frost and freeze

If you have an overnight frost, many of your annuals will disappear then. Wilt and perish. Many, but not all. Some will waffle -- hanging in by a thread, ultimately letting go. Or not. Some will survive by a thread. It takes a deep freeze to wipe everything out. We had frost (down to 30F/-1C), but not a freeze. Moreover, the next days are all above freezing, day and night. In other words, we are still slogging along. Wounded, but not demolished.

And we are still very very dry. I've not ever seen such a dry late summer and early fall. Will we get pounded by snow to make up for it? For us snow lovers that wouldn't be a terrible winter outcome, though I speak cautiously, because with snow you can easily have too much. Catastrophically so.

But I'm running way ahead. For now, I wake up to a cloudless, cold October morning. With some (just a few!) plants still showing their stuff.

And once again, I have morning appointments, this time quite appropriate ones -- with lung docs, and of course, I under-perform on all their tests because, well, I had this bout of pneumonia. I'm told to come back again in a few months. Which means -- write in more appointments, more reminders, more time fillers into my calendar. 

Well, no matter. For now, I am good to go. Or at least to return to the farmhouse for breakfast. Which again is very late, but all's forgiven because I have this again for my morning meal!

Not much left to the first half of the day. Just enough to put in the first bunch of tulip bulbs. 25 of them. The ones that will likely be eaten by a groundhog and/or deer before they ever bloom. One can but try!

In the afternoon, I pick up the kids.

(she's still into purple clothes)

(he loves those purple pansies... which survived!)

(her first few minutes? pounding away...)

(his? well, the current love is to mess with the tiny reject lego pieces...)

In the evening, Ed bikes, I put away the chickens, feed the cats. There should be a dinner plan in place, but it's one of those days when nothing, absolutely nothing seems like it's worth the effort. Those are the evenings when a big salad and a couple of eggs will do. 

We do always have the eggs.  Fewer now each day. The hens take a pause. They dont need a deep freeze to slow down in their laying. Ed reminds me, too, that they're getting old. Well now, aren't we all!

my Stockholm knee

It was cold, but it stayed just above the freezing mark overnight. Still, it was very cold. Stepping out in the morning, I felt that winter chill of an early walk to the barn.

Feed animals, get kitchen in order, cut up fruits for the populace (for kids, for Ed, for me), shout a "see you later" to Ed and I'm off. I have my appointment with the doc who replaced my left knee a year and a half ago. He is to do an assessment of my right knee now. 

That knee had been the marvel of strength, needing no intervention at all. Beautifully functional, never giving any sign of trouble. Until my big daylong walk through Stockholm. It decided then and there to show its true aged face (does a knee have a face?) and it has been wobbly ever since. Today, my doc and I consult. The big question is: do the replacement of my Stockholm knee now, or try some tricks first to forestall its deterioration. 

Typically I do not wait. I move forward quickly and put things behind me. A replaced knee would be huge bother for a year, but it would then give me a trouble-free existence til my deathbed. And yet, a fake knee never fully bends. A fake knee takes a chunk out of your life as you tote ice machines and do endless exercises to get it to work in the way that it should. 

So I opt to wait. To medicate, to do therapy, to stall for more time. I dont want to give over another year to healing right now. And so I say -- see you later doc and please dont retire. He promised me he wont. Not in the next decade anyway.

 

Breakfast is very late, but oh is it worth the wait! I stop over at Madison Sourdough to stock up on stuff including on these:

 

 

Honestly, they are up there with the ones in Perros-Guirec. Indeed, better, I think, than the one from the bakery by the port! 

All I have time today is for 30 bulbs to (sort of) go in. And it's a struggle. Ground hard as a rock. You know how they're supposed to go into the ground about 6 inches, measured from the bulb tip? Ha ha ha. Predominantly clay soil, without rain, turns into solid clay. The chickens watch me chip away at it and then proceed to undo my diggings, thinking perhaps that I am there just to loosen things up for them a bit. A frustrating final act of the gardening season. And not so final -- I finished the daffodils and have done none of the tulips, allium etc yet. Sigh,..

 

And then -- off to school to pick up the kids.

(look who else is attending their school??)

It's not a straightforward return today, as Snowdrop has Girl Scouts. But eventually everyone is where they should be and importantly, I am on the couch once more, still working to get back to some level of strength appropriate for a sprotive senior who is just getting over pneumonia.

