so many...

The more you work on your garden, the more mistakes you'll make. That is my conclusion and I wont back away from it.

Say, for example, you're 73. And hypothetically speaking, say you have been gardening, oh, since 1981, so for 45 years. You'd think that by now you will have made most of the mistakes that one can make, so if, for example, you have a plot of land and you put in a new garden, you're golden, right? All your learning will have paid off! Your magnum opus, piece de resistance, in all its magnificence, will be fabulous and close to perfect. Oh, sure, there may be outside forces that could kill the whole thing. Storms, freeze and thaw cycles, infestations, predators -- they could destroy your thing of great beauty. But it will be a thing of great beauty, right?

Things that I neglected to pay attention to (at the age of 73 after 45 years of gardening):

1. The sun does not shine down in the same way in all seasons. A spot (for example, one where you chose to grow roses) that was 100% sunny in the summer may now be... more shady. 

2. When you order roses and you are watching your budget, you tend to pick up smaller, younger plants. They'll take longer to mature and bloom, but they are less expensive. But then, perhaps you should not create a rose garden where you will have also inserted the great estate roses from the Live Sales that are already several years old and therefore huge (but at fantastic sale prices). Because the babies will be well hidden by their older, grander cousins. (In working with perennials, you never worry about the age of a plant you put in. With roses, you have to worry about it. Or be sorry.) 

3. Everyone says -- plant roses in the Fall! It's the best time for them, they'll have a chance to establish a good strong root system, you'll have beautiful plants come spring. To my knowledge, Fall started yesterday. Thus I am abiding by that directive. I'm planting in the Fall. And early Fall at that. One-day-old Fall. So how is it that AI tells me that the last rose planting should take place no later than 5 weeks before the first frost? That plants might die if you put them in too close to a frost. Or come out warped in the spring, or basically look awful, as if an amateur planted them? As it is, I'm lucky, because the next ten days have no frost in them, even though Madison's first frost dates are typically thought to be between October 1- 9. If you plant in the Fall season here, how is it that you're giving your babes five safe weeks ahead of frost? And yet, all the nurseries are shipping roses left and right, including to Zone 5 places like mine. I don't understand!

I could go on, but I'm afraid you'll have tuned out. Rosarians tend to overdo it on the rose talk.

 

So, back to the early morning. The light now is just beautiful on a sunny start to the day.

While Millie sniffs, my eyes follow a butterfly. Her yellow looks gorgeous against the aster. Next to her -- a bee. 

 

 

Then she moves on, so that it's yellow on yellow. It's hard for me to look at this picture and think that the butterfly could be a male. But in fact, it could be either, or both. Some butterflies can indeed be both male and female -- a split-gender as it were. This particular butterfly is called the "Little Yellow." Sadly, it cannot survive our winters. The Little Yellow does a one way migration from the south, then dies off as our days get cold.

 

 

 

 Breakfast, now as usual, in the reading nook, by the window.

 

 

 

Wednesday isn't a doggie daycare day for Millie, but I make an exception today: I have the last of the sod to rip out and 9 roses to plant (leaving me with 15 more, but those haven't arrived yet, so 9 it is for the day). If Millie stayed home, I'd have to crate her for a good chunk of the day. She has such fun at daycare -- I take her there to be with other dogs instead.

Back at home, I work nonstop. Well, I pause when Ed drops by to help me with three tiny chores -- putting up the number sign in the back of the house (along the driveway), attaching the "feet" to my ceder planter, and tightening the screws on my stool. Ed remains stronger than me, despite my shoveling and stone and soil lugging frenzy this summer.

Since it's a day of roses, let me post this, from today:

 

 

They're not from my rose garden. They're from the nursery and I got them for being such a good and loyal customer and participant in the Live shows on Thursday. Only this Thursday I'll have to pass on the Live rose event. When they do their surprise price drops (sometimes down to $1 for a rose bush), I'm too tempted. And I really dont have space this year for anything more. Besides, in a little while, I wont even be 5 days before frost, let alone 5 weeks.

with so much love... 

the incredible power of a fruit fly

The fruit fly is tiny. About 3 to 4 millimeters in size. Its brain? The size of a poppy seed. Here's what else I learned today: a fruit fly can kill you.

How is that possible? Let me describe just exactly how my life nearly ended at the hands of a fruit fly.

It was a very normal morning. Cool of course, but, it's the first day of Fall, so yes, it's going to be cool. I slept a good six hours -- a vast improvement over the four the previous night. Breakfast? I'm still improvising. Skip the tray, lay it out on the window sill. Easier to reach while I'm reading.

Millie is curious about the offerings. 

