a downpour that missed Steffi's House and Yard

I had a lovely chat with my doc this morning. I like her and have had her now for some dozen years. We are on a friendly platform -- meaning we always manage to spend just a few minutes on sharing trip plans or reflections on trips taken. This time I was curious about her most recent trip. She'd been telling me about it for a long time now. This summer she will have gone for the first time to Europe. With kids and husband. She has traveled plenty as she is by birth from Korea, but Europe is a first for her. She was excited. The plan was to go to the north of Norway and then to Scotland. To hike, to admire the landscapes.

Predictably, the trip was a total success. As she reflected on it, she said to me -- I'll never forget it. As we stood on a mountain summits after a hike, I felt this wave of gratitude. Here we were, healthy, together, witnessing something beautiful.

When you are a doctor, you see it all. Sometimes you heal an anxious patient, sometimes you don't. You see families break up from the tragic spillover effects of medical crises. I suppose one gift you have after a rough day is that you develop an ability to feel gratitude for all that is yours very deeply. Many of us say we're grateful for what we have, especially around Thanksgiving, but that gratitude is fleeting. We move on quickly to groaning about some inconvenience or aggravation. 

I've had some near misses in life. Maybe we all have had those. Mine were sometimes my fault -- recklessness seemed to have been my middle name at times. How else to explain such horrors as unprotected sex or drinking excessively? Youthful transgressions? Perhaps, only some of them weren't so youthful. People are often boastful about their past misdeeds. Who can come up with the most egregious story of crimes committed? Me, I'm just glad that mine were all misses. That recklessness didnt lead to damage. That poor health and so many surgeries all resulted in cures rather than a death sentence. Like my father, I've always felt grateful for being so darn lucky. That things worked out (for the most part). That I got to 73 without crashing. That I wasn't at the WTC on 9/11. That I was born in postwar Poland rather than in the middle of that horrible war. That I learned English by immersion, that I escaped storms while riding a bike, that I had two daughters that I loved, that I found something to love in a person who is so different than me. Lucky. So yes, life is very much like the downpour I experienced this morning while driving Millie to doggie daycare: it happens in some spots, it misses others. Chances are you've had some lucky breaks too (or else you wouldn't be reading this). Stay grateful. For each and every one of them.

 

My pup is tired! Late nights, early wake ups. And a full day ahead! 

 

 

 

Breakfast, on the porch, with market flowers.

And a morning of doc visits, weeding, and to be honest -- lying on the couch and wondering how long my luck will hold. 

 

In the afternoon I am with the kids. First the boys. And truly, it's heartwarming to see the older one show his little brother how to "do school!" 

 

Then Snowdrop, and to their home. The new routines take some getting used to. We're not reading yet -- not me with the boys nor with Snowdrop. We'll get there! For now, I do some online shopping with the girl for sweatpants for the three of them. After a minute, she takes the laptop from my hands and says "here, let me do it... you're too slow!" Click click, to the checkout, auto fill  here, credit card there. I shake my head -- it's too easy. Shopping is just too easy. You could pick up my laptop and fill the cart with thousands of dollars' worth of stuff. No I couldn't. I dont know your security code! I dont tell her that many vendors have that stored in their memory bank as well.

She asks to tag along with me to pick up Millie from doggie daycare.

 

 

 How those kids love my snuggle pup! Truly a teddy bear parading as a dog.

 

Ed comes over in the evening. I scramble eggs, we watch the last episode of Clarkson's Farm. Not to spoil it for those who are still set to watch it, but I have to say, it's a bit of a downer. People have issues. Not to state the obvious, but even very rich people! I come back to the idea of gratitude. For all the days we get to be with people we love. Deep gratitude. 

with so much love... 

 

so thrilled

No one in my whole life has been as happy to see me as Millie is when I return home. I will have been gone ten minutes or three hours. Her greeting is always the same. She will jump as high as she can, standing on her rear paws forever, tail wagging furiously. 

 

 

 

The greeting is long and intense. I know you're supposed to not encourage it. And I don't really. She goes nuts around me anyway. And I have to say, my heart swells for her overjoyed but also anxious eyes that always seem to be saying "please dont leave me, please dont leave me..."

I did have to leave her today. Twice in fact. She no longer cries. When asked to go to her crate, she goes to it. I put on Mozart, I exit.

My first departure wasn't too long and it coincided with her post-breakfast nap. As I noted before, today was Sandpiper's first day of school. I was up very early...

