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

Easing into summer here, with high temps ranging from 83.8°F to 63.9°F, averaging 75.5°F, and low temps ranging from 42.3°F to 57.9°F, averaging 50.7°F. We got .21 inches of rain this week (need so much more).

• Beginnings/Firsts

My husband’s brother and sister-in-law visited us here in NH for the first time in the almost 17 years we’ve lived here (one of their daughters was here with a boyfriend years ago, though, and we did just see his brother in Oct. when we were down their way). We spent about 4 hours together having lunch on the patio, walking, and chatting on Wednesday, which was a beautiful day.

Sent out the June 2026 nature photos link to those on the email list on Saturday.

My husband made naan bread (using atta flour) for the first time ever, on Sunday! It’s perfect.

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

• Wandering 

Walked in town on Mon., Wed. (with visiting relatives), Thurs., and Fri., and also at the bog on Monday, at The Fells (2-hour guided walk) on Thursday, and the lake on Saturday.

in-town

bog

Fells

lake

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I’ve often seen the bog bean foliage in one spot at the bog but never the bog bean flower until this year.

• Creating

Another week of creating and maintaining the meditation habit every evening!

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

Humans: My husband got a haircut this week. I took the week off from working out but managed to walk quite a bit in between (and during) gardening: over 10,000 steps on all days, over 15,000 steps on four days, and a high of 19,419 on Friday. I meditated every evening, for a total of 3 hours 50 mins.

• Nesting 

Cleaning/Maintenance: We tidied up the sunroom more on Monday. My husband cleaned both air purifiers on Monday, too. I did a load of clothes laundry on Tuesday and also on Saturday, cleaned the guest bath (shower, toilet, sink, floor), and vacuumed the hallways, kitchen, and laundry room. My husband took a (free) lawnmower he had been trying to repair to the metal dump on Thursday. I watered houseplants on Friday. I laundered the bathroom rug that the cat threw up on, plus a few other odds & ends, on Sunday.

Financial/Admin: I backed up my laptop on Monday,

Food: I made a tortellini salad (room temp) on Monday with sautéed artichoke hearts and red bell peppers, black olives, corn, peas, fresh basil, oil & lemon juice, and we had that with a homemade baguette. Same on Tuesday. But also on Tues., I made an orzo salad [I use veggie “chicken” broth, make half the quantity of vinaigrette, and don’t use mint] and we made marinated chicken kabobs, both for a lunch on Wednesday. On Wed. morning I made the Stonewall Kitchen corn & bean (+tomatoes, avocado, cilantro, cheese cubes) salad, also for that lunch, and for dinner that night we had some of the leftover orzo salad (+ grilled chicken – husband) and cucumbers. On Thursday night we finished the corn & bean salad with tortilla chips, plus steamed asparagus. We ate outside at a local restaurant on Friday night for an early dinner. Saturday night I made a veggie curry (cauliflower, potatoes, green beans, cilantro, coconut-lemongrass simmer sauce) and we had that, served on jasmine rice, and again on Sunday with homemade naan bread my husband made from some recently gifted atta flour (thanks, SW). We’ll be finishing the curry and naan well into next week.

• Garden

Pretty big garden week, with about 90 seedlings to plant on Monday evening and on Tuesday, as well as some other plants I’d acquired but hadn’t gotten into the ground yet. Overall, I worked in the garden planting, weeding, and watering for 13.5 hours, a hefty portion of that on Tuesday figuring out what could fit in the raised bed and dropping those in, then digging holes in the rocky clay soil and adding compost or raised bed soil to plant everything else in the main vegetable garden and anywhere around the house that I could find sunny space. I mulched some of those with either straw or bark mulch to help retain the scarce moisture. After I finished that, on a roll, I bought and planted more things from the local farmstand, including a container I created with two pink zinnia and some pink salvia, two more Firecracker cuphea, and three coleus, and I bought another red begonia hanging basket. I also finally, on Sunday, planted two tomatoes given to me by a friend (ED) who started them from seed, hoping the weather is in their favour. And I got the dark cardinal flower in the ground on Sunday. We also set up the three-tiered plant stand and planted two long containers with herbs and veggies to sit on it.