I give her a bit of yogurt in a "pup cup." She licks it, but with that attitude of "doing me a favor." We both doze off afterwards. Sleepy weather. But I force myself to get going. Lots to do in the garden today!

In the car you go, Millie! And we're off.

Happy Dogz (her doggie daycare place) is a 17 minute drive, mostly along the Beltline. (For the non-Madisonians, the Beltline is one of those city highways that wraps itself around the city, or at least the southern part of it. The speed limit is 55 mph (88.5km), but many stray into the low 60s. Still, it's a "polite" highway. Many of us use it daily and we know where the bottlenecks are, and we know that it empties out as we reach the western section. Most of us are careful drivers. When a maniac speeds by, we all shake our heads and hope he or she will get stopped by a cop. 

Careful as I am, perhaps I am also a bit complacent. Today, I sort of lost it in the car. I had left a bag full of compost over the weekend to take over to the farmette and it had leaked. I managed to clean up the mess yesterday. Or so I thought. On my morning drive today, I notice the fruit flies. There weren't hundreds of them, but there was a good handful and they were irritating to the max, flying around me, the windshield, darting quickly, raising my ire and raising, too, my protective instincts: they must be driving Millie mad back there. They're certainly driving me mad! I start swatting at them. With my elbow. My palm. Clapping, slapping, with only partial success. Fruit flies know how to evade the likes of me. 

I drop Millie at the daycare (she seemed unruffled by the fruit fly saga) and turn around to return home. Same highway. And that's when I saw it -- a crash, just ahead of me. Many vehicles were involved and one was completely flipped over. How could that even happen on this city highway? How does a car flip upside down? Of course, there were ambulances on the scene. Of course there were. I expect to be reading about it in tomorrow's press.

And I thought -- that could  have been me. Two minutes earlier, distracted by fruit flies, I could have been in that mess. I could have died at the hands of a tiny fruit fly.

All this to say that yet again, I consider myself lucky. Jumping from stone to stone on a path through turbulent waters, teetering sometimes, but somehow, I have managed to stay afloat. Remarkable.

*.    *.    *

Fourteen years ago today I attended my daughter's wedding. How fortunate that those two met and fell in love! How lucky for me that they live nearby with their bevy of kids. Happy anniversary, you two! May you grow and prosper and be lucky in life!

*.    *.    *

I work in the garden. Enough said. No, wait: not enough said: I toiled today! From 11 until 3 (that is 4 hours in case your math skills aren't up to snuff), I dug holes and shoveled out turf. I dislodged rocks and carried all of the debris to the vacant lot. There was a reason for my insanity (such hard work!). They're going to do something about that lot tomorrow (it's leeching mud into people's driveways) and it may well be that my dumping ground will disappear. And by the way, my driveway is not covered with leeching mud because I dumped turf in the corner of the lot closest to me. The turf held back the stream of mud that everyone else got. That was unintended consequence for sure!

*.    *.    *

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop after school. 

 

 

 

Yesterday (which was not my caregiving day), for the first time, she took the school bus home. Most kids love that ride. Snowdrop, who is enthusiastic about pretty much everything that comes her way, hated it. Why?? -- we ask her. Too loud, no friends are on the route,  mean bus driver. Since I would have to leave my house the same time, whether or not she takes the bus, I offer to pick her up on my days, at least until she gets used to the ride, the noise, the kids, the mean bus driver. 

On our way home, we stop at the market to get some flowers for her parents. 

And back at her house, we read, but honestly, it can be a challenge for me these days. Why is the print in books now in shades of gray? When did it stop being black? 

When we're done, she tells me that one of the books I purchased for her during the Barnes&Noble outing last Friday is not one she will ever read. (It's pretty depressing -- dont know how we missed that in the store.) Since we have a few minutes left, I suggest we return it right away (or else I'll forget about it and it will be a wasted purchase). And of course, once we're at the bookstore, she pleads for their hot chocolate.

It's getting late and I really should return her home, but she really really wants to go with me to pick up Millie. "I haven't seen her for weeks!" 

And then Millie and I drive home, I see that there are still some fruit flies in the car. I resist the urge to swipe at them. After all, they have a lifespan of what, 50 days? Yes yes, I know, each fly can lay 500 eggs, but I'm not worried. We are in Wisconsin. Fruit flies, eggs and all, cannot survive in freezing temperatures.

with so much love... 

trivial pursuits

Planning a trip (whether or not it actually happens). Binge reading mystery novels. Baking. Sitting at Borders Bookstore coffee shop with a stack of interesting books that I have no intention of buying and sipping a tall latte. Watching a rom-com on repeat in the years when they used to be actually good and funny. Planting a new garden and especially a new rose garden. These are examples of plunges I have taken in my life, ones that then, unexpectedly, swallowed me whole. Ones that I cant wait to return to and try to fit in at  every spare moment. 

