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

Nice summer temps, IMO. Highs ranged from 88.9°F to 77°F, about my favourite range, averaging 83.0°F. Lows ranged from 57.9°F to 68.7°F, averaging 62.6°F. We had the A/C in the bedroom running the latter part of the week. Rain fell only on Monday, 1.44 inches. Still not in a drought (again), though the seacoast’s drought is severe.

• Beginnings/Firsts

I emailed the new August nature photos link to those on the email list on Monday.

My nephew and my sister called on Friday evening with some exciting news about my nephew’s life!

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

• Wandering 

I walked every day this week, in town every day but Saturday and also at the craft fair on Tues., around the lake on Sat., and at the bog on Sunday. We also drove a bit for a breakfast and a lunch.

in town

lake

bog

• Curiosity & Discoveries

I was surprised to see a spring peeper around now. They’re not making their peeping sound much but just hanging out on raspberry leaves apparently.

• Creating

I’m happy we’re creating more opportunities to eat outside while the season for it lasts.

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

Human: I worked out three times (3 hours) this week, using Body Electric streaming workouts. I walked more than 11,000 steps on six days, more than 14,000 steps on four days, and a high step day of 17,165 steps on Friday. I meditated every evening, a total of 3 hours 25 mins this week. I enjoyed the summer heat and appreciated the heck out of August.

• Nesting

Cleaning/Maintenance: I did a load of clothes laundry on Monday and another on Saturday. I watered and fed the houseplants on Wed. My husband cleaned the air purifier filters and the A/C filter on Monday. He also vacuumed the primary bedroom on Friday. We took one aerosol can to the hazardous waste disposal event on Sat. and we also did the dump/recycling run on Sunday. Toilets and counters were cleaned, etc.

Financial/Admin: I backed up my computer on Monday. And in bigger news, we paid off our home mortgage (over the phone!) on Tuesday, not quite 17 years after moving to this house. I had been paying ahead monthly since the start on our 30-yr mortgage, which shaved off a lot of interest and over 13 years on the payments. It feels strange but I think I can get used to it.

Food: My husband made three sourdough baguettes on Monday. Our dinner Monday was tuna-pasta-veggie salad with romaine lettuce (from the garden) and cukes (ours) and carrots, plus sourdough bread. We had more of the tuna-pasta salad on Tues. evening, with arugula from the garden, our cukes, and sautéed summer squash, Vidalia onions, and green peppers. I finished the tuna-pasta salad on Wed. while my husband had a grilled (beef) hot dog, and we both had the last of the potato salad (bought at co-op last week), local corn on the cob, and our cukes and tomatoes. We ate outside at a local restaurant on Thursday evening to celebrate our mortgage payoff! (Shrimp sui mai [dumplings] app and Caesar salad for me, garden salad with grilled chicken breast for him + garden gimlet cocktail for me and Sam’s Summer beer for him.) Friday my husband had a packed lobster roll from the grocery store ($9.99!) and I made red beans, Jasmine rice, orange bell peppers, our cilantro, and cheese for me, and we both had local corn on the cob and our cukes with humus. My husband “grilled” soy dogs in the new (gifted) air fryer on Sat. — a learning experience shall we say — and we had those with the summer squash/pepper/Vidalia sauté and our cukes + humus. I made Niçoise salads for us on Sunday.

• Garden

I worked in the garden for 5-1/2 hours this week, watering, weeding, harvesting (listed under Endings/Harvest, below), adding Neptune’s Harvest to cucumber and tomato plants, getting two cilantro plants into the ground, and pulling invasives as I noticed them. My husband worked in the garden for 1-1/2 hours this week, sheet mulching with cardboard and chips.

some pics from the garden this week

• Sleeping & Dreaming

Sleep was good this week, with all scores 85 or over (all considered “excellent” in the Samsung Fit 3 universe). I slept an average of 7 hours 33 mins per night, with an average score of 90.3, REM sleep of 14 hours exactly and deep sleep of 8 hours 41 mins. Vivid dreams.

• Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching  

Reading

BOOKS I read Ignorance and Bliss: On Not Wanting to Know (2024) by Mark Lilla. I gave it two stars out of five. I really thought I’d like this book more than I did. Lilla looks at the multiple ways individuals, groups, religions, and nations seek to not know rather than to know: evading discomfiting or disturbing information; making knowledge taboo; trying to empty ourselves of knowledge so we can be inspired (by an external source); seeking childlike innocence; and striving to recover paradise, a past we nostalgically imagine. He uses many myths (Prometheus high among them) as well as stories about people led astray by their ignorance, passages from St. Augustine and from the Bible (he’s particularly got it in for St. Paul, whom he sees as the instigator of Western populism), and a plethora of notions and examples from Freud, Plato, fictional works by Homer, Sophocles, Cervantes, Melville, Dostoevsky, Dickens, a poem by Frederich Schiller, et al, and actual historical accounts. His tone is smug in places; he disparages those who don’t rely enough on reason and experience to achieve knowledge, considering those who operate on belief or faith, and those who appreciate a mystical, magical, numinous quality to life, as being stuck in a fantasy world, taking the easy way out, children who need to grow up or sick people who need to be cured. Overall, I didn’t feel engaged when reading this book. The examples feel cherry-picked, without enough explication for many of them and too much for some. There is a strange vagueness about the book, in spite of the fact that there are many paragraphs packed with names, details, and well-constructed if slightly enigmatic sentences. An index would have been well useful.

OTHER

Interesting article (gifted link): The New Science of Inflammation by Kim Tingley, NYT, 29 July 2026.

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this poem:

Listening

Songs Shazam’d this week

Watching

House Hunter & International House Hunter episodes on dvr and a few “Death in Paradise” episodes. Bumble was into this one:

• Connections &  Community

Local Support: My husband volunteered at the local car museum for 8 hours this week. We attended the NH Craftsmen Fair for a couple of hours on Tuesday; bought a lavender bubble tea and a gift for a friend, for a grand total of less than $40. For us it’s less a shopping experience and more an art gallery visit.

Bought some items at the local farmstand on Tues., including corn on the cob, arugula, and cherry/pear tomatoes. On Wed. we bought three shirts (two for me, one for him) at a local consignment store, using mostly my consignment money. We also had lunch outside at a local bakery/café that day, where on Thursday I also stopped and bought a jasmine tea and pretzel. Also on Thursday, we had dinner outside at a local restauarant to celebrate our mortgage payoff this week. We had breakfast outside at a localish farmstand/café on Saturday morning (near a chill St. Bernard dog who reminded me of one I adored when I was a kid). On Sunday, we had lunch outside along a river at another localish café.

Relationships: We took our neighbours (J&SL) three cucumbers on Monday and came home with their air fryer!, which they no longer have a need for. We need to learn how to use it, and for what. I took three more cukes to another neighbour (WD) on Wed. and we chatted for 15 mins or so. Our good friend (JKN) sent us a package on Wed. with some books and her husband’s papers on environmental issues, which he thought we’d appreciate; texted with her on Friday to thank them. I attended my bookgroup on Thursday where nine of us spent 1.5 hours discussing Ignorance or Bliss (mentioned in the Reading section, above) and chatting. All eight Salon members met at a friend’s (RL’s) for Salon on Friday for 2.5 hours; I regret not taking a photo. Ran into a neighbour (JL) on Friday evening (on our way to hear music on the green) and chatted a few minutes with him, and on Sunday evening chatted with another neighbour (RD) we met outside walking.

• Endings/Harvest

Harvest: all the remaining ‘Little Gem’ lettuce (started to bolt); the few unripe hazelnuts the grey squirrels didn’t get; 9 cucumbers, 10 Sungold tomatoes; the second 1/3 of the garlic (still small); and some cilantro.

• All This Useless Beauty