The two Indian pinks are still not planted — they’re in their containers on the middle tier of the plant stand. And I don’t have my plugs (dwarf crested iris, strawberries) and other plants (liatris, mountain mint, sweet bay magnolia tree) ordered in March from the native plant nursery yet; in fact, I ordered a few more items from them this week: some blue-stemmed goldenrod plugs and two quarts of sneezeweed. Hope they will all be ready next week!

more pics in the garden this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

I slept an average of 7 hours 35 mins per night this week, with a (Samsung Fit 3) score of 89.4. I had 14.5 hours of REM sleep and 7 hours 45 mins of deep sleep. It’s been nice to have the windows open, the fresh cool air blowing in, but sometimes outside noises awaken us. And in the wee hours of Sunday the cat threw up on the bathroom rug, which roused us from dreamland.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS I finished The Things We Never Say (2026) by Elizabeth Strout this week. She’s always a pleasure to read. Artie Dam is a high school history teacher in his late 50s, married to Evie, a family therapist, and living in a house they inherited from Evie’s parents on Massachusetts Bay, where he likes to sail. He’s a good teacher but a lonely man who feels isolated; he thinks his wife doesn’t see him for who he really is and he’s obsessed with the question of whether people have free will. He and his students share a sense of anxiety, even despair, about the world they’re living in. Their son Rob, whose girlfriend was killed in a car Rob was driving when he was a teen, is married now and living an hour away in Somerville; he knows there’s more to his father than meets the eye but hasn’t been able to break through to whatever it is, and soon he’s saddled with a secret that may drastically change their relationship. The upcoming presidential election of 2024 looms over the book and fills Artie with dread. He’s a pensive man living in a coarse and often unkind world, yearning to be “innocent and incorruptible,” still very much learning about himself and the “multitudinous aspect of people,” the complexity of his own inner life and others’. It’s a movingly told, somewhat spare story that threads together the lives of Artie, his family, some of his students and co-workers, and a handful of neighbours, friends, and other community members as they pass moments, days, and years in each other’s company.

OTHER

It’s almost always worth reading whatever Jeanette Winterson writes. Here, in an essay titled “June 1 2026 And it’s a Monday… perfect,” she’s talking about recalibrating and resetting for the month ahead, writing down what she “would like to think about/read about/listen to/learn/manage better/confront/let go of, or start to let go of,” what she calls her interventions, a way of being intentional about what nourishes her.

Sort of interesting essay on the shrug emoji, The worst emoji And why it’s ruining social media, at Haley Nahman’s Maybe Baby.

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Listening

Some Shazam’d songs this week

Watching

All “Schitt$ Creek” this week (season two).

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered at a local car museum this week for 8 hours. I ordered a few more plants from the local native plant nursery on Monday. I bought more plants at the local farmstand/garden center on Tuesday and we bought a few more bags of raised bed soil and another bag of Coast of Maine compost at the local (regional chain) hardware store. I had lunch with a friend at a local bakery/café on Friday and my husband and I had dinner outside at a local burger place that evening.

Relationships: No Salon or permaculture meetings this week. I met a friend (JS) for lunch on Friday noon. We spent four hours with my husband’s brother and sister-in-law on Wed. Spent a couple of hours visiting a friend (ND) on Friday afternoon (and my husband repaired one of her solar garden lights). Chatted with neighbours (BT&SS) a couple of times this week for 20 mins or so (they had a fawn cached in their yard!). Texted a bit with a friend (RL) and her husband (BP) on Monday during her knee replacement surgery, and more texts with her during the week. I took a 2-hour Hidden History walking tour at The Fells on Thursday morning with eight or nine other people.

Donations: I made a donation of iNaturalist on Saturday. (I use their app and other users’ expertise multiple times a day!)

• Endings 

Buh-bye weeping spruce (and blue spruce) heading for the vast sky

• All This Useless Beauty

I love baptisia, all the colour combos (with more varieties to bloom yet)

this one again

the scent of this rose