Because I lose myself in said activity, much of everyday stuff gets shortchanged. Is this why I have been staying up so late every day now? Lat night it was 1:30 before I called it quits (and no, Millie did not want to sleep in the next morning). 

Right now, I am sitting at my computer nervously watching the clock move forward. Soon it will be dusk. Soon I cannot dig anymore. I want to be out removing sod and digging more holes, even though at the moment, I do not have any roses to plant. 

Obsessive? Perhaps. 

Rose gardens are, in fact, like wine: you enjoy it, you want more. There is a group of rose planters who attend the "live" sale online every week, then follow up with reviewing their roses on FaceBook. Judging by their posts, they're mostly women, and yes, they are obsessive, and many of them are quite rich. They must be, because they buy enormous roses in enormous quantities and have husbands (yes husbands!) yelling at them for buying too many. (Some of these same husbands then dig the holes for the new arrivals.)  I am neither rich, nor do I have the spaces they do for rose gardens (they post photos, so you can tell), nor a husband yelling at me or digging for me, so that dynamic is totally lost on me and yet, let's be honest -- I share their passion for this flower. (I have been growing perennials for more than forty years and I don't know of a comparable perennial buying/growing group that likes to brag about how many boxes of new plants came by UPS that day.) What is it about roses? They are not especially easy to grow and though the bigger plants can be expensive, the younger smaller ones cost no more no less than any other flower you may buy for your garden. So what's happening here? Are roses the new white wine we once drank before/during/and after dinner?

For me, they are both demanding of physical labor (I like that!) and, as I've said before, they take my mind off of everything else. And they allow me to create a vision of a flowered future. A rosy one at that!

 

So, reluctantly, I am up with Millie early-ish, bundled now in sweatpants and my fleece over a sweatshirt, that's how quickly we jumped into autumn. 

Breakfast.

And then I plant three roses and dig out some mud. I have blisters now to show for it. (One of the roses went into Millie's yard, so the girl could hang out with me while I worked.

I also stopped by the farmette to drop off food for Ed and to pick up some more compost. I visited for a few minutes with him (but only for a few -- I was in a hurry to return to my digging!) and also with his one remaining hen.

She lays very small eggs and she is very lonely, as all her mates have been taken away by predators. She sleeps and poops in the garage and she occasionally hangs out with the wild turkey family that inhabits the farmette. I'm not sure they are happy with this, but so far, no squabbles have ensued.

And then I worked some more on my garden, forcing myself to do the unpleasant -- mow the lawn, which, admittedly, is a much smaller task than it was just two months ago!

(Millie, on a walk: her retriever genes kicking in...)

 

 Back to my rose notes. I'm moving things around tonight, on paper. Does it matter whether All Dressed Up is in back of Loves Me Loves Me Not? Will Princess Anne feel snubbed because she is very much behind Princess Charlene d Monaco? I put in Mill on Floss today and I forgot to check it off on my site map. Oh, I see that she is next to Emily Bronte, with Nye Bevan not too far. (Did you know Nye Bevan was the Welshman who, in 1948 created the National Health Service in the UK? And can you believe it -- they've had national health care over there since 1948?!)

I can go on like this until 1:30 again if I don't rein it in. Such a fabulous thing it is, to grow roses. And to think that they may even bloom someday!

with so much love... 

 

why do kids like playing in the mud?

I just don't see the attraction: mud is slimy and it clings to everything -- your hands (or gardening gloves), shovels, buckets, anything it touches, leaving a thick deposit of goopy yuk. Dirt is beautiful. Mud is gross.

 I have a lot of mud in Steffi's Yard.

It still is raining this morning, albeit lightly and they are telling me this is the tail end of our wet weather. Of course, many of my dugout holes are still either wet with standing water or muddy in the extreme. In fact, the whole garden is muddy. Everything squishes. No surprise here -- my yard got a total of 6.5 inches (16.5 cms) of rain in the past two days.

Many of the rose blooms have given up and dropped their petals. Many, but not all.

(an Eden climber)

 

(Sweet Mademoisalle)

 

 

And no, I haven't given up on my other flowers. Some are drying up for the year, but some remain magnificently vibrant and colorful.

 

Breakfast -- now permanently inside. Indeed, it's cool enough for me to turn on the furnace. Just to see if it's working and to give the interior a little burst of warm air.

 

 

 

 

I'm not going to delay planting, mud or no mud. When Millie naps, I work on the rose bed. And it is its own special gardening misery. 