One big cold snap tonight. Such a good word -- snap! The frost will definitely snap shut the gardens at the farmette. And maybe that's a good thing...

with love...

October Monday

As far as I can figure out, all my grandchildren are afraid of spiders. Sure, the youngest -- Juniper and Sandpiper -- aren't really expressive about it, but the older two more than compensate for that. Snowdrop calls out every time a daddy-long-legs (or a cellar spider) is in her path. She doesn't want me to squash it, just to pick it up and take it outside. Which I do. Again and again. Because the fact is, the farmhouse is not free of spiders. 

Most of them reside high up in corners that are unreachable by us and I tell the kids that anything that is unreachable and does not cross their path stays there. The thing is, Ed and I do have a great deal of respect for our spiders (and spider lookalikes). I'll admit to even having one who lives by the corner of my bed. When I see it in the evening, I smile. 

I was, therefore, enchanted, positively enchanted by the gentle opinion piece by Margaret Renkl in the NYTimes this morning. She, too, likes spiders, though she seems to like them on the outside of her window pane. Not a real spider aficionado, by my count!

It's not that I am bug crazy. And weird spiders do give me pause. Most spiders can't puncture human skin, but there are those who can and no, I dont like bug bites any more than you do. Fun fact: daddy long legs are known to attack and kill spiders that would harm humans. And by the way, they are not even spiders but opilionids: they lack silk and venom glands. We think of it this way: spiders (and opilionids) have a life and moreover, they are the most effective insect control you can employ in your home, trapping and killing mosquitoes, mites, clothes moths, earwigs, flies. What's there not to like?

Inside, a daddy long legs can live for up to three years. Outside, the frost tonight will kill off most of them. Their egg sacks will survive. New spiders will emerge in spring. You've read Charlotte's Web, haven't you? The cycle continues.

I count this as the seasonal turning point for us: the night that frost comes to farmette lands. It may come tonight, it most assuredly will come tomorrow night. On the one hand, nothing changes. The birds will dive for the crab apples despite the burst of cold. The woodpecker will continue to peck at the corner of our house. (Such a remarkable thing, nature's evolution is, allowing that bird to have protection of its pea brain so that it can absorb all those shocks!) The leaves will still cling to the branches of the maples, the black walnut, and yes, the dreadful honey locust ("dreadful" only because it shades the Big Bed and drops huge seed pods over everything). And yet, that frost marks a change for us. The annuals will disappear. The spiders will have done their life's work. The heavier jacket hangs now in the kitchen, because I can longer just dash out in my hoodie to feed the animals. Us humans need help keeping warm outside. And inside. The furnace is on. Winter is just around the corner.

Morning walk...

(Renkl got it exactly right: October sunlight is stunning! But then, so is February's. So different, and so beautiful...)

(Ed urged me to take a look at our one successful artichoke plant out back...)

(Right next to it -- our very successful lavender patch, which did a rebloom this October...)

(Perhaps an award should go to my sweet peas: do you see the one that climbed all the way up the crab apple?)

Breakfast of oatmeal. Tis the season. And snipped lavender blooms. Tis not the season.

Planting bulbs: just 25.

Today is a day of no school for the kids. I can't say I have entirely shaken my pneumonia just yet, but I'm making progress and Snowdrop requires no work for me so while her brother attends an afternoon of sewing at his sewing class (the little guy has a new hobby he loves!), I pick up the girl for an afternoon at the farmhouse. With a stop first at the Arboretum because we do not want to miss the fall colors this year.

(You know what's not supposed to blooming right now? Lilac.)

Colors? Just starting to emerge...

We find trees that head the show.

It's cold and in any case, I'm not in top form so we do not stay long. Still, I'm glad we went. I haven't missed this October walk yet in the last decades! I'm glad we could squeeze it into the afternoon.

At the farmhouse: a quick lunch, reading, math, play lines -- the usual.

(computer math -- she asks for help on this one....)

And in the evening I do a modest postponed "Sunday dinner" for the young family. 

(shows me his sewing class creation; "and it glows in the dark!")

(for the love of carrots)

(if those two get to be on my lap, is there room for a third?)

