for problems in favour of blaming (other) individuals. On the negative side, this book — which, in fairness, is subtitled Notes on a World of Change — often felt like a disjointed laundry list of arbitrary events, people, and pieces of the threads of progress. Having read some of her other work, especially on nature and walking, I expected a more poetic and coherent book. I didn’t derive a lot of hope from the book but it does offer alternative perspective to despair and doom by reminding us that changes that seem sudden aren’t, they have been built over time by small actions and incrementally changing attitudes; that while laws may come and go, it’s underlying attitudes that determine the tenor of a culture; and that history is full of things that once seemed unlikely or impossible (which, yes, all of these are potentially double-edged swords).

Hot Milk (2016) by Deborah Levy, an enigmatic novel about Sofia, a young anthropologist and barista who is in hot coastal Spain with her mother, Rose, as they desperately seek treatment from the unconventional Dr. Gómez and his unconventional daughter Julieta for Rose’s chronic and baffling pains and physical dysfunction. Sofia has a lot of desires and impulses but she is adrift in her life, devoting herself to caring for her mother, to such an extent that there is a confusion in Sofia’s mind of her limbs and her mother’s. She is continually stung by Medusa jellyfish when swimming in the ocean, and she is continually and irresistibly drawn to Ingrid, a woman with whom she is developing an intense relationship but whom she also fears might be trying to harm her. Through the course of the book Sofia does many new things, often on impulse and sometimes because someone tells her to, yet she is still tied symbiotically (parasitically?) to her mother (“My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.”). One short excerpt:

OTHER

I found this essay/book review interesting, as a fairly picky eater myself: Pickiness tastes like trauma: How American children became the fussiest eaters in history (and why they need to check their not-dying privilege) by Amy Brown in Oakland Review of Books. She’s reviewing Helen Zoe Veit’s book Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History (Feb. 2026), from which, “But it turns out that Picky is not about what modern parents are doing wrong. Helen is a historian and she traces a wide variety of factors across hundreds of years — things like industrialization of the food supply chain, advertising and its consequences, and the weaponization of parental anxiety for nefarious purposes — to explain how we got here as a culture.”

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Recipe that looks good (from Jenny Rosenstrach):

Watching

We continued watching the 11-part Brideshead Revisited series (1981) each night this week, to be finished next week.

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: Shopped at the regional co-op on Monday, bought a red yarrow plant at Bedrock Gardens (where we’re members, so supportive that way as well) on Tuesday, bought a treat at local bakery/café on Thursday, bought crackers and wafers at the local farmstand on Friday and something there on Sunday (forgot to note it), ate breakfast at a nearby farmstand/café and bought produce there (asparagus, celeriac, spinach) on Sat. My husband participated in a cars & coffee fundraiser morning (for the local high school) with others on Sunday.

Relationships: I had a busy social week: I attended the monthly poetry group meeting for two hours on Tuesday in a lovely lakefront home where all seven of us were present!; I attended a monthly bookgroup meeting on Thursday at someone’s home for two hours (7 of us); and on Friday I attended Salon at a friend’s (5 of us) for almost 3 hours. A friend (RVN) sent a catch-up email on Sat.

• Endings 

We ended our short period (a few weeks?) without a woodstove fire on Wednesday, when we lit one at 3:30 p.m. (high temp 44.2°F).

• All This Useless Beauty

‘Olga Mezitt’ rhodo + Kinoko recycled plastic seafoam/pink lamp from MOMA are a perfect combo

this pollen-covered bee

the scent of this Koreanspice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) is utterly intoxicating