I cart away some of the mud. Weighted down by water and boulders, it's all heavy stuff, even in the wheelbarrow. But, I do succeed geting four more roses in. I have only 28 left for the season (no, I'm not a math dunce. I, um, added one more this morning. I had a reason, though I don't quite remember now what that reason could have been). 

Just after the noon hour, Millie and I meet up with Ed at Tati's. My pup is almost as excited about going there as she is entering Happy Dogz daycare. And she has finally recognized Ed as one of us. No more introductory barking.

Afterwards? You guessed it: more mud work.

In the evening I cook dinner for the young family, even though they're not here for it. At the moment three out of the five are sick and I'm not in a hurry to pick up whatever it is that's going around at the moment. I hand over the food  and return home.

  

 

 

Looking through my email, I see that there is yet another friend who is very sick. The trouble is -- every one of these friend illnesses isn't trivial. It's not a cold or a gastric upset. Mending will take time. I suppose we all need different parts of us repaired as we get older, but still, I hate to see how much the illnesses have affected their lives. And yes, I am grateful for every hour where I dont have to think about treatments, or worry about cures. If you're healthy, you are by definition lucky. Charmed in fact. At this time in my life, that is exactly how I feel! You too Millie?

(roses and sweet peas and Millie)

 

 

with so much love... 

flooded

Yesterday, I called it quits just before midnight. I noted I had 33 roses to plant (and five miscellaneous tiny perennial cuttings that are so petite that they dont even count). About a half dozen were waiting for me on the porch. The holes are dug for all but nine. Saturday is a great day for gardening! Better get some rest in preparation for it.

I took Millie out for her last bathroom run. All was quiet outside, although the wind had picked up considerably. We came back in and literally one minute later the skies exploded -- with thunder and pelting rain that was so loud that you could have mistaken it for a subway pulling into the station in NYC Well, close to it. Millie was no more no less scared than she typically is when strange noises rattle her. But it was clear neither of us would fall asleep until this band of storms passed. We snuggled in bed together waiting, eventually me reading and she staring out the window at the unexpected flashes. 

This morning was the first time that I felt no rush to get up and neither did she. We lazed in bed until just before 8 -- that has to be some kind of a milestone for my girl! 

 

The torrential rain caused flooding in parts of Madison and I went outside with trepidation: how would by newly planted roses fare?

A quick scouting of the yard revealed minimal damage, although many of the dug out holes waiting for the roses were completely waterlogged. 

We got a lot of rain! Many inches of it. The question is, of course, how much more will come our way? Right now, I think the roses are okay. But another torrent of rain could do some major damage. 

Breakfast, after I towel-dried Millie.

Afterwards, I prepped the boxed and potted roses for their move to the garden, but after Millie retired for her morning nap, I saw that I could do very little out in the garden.  Mud, standing water -- foes of a person who wants to plant. One modest success: I put two roses into holes that were relatively dry. The rain had paused, but it wasn't a long pause. By the time I was tidying up my second rose, the light rain didn't feel so light at all. I was soaked. 

My goal had been to do a lot of outdoor work today. That did not happen. I did a little. 31 more to plant. When it stops raining and when the water drains. I will say this: the window for purchasing new plants has closed. But planting? It doesn't end with the roses. I seem to have ordered spring bulbs early in the summer. In bulk, for a total of 146 of daffodils, tulips, crocuses, bluebells. What was I thinking?? I can only hope for good weather in October!

This was my day then: a pause in the rain has me out removing sod. Walking Millie, surveying the landscape. A drizzle and I ignore it. A steady rain and I'm inside, drying off myself, my pup -- until there is a pause in the rain again and I continue. Start stop, start stop. 

 (wet me, wet Millie)

 

 

(Millie, you need a serious brushing out after you dry! there, that's better...)

 

 

But I cannot say I dont enjoy it. I'm finally nearing the completion of my rose project. It's exciting to have gone through it all -- from a very modest start (just six roses along the fence line), to something much more ambitious. 

I cant wait until spring!

with so much love... 

 

Millie!

It's classic, isn't it? My pup has a basket with toys of every shape and size. Squeaky, chewable, tough, soft, with delicious tags to tear off, with flavors of beef, bacon, chicken, peanut butter. And what does she choose to do when I lose myself in my rose notes this morning over breakfast?

Indignant that I should again demand space in the corner chair, she goes off in search of trouble, settling after a while on the small wool covered stool I added yesterday. I really need to put my feet up when I am sitting on the couch. The stool is cheap and though innocuous and not especially beautiful, it is just the right height and some poor underpaid women in India or maybe Vietnam, I cant remember, made wool covers for these pieces, making them very comfortable, especially with the coming winter, where wool seems so perfectly hygge! 