I don't rush to clean up everything afterwards. My bedtimes this week are on the very early side and I sleep (would you believe it!) a solid 9 or even 10 hours -- I am that worn out by this bug. I sit for a while with Ed on the couch and think about October. And frost.  Growing season behind me. All that's left is to look for beauty (and it's there!) in the barren landscape that will ours for the colder months of the year.

with love...

Sunday rest

By now I should be popping with energy. I had a vacation. Time off. Relaxing seaside walks. Even a massage. And yet, here I am, huddled under my comfy sheep blanket (it has pictures of sheep on it), postponing Sunday dinner, debating if I have the energy to put in any of the bulbs. Honestly, I'll be happy to do anything outside at all.

I do walk this morning to the barn (a misty morning, pretty in its own way)...

And I have breakfast with Ed...

And then he and I both hit the couches. (I at least have an excuse -- pneumonia; he's just keeping me company. Or maybe he feels compelled to teach Dance how to work the computer.)

Bummer, you say? Well yes, though it gives me a chance to sit back and reflect. To post comments to people's comments in the NYTimes (how is that for a total time suck). To think about how lucky I've been, because even this bout of illness came at a time when it is easy to fix and attend to -- at home, as opposed to in the small town of Perros-Guirec. 

I read about how on that rainy day I had in Paris, the city did indeed flood -- or at least some of the metro station flooded. How they did receive more inches of rain than on any one day before. I probably didn't help myself then by soaking my shoes, socks, pants -- and yet I managed to hold off from getting beaten down by it all until I got home. 

So here I am, on the couch, recovering nicely, while the winds howl and the temperatures drop outside. 

And what about the bulbs? Well, there's no way I can plant 50 of them today, but a little goes a long way: I do get myself up and out to do 25. In easy soil. After that? Couch time once again. With many cups of warm tea to help me along.

Toward evening I decide to bring in the chosen few pots of annuals -- ones that I think have an okay chance of doing well on the partly sunny windowsills here in the winter. The frost wont come until tomorrow night, but it's getting darn close already and I see no reason to leave them out one more day.The rest? Well, enjoy these last couple of days of color, because by Wednesday it's all likely to disappear.

Are we ready for winter yet? Gettin' there.

with love...

you do things you love...

I was just reading an article (in the Washington Post) about people living on Casey Key, Florida. It's right where Milton came in on the Gulf Coast and it's just a stone's throw where my good friend lives. It struck me how much people who live right on the ocean love that lifestyle. The sound of water. The beach, there for you, every single moment of your life. The sunsets, the wildlife, the vegetation. All of it. And now they're having these often life course-changing discussions. Is it worth it? And some will decide yes it is and some will say no it's not. And I thought how the way we live is often riddled with these micro and macro dilemmas. My frequent travels are draining -- financially and they can wreck my sleeping cycle for days on end. And, the last three trips I've come back sick. Some virus in April, Covid in June and now I seem to have pneumonia, which maybe wasn't from the trip itself, but maybe it was, and in any case, I'm sure it got exacerbated by the pace of my travels. Travels, a glass of wine -- now thought to be extremely hazardous to your health and yet I love my spritz before dinner!  And my Kouign Amann for breakfast in Brittany -- nothing healthy about that, and I can go on like this: decisions big and small, risks we take. 

Of course, it's always worth it until it's not. The beach life is worth it until that last final hurricane that wrecks your equilibrium (and your home), the lovely walks along the Brittany coast are certainly worth it, until you have to deal with that cough that leads you on Saturday morning after the return not to enjoy a leisurely moment, but to spend time, instead, in the Urgent Care of your clinic, because your lungs are acting up. The glass of wine -- still worth it, though my goodness, it's gone down to just that, because anything more and I know I am asking for trouble. 

At a certain point in life, you should take fewer risks, no? Ed probably would disagree. He'll sail into the ocean in his old age if a good opportunity presents itself (meaning the boat and crew and destination are to his liking). Some people in that article on Casey Key are staying, despite the ravages to their homes following two hurricanes this season. I'll keep on traveling as long as the savings last and my health isn't teetering on some brink of horrible destruction. The glass of wine? That stays for now. But I know for sure that lifestyle choices can change instantly. Stuff happens, you realize it's time to change.