When the room is quiet, very quiet, and I do not see a pup stretched out somewhere close by taking a beauty nap, I know that I must stop everything and go to see what is getting destroyed behind my back. But the thing is, the house is pretty Millie proof. Oh, she has been known to go upstairs and mess up my bed, and recently, she just loves to lift the Turkish (or is it Moroccan?) rug and go after the pad that I put down underneath to keep it from sliding when she has her zoomies. And yes, several of the throw pillows on the couch have corners chewed off, but otherwise, what other trouble could Millie possibly get into?! 

I didn't figure on her excitement over the arrival of the new stool.

Millie!

It is the first time that I actually raise my voice at her. A very loud NO follows. She looks at me inquisitively. What does it even mean, this word "no?" I heard it once at Doggie Daycare when the trainer caught me picking up another dog's poop to see what it tastes like, but at home? Could it be that my mommy is shouting at me??  She shrugs it off as a possible weird noise humans sometimes make and returns to sniff the stool cover. But by now I'm prepared -- bitter apple spray! (Have you ever tasted that stuff? I have. It's disgusting. Worse than dog poop, though I admit to never having tried the latter.)

*     *     *

I feel this morning like one does after drinking way too much wine the night before: I am dealing with the post-rose-purchase hangover. Getting nine new roses last night during the very tense live rose sale (online) was exhilarating. You have to be on your toes and take some risks! I did, and (thank goodness) it paid off. However, going outside today to survey the landscape was daunting. Oh, there's room for them in the side yard and when they bloom, people walking the path that abuts that space will have a lovely rose garden to sniff and admire (unless I kill all the new plants, which is not impossible of course). But extending that rose garden means that I will have ten more holes to dig in the toughest soil on the property, and of course, I will have to remove all that sod as well, and I will have to rearrange the rose plan because now I have sizing and color issues afresh to address.

And so, while Millie is at day care, griping about her weird human mama to the other dogs, I set to it. And yes, it takes me over an hour to remove a few inches of sod and dig just one hole. And carting away the stones and the clay and the sod, uphill, because I'm planting at the bottom of an incline -- that's another chunk of time. When I am done, I have to sprint/speed to get to the boys' school on time.

*      *      *

I try to come up with a special adventure for Fridays when I have all three kids after school (otherwise, the boys glue themselves to their tablet until their time runs out, after which they complain that their time has run out). Since today is a wet day (yet again), I take them to Barnes & Noble Bookstore. 

 (Sandpiper likes to be prepared for big rains)

 

It's rare that kids these days go to bookstores and indeed, Sandpiper was a little uncertain about the purpose of the excursion. When I told him he could pick out a book or two or three -- something he didn't have at home, he spent a good chunk of our time there lifting random books from the stacks, one at a time, and asking if they had it at home. 

 

 

 

The older two quickly lose themselves in their own searches. 

 

 

 

It's a huge bookstore and I have to admit -- there were times when I did not know where at least two of the three kids were, but eventually we found each other and found good books and we took our sizable stack to the Starbucks there, and the kids got treats and we did what I had done so very often just a few decades ago -- we sat at the table, sipping, munching, and looking through our precious loot. 

 

 

When I was nearing retirement, I thought this is what I would be doing once work stopped: looking at books at a bookstore cafe for hours on end.  Shows you how inaccurate our predictions are about our future.

 

*     *     *

Millie and I come home to a bunch of boxes with roses in them. I want to work on this mega gardening project this weekend, but of course, it looks like it's going to be pretty wet out there. 

Eh, who can predict anything these days! One day at a time. Right now there are roses and there is a yard and soon those two will come together to form a rose garden.

That is the hope.

with so much love... 

still wet

I am well aware of the fact that this humidity, drizzle, dampness, with the occasional heavy shower, are not what roses like. Before I began planting them, I always believed roses liked rain. They are, in my mind, an English flower -- all the great rose growers seem to come from England (okay, also Germany and France, but when I think of beautiful rose gardens, I think of England) and I view England as being... soggy. A place where you should never leave your home without an umbrella. Ergo, roses -- a flower that thrives there -- must like soggy, drippy, wet weather, no?

Actually no.  Root rot and fungal diseases -- they're what you get with a steady stream of rainy days. As for my thoughts about English roses, well, it turns out that the countries that grow the most roses are Colombia and Ecuador, followed by Bulgaria -- which grows roses massively for perfume. In terms of exports and sales, even Poland does more with roses than England. 

But here you really have to differentiate between roses grown for commercial purposes and garden roses. With the latter, Great Britain does in fact dominate. The English dude David Austin revolutionized rose growing with the development of old fashioned shapes and fragrances and in recent years, he joined the Germans in focusing on disease resistance in these roses. France and Canada followed.

So why do all this in England, given its wet climate? Well, in the past at least, England had many qualities that are good for roses: consistent but not excessive moisture (rather than downpours with sitting water), moderate temps (rather than scorching heat), and perhaps most importantly -- growers who are keenly aware of climate and growing conditions, and who adapt their breeding programs accordingly. 

But here, in south-central Wisconsin, I have already planted some 50 roses (scattered in the four corners of Steffi's House and Garden), and I have some 20 more to go and let me tell you, all this rain, coupled with poor base soil (I can only dig out only so much of the crap in my little plot of land) has me worried. I'm picking off black spotted leaves every day now and though it's all still under control, all I see is rain in the forecast and the sight of all those clouds and raindrops on my screen ties my stomach up in knots.

Breakfast -- lovely, in my corner.

 

 

 

Millie is still unsure about me being in her chair every morning... 

But in a couple of months, I hope she'll finally accept the fact that this chair is for both of us!

Though most of the time -- just for her.

 

 

 

I take the girl to doggie day care, then stop over at the farmhouse to unburden Ed of some more of the loose items I'd left behind. This is the hateful stuff that you haven't the heart to throw out, yet there's no real reason to keep it either. Stacks of old photographs that never quite made it into any album. Language books, books on walks in and around Paris, unused notebooks, sticker books for the kids, puzzle books, card games. A lobster pot. A Christmas tree stand that I would only use again if I were to go with a big, living tree. But am I ever going to do that? Unlikely. I could go on. This stuff is scattered on the floor of the farmhouse sunroom and I dont really want any of it, but nor do I just want to dump it in the trash. So I go through a little at a time and each item that I bring back to Steffi's basement causes me great pain because I know I will never touch it again and yet, here I am, bringing it home. Honestly, I wish that Ed had, in a fit of rage, dumped all of it in the trash, but of course, Ed doesn't have fits of rage, nor does he want my wrath when I find out that he (hypothetically) threw out my most beloved whatever.

Despite the drizzle, I take the shovel out and move some plants around. Making room. The next week should keep me busy as well. I do intend to be done by Fall (Tuesday), but you just never know!

 

And in the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. We walk Goose and then settle down to read together. Except -- I forgot my reading glasses! I take the book to the best light and I try to decipher the words -- I sound like a second grader struggling to figure out the sounds! Sorry, Snowdrop -- this will not work! Instead, can I treat you to a treat at Barriques?

(hot chocolate with whipped cream... the girl is so agreeable!)

At home, I did something for the last time this year -- I tuned into the live sale of roses at Grace Farm. It's a three hour Thursday evening thing. They try to offload roses at discount prices, digging up large plants from private collections as well as from their nursery, and I always pick up my very best deals then. This time, knowing that it's my last rose purchase of the year (us Wisconsin people cannot put flowers into the ground after the first frost date, which is on October 1st for Madison), I successfully bid on nine.  This means that I will be planting past the first day of Fall. It also means that I will be done with the side bed this year, and it will be a bed of mostly roses. Now I just have to live long enough to see them bloom in years to come! Unfortunately, it also means that I have a lot of sod removal and digging in the next days. Ah well, calloused hands are healthy hands.

with so much love... 

wet middle of the week

To cry or not to cry, that is the question. My sister tells me I was an emotional little kid. Cried a bunch. I do not have any recollection of that. In fact, once I was in school, my mother (cynically? enviously? generously?) called me Little Miss Sunshine -- a quaintly early 60s kind of label. By the time I was a teenager, I was sad a lot (boyfriend wasn't really behaving much like a proper boyfriend), but tears? I don't think so. And then came menopause. And especially the years just before. I think I cried every single night for maybe a year or two. (I also drank too much wine which I'm sure did not help matters.) Once I started my life with Ed (so, since 2005), my crying stopped. I could credit him with that, or I could admit that I'd finished going through menopause. Or something. In any event, since then, I have rarely cried. People get sick, they die and still, the tears rarely spill out. Depressed? Sure, occasionally. Hurt feelings? Definitely, though not very often. Frustrated with Ed? Sometimes and yes, an outburst of tears may follow, but it's really rare (not the frustration, but the outburst).