For now, I'm hackin' away with a case of pneumonia. But feeling good and reasonably strong otherwise! Strong enough to walk over to the deal with the animals early on...

Strong enough to go from clinic to Tati's Cafe to pick up some cinnamon rolls for breakfast and then to have a lovely few moments with Ed...

Strong enough to bike over with him to the pharmacy to pick up my medicines.

And then to put in the next bulbs into the flower fields. But just twenty. I blame the rocky soil. Well, and my exhaustion!

Someday maybe I'll come up with a different calculus, but today, I'm sticking with my course of sail. Without a boat of course. That's Ed's domain. 

with love...

it's still about the weather

I can't help but feel a combination of marvel, confusion, pleasure and exasperation with the weather here in Wisconsin. It's still dry, sunny and warm. Today's high -- 79F/26C. Ed says it was cooler last week, but not by much. He watered the pots for me and I will continue to keep them going until... Tuesday! That is the predicted possible first frost day for us. No sense in doing anything after that.

I'm up early. We both are. I check on the animals, on the dried out garden. Wait, something is still blooming! Oh those gladioli murealis!

Breakfast? It was early and we had so much to catch up on that I completely neglected my camera, until we were well done with our morning meal. Here, you can still see the flowers I picked for the table -- nasturtium. Also still blooming outside.

Then I turn to the job of unpacking, laundry, grocery restocking. The normal "return stuff." Not too bad this time around. Ed's been trying harder not to slum it down in my absence and so the house is actually in good shape!

Emails to write, reviews to post.

And now for the garden: my box of bulbs arrived. I buy in quantities. I have nearly 325 to put in -- daffodils mostly, but, too, crocuses, tulips, allium, hyacinthoides (like bluebells only different), snowdrops, and a blue anemonie that I'm trying out for the first time.

This is my last gardening job for 2024 and it's a big one! But oh, the rewards, come spring!

I start off slowly.  Fifty in today. Seems plenty, frankly. Now I just have to keep up the pace and they'll be in by the end of next weekend.

It's time to pick up Snowdrop. Sparrow is under the weather, and her violin teacher is under the weather, so it's just the girl and just at the farmhouse. 

To her it always seems "forever since she was last here," and she buzzes with enthusiasm for the various games with Ed, for her book reading, for her predictable snacks.  

The day is in other ways unusual as well: I drive Snowdrop home and linger for a bit to catch up with her mom. By the time I get home toward dusk, I am significantly sleepy.

Still, I cook up a pot of chili. It'll be good to have something in the fridge for the next couple of days. And of course, after dinner, I can hardly keep my eyes open. Ed looks around for a movie to watch, but I tell him that it's impossible for me to stay awake through anything at all. Tomorrow. I'll return to all those lovely things tomorrow. Right now? Sleep of course!

leaving Paris

Paris. One last walk this morning. The rains pause for a few hours. Umbrella packed, everything packed and ready to go.

I come down to breakfast.

 

 

Then I go out. To walk the neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One last time.

 

Everything about the trip back is straightforward. Flight to Detroit -- on time. I watch three French movies, two quite beautiful (Brothers, and Like a Son). Detroit airport itself is chaotic, but I had quite the surprise at passport control: the agent checking me in said -- "you know you're partially approved for Global Entry." Well yes, I did the paperwork for it two years ago, but then I let it slide because there are no interviews anywhere near Madison for this. But, in Detroit, there sits an officer in the afternoons, right at the entry point and he will do an interview if you're partially approved. I thought my application had expired, but it hadn't. And so there you have it -- I got my speedy border entry permit today. It is possibly the least useful thing I own, as the entry lines in Detroit are rarely long, but still, as a frequent traveler, I have some pride at finally having completed this one step toward a smoother process. Long flights and layovers are tough. If you sprinkle the journey with little perks, you feel a heck of a lot better -- disproportionately to the service you receive! Us humans like to feel special!

Flight to Madison -- leaves on time, arrives on time. I do have a bit of a delay at my arrival, because I've been around enough people in planes trains and automobiles, museums, restaurants, buses, subways -- often masked, to be sure, but still, I test for Covid before meeting up with Ed. Thankfully I seem to have stayed clear of the coughs sneezes and snorts that are so much a part of fall and winter travel.

Home. I ask Ed for updates. Everything's quiet -- he tells me.

With so much love...