Today though, the tears came. I suppose it had been building up. Sick friend, with daily decisions, expenses surrounding that, and yes, frustration with Ed: he's being slow in taking care of a request I made, at the same time that he keeps bringing boxes of old stuff I'd left behind in the farmhouse, even though I'm telling him that this month I do not have the bandwidth to deal with it. Add to all this is my passport issue. Because so much has been going on -- the moves, the moves, the dogs -- three of them!, the moves -- three of them! -- I'd been stalling with my passport renewal. I finally filed an online app a couple of days ago, thinking surely this would go quickly, but today AI told me I am stupid to do this now because I am going on a brief international trip in four weeks and it could well be that I wont get my new passport on time. 

So -- frustrations, worries, tiredness (late nights) and therefore -- tears. 

The thing is, I'm not especially sad. Lots of joy to be found. Roses! Millie! The grands! Ed, just not at the moment! Steffi's House, good books, milky coffee, dark chocolate, a long leisurely breakfast...

The list of happy moments is long. Add to it amazing luck: my passport expires toward the end of January. My trip has me back in the US by the late-middle of October. I am allowed to travel to a Schengen country, so long as I'm back in the U.S. three months before the expiration date. Close call, but I make it with only a few days to spare. 

Still, I feel I owed myself a good cry. It had been too long! (The last tearful spell had been around the departure of Henry then Sadey.)

Millie watched this unraveling of her mama with utter amazement. Ed happened to be here then (he was bringing in those boxes of stuff I wish he had left alone for now) and Millie looked from him, to me, to him again wondering perhaps if she should file him in her brain as an enemy of the people after all, because, was it a coincidence that her beloved mom was crying while he was bringing dangerous explosives and killer weapons into the house and storing them in the basement? (Even in the best of times, Millie is suspicious of boxes.)

I planted two roses and I transplanted some flowers to make more room and during this time Millie either slept or did her famous loopy zoomie run in her garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ("that was fun!")

 

 

She was amply rewarded with a walk in the afternoon to Tati's: Ed met us there and Millie, of course, had a pup cup. 

 

 

 

 ("is there more?")

 

 

 

 

 

There is a FB chat group of gardeners who bought roses from one of the country's small but exceptionally good nurseries (Grace Rose Farm). There are also many, many video clips on FB of people with their doodle stories. When I feel my frustrations mounting. I scroll to either one for a good chuckle. People who are rosarians are obsessive and funny and people who have doodle stories and video clips offer humor that is powerful because it's true. Roses fill your head and doodles fill your heart. 

Still, a good cry is like a good massage -- for a few minutes after, you feel grand.

with so much love... 

 

it rained

Not only did it rain, but, looking at the forecast, there are symbols of raindrops falling from clouds as far as the eye can see into the future (so -- for the next ten days). 

Granted, we need the rain. The inch that fell overnight wont make up for the long period without any rain at all. And it saves me time: I've had to water my flower beds every single week (and in the heat of the summer -- much more often than that) since I moved to Steffi's House. Watering is pleasant enough, but like a powerful vacuum it sucks up the hours. Nothing else gets done on a day that I take up watering.

All this means that the rainfall was a good thing.

And yet, it rained. 

And it is still raining lightly in the morning. I make use of the towel I keep by the door to get those Millie paws dry before reentering. Breakfast, of course, is inside.

I always give myself about a half hour of reading time during this morning break and though I don't love the book I've finally come around to reading, I do like it enough. Identifying with fictionalized characters isn't really something I do when I pick up a novel, but this time there are these glaring similarities and I cannot ignore them. Perhaps you've read the book -- the Correspondent? It's one of those hot picks of the year so if you chomp your way through well regarded novels, I'm sure you've given it a go. But to those that haven't, I'll just note this much: the character in it is divorced. She is 73 at the start of the book. She was a lawyer before retirement. And she writes letters -- to everyone it seems -- and in reading these, we make some sense of her life.

She, Sybil, cannot imagine not taking the time to write. To put it down on paper. To be a correspondent. Without the written word (and to her, it's important that it be written, not sent through the internet), she feels a life becomes an empty nothing, quickly forgotten.

I dont share this view, but I share her compulsion. Sybil agonizes over her words and sentences and though I dont exactly agonize here, on Ocean, I do find it necessary to take care. I haven't enough time to edit every post very carefully, but I reread and modify and/or correct 99% of what I write here.

Do I care about leaving behind this record of the everyday? I suppose I do, although I dont really know why I care, since I dont think books, letters, or blogs have any great meaning or significance when you take the perspective of infinite time and an infinite universe with an infinite number of galaxies (well, maybe not infinite, but two trillion observable galaxies -- the latest estimate -- and who knows how many there are beyond that). If I did nothing but plant and smell roses for the rest of my days rather than write here on Ocean, the universe would continue to spin into infinity and in a speck of time (like a handful of years or even a thousand years), no one would know or care.

Except, well, so long as I'm alive, so long as the people, animals, flowers mentioned here are still living, writing here matters to me. For some indisputably strong yet mysterious reason it matters to me.

 

Millie went to doggie daycare, I went back to digging out a strip of sod and working in one more rose hole. Looking at my list of what hasn't come yet, I see that there are a couple of dozen plants that are either in transit or still in the ground somewhere in California, but as of right now, I am ready for them!

 

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop at school. This is a scheduling change that actually gives me a meaningful number of minutes in the day for, well, whatever I'm obsessed with at the moment. The two boys are starting a Taekwan-do after school program and I'll be their pick up person only on Fridays. The parents feel (and I share this view) that Sparrow needs an after school activity that draws him in. He is not a sports guy, nor is he bookish in the sense that he wont lose himself in some fiction or other (he does like nonfiction though, but not enough to hook himself into one book after the next at home). He is also exceptionally friendly, but not necessarily hitting the vibe of the boys in his third grade class. At Taekwan-do during the summer he hung out with kids that he liked and who liked him right back. He played games, played chess, hit it off with the group leaders. Obviously, it's a good place for him to go to after school. And Sandpiper? We shall see. Today will have been his first day, but honestly, if an older sib does it, chances are very high that he will want to continue with it as well.

So, just Snowdrop for now. 

 

 

 

We walk Goose, then resume our reading schedule.

 

 

 

I come home in the evening with a tired but happy Millie. I have to note here how much I really love this pup. Holding her close to me, burying my face in her fur -- I realize how precious that contact with a live one can be. She wasn't a total snuggle bug initially -- she'll jump up with huge excitement with her tail wagging as fast as a flutter of a humming bird's wings when she sees me. Her love is strong and it is the number one driving force behind her every move. But only recently has she started to ask for snuggles on the couch. And I am all in, and on that couch, together, we are happy.

with so much love... 

looking out and ahead

Down to 46F (7C) this morning. We definitely pushed summer aside. On schedule, I'd say. The sunshine, too, is becoming a thing of the past. Showers this week -- welcome, to be sure, though I'm hoping they'll come in moderation. I worry about my roses -- as with children and puppies, the first months are crucial in their development.

No, Millie. No breakfast on the porch. Not today. Though while we have a few minutes of sunlight, let me fix a breakfast in the reading corner, by the windows.

Millie, dont act so surprised! This may well be the new normal!

Of course, when I am that close to the windows, I see the filter of dust. There has been a lot of construction on this road and it shows. I consider calling window washers, but then I remember how much I have spent on plants this year and I reach for the Windex instead. There's no need to do all the windows -- just the front facing ones in the reading corner and some of the ones that are easy to manipulate in the dining nook. A half hour of work and I'm done.

 

I thought yesterday that I was finished with digging out turf, but no! I redrew my plan for the roses that haven't arrived yet and I see that I can plant them out further in the side yard. So, Millie goes in her crate and I take out the shovel again. Maybe for the last time this year? With me, you never know, though I would find it obscene to continue planting past the official start of Fall (September 22nd). 

Two hours later, I'm done. Heavy work! The sod removal given the dry clay was bad, but digging out holes was the worst. That I haven't broken the shovel yet is one pure miracle. 

Before releasing Millie, I go over to the farmette to dump my bucket of compostable scraps . 

(the porch that once was my slice of heaven)

(remember the writer's shed?)

I stay a while to fill Ed in on weekend happenings. I haven't written much about my ill friend, but it is in fact an ongoing saga. I try not to get moody about it even as there's much to make you feel moody. I learned a lot about the need for joy even when drama strikes close to home, from my Michigan friend Deb. I suppose it helps that I've been on a hunt for good distractions from the more somber aspects of a day pretty much all my life. Seek and you shall find. (Me? Quoting the Bible? That has to be a first!) Digging into hard dirt may be hard work, but it is in fact very very satisfying! Getting that large rock out, pushing the shovel with your foot -- there's pleasure in that! And when I'm done for the day and sit down on the couch -- well now, that's real bliss! So, today I had a heck of a wonderful feeling of bliss.

 

Since my pup was crated for a good three hours, I take her for a longer walk in the afternoon. Along the bike path that looks out on the wetlands and on the distant side -- the farmette lands.

 

 

 

She is not a fan of longer walks along unfamiliar paths.  Tail down, a sharp pull to return. But I persevere. It's so lovely by the prairie fields now, in the very last breath of summer.

Millie, I hope you do learn to love the new, the adventures, the discovery. It's remarkable how much you can get out of life by just opening that gate to the outside world. Right, my pup? We'll keep on working at it!

with so much love...