("are you sure it's time to get up??") 

 

 

And i was at his house by 7:15. He and Sparrow have the first bell at 7:40. It's only a 5 minute drive to school, yet there he is, backpack on, ready to fly. Photo first, little guy!

And how about one of the three of you? Setting out into the world!

I drive them all to school. Sandpiper and Sparrow first.  I have to wonder what is in the kindergartner's head as he follows his brother inside. I know that Sparrow is intensely proud to have his younger bro trailing him in on this day (figuratively and literally). 

I then take Snowdrop to her school. Hers too is just about 5 or 6 minutes away and we stay in the car for a while before she goes in -- it's that early. She's quiet today and I'm pretty sure she is fighting a bug. At one point she tells me maybe we should go home and take her temp. She's a little warm, but we are all warm -- it is a hot and humid day. I consider this then tell her to give it a try. "If you don't feel well at any point, call home." She trots off to be with her friends. Would have I chosen, at her age, a day with friends over a day in bed with the TV on? That would have been a tough one!

 

And now I come back to Steffi's House and have my own breakfast. With a very happy Millie.

I had moved some plants around the other day and I have a new hole for a new rose out front. This is an easy planting, since the earth there is already improved and, too, it's right by the porch, so that Millie can keep an eye on me.

And now it's time for her longer morning rest. This then is my second departure, a much longer time away -- three hours! A packed and actually quite lovely three hours.

First, I go to Tati's. Our neighborhood (encompassing the new development) has a women's group that meets once a month over coffee. It's been on my radar, but because of kids, dogs, moves, trips and such, I could never quite fit it in. Besides, I didn't think I needed a whole new set of friends. But here's the thing: I do need friends for inconsequential fun stuff. Local ones that can be enjoyed in person. Women (could be men, I dont care) who have interesting stories, who will introduce something new into my everyday. Ocean notwithstanding, I am not one who needs to lean on people, to spill out my woes and seek out support. That's just not me. But I have long thought that I am short on fun encounters of the insignificant yet very significant kind. Will I find it in my neighborhood?

Maybe. I spent only 45 minutes with them (a group of about 8 or 9, obviously retired or not working), but it was in fact delightful. I told jokes. (My life is a joke, really.) Many of them seem not to have had kids, which means that I could for once think about stuff other than the dramas surrounding child rearing. I wore my subtle statement t-shirt. It has a dog filled with flowers, but if you look between the petals, you'll find tiny print with messages such as No Kings or Truth Matters or FDT (which honestly I did not know what it stood for, but now that I know, I have to say -- spot on). One woman actually noted the messages contained therein and voiced approval which was nice. The whole time spent with them was really good!

From there, to my haircut place. I get one cut every three months. I'd say I need one every two, but haircuts cost money so I wait another month and then regret it and tell her to go shorter. (It is short now!)

Onwards! To the downtown farmers market. First -- flowers! Those two please...

 

 

 

Too, my daughter needs fresh corn and Stoneman's is closed this week. I ask the market vendor if he'll be around all month. Yes, he tells me, but only at the big Saturday market. Why? Kids are back in school, no one to help... Yeah, kids back in school, though the ages of my grands are such that their time in school actually frees and helps the caregivers (parents, grandma...).

Still another errand -- to Madison Sourdough. Sparrow is back to loving croissants. Must stock up.

And from there, I drive back to the other side of town to deliver the foods to my daughter's house and finally -- I come back to Millie.

She and I spend a good chunk of the afternoon in her yard. 

 

 

 

My tree needs water! Roses need water! Leaves with black spot have to be removed! Did I mention here that rose care can be tricky? Ah, but the rewards...

 with so much love...

September

Well now, that was some August. Ranking in the top three of life's most challenging months, surpassing September 1960 when I was plunked into a second grade classroom in NYC speaking no English and knowing no one in the whole skyscraper filled city besides my parents and my sister and my sister was in a similar predicament many corridors and classrooms away. Surpassing, too, May 1994 when my brain exploded. I survived that without lasting damage except the damage done to my confidence that weird things dont happen to boring normal people. Up there with March 2026 when I lost Henry, though that month had positives in it as well, so I can't count it as a complete downer. And this August wasn't a complete downer either. All those grandkids! All those roses! But yes, also all that illness. Not mine, which in a way makes it worse.

So now along comes September. An early wake-up for me today. Looking out the front door, I see a mist over the wetlands. Gentle hues of pink and apricot.

 

 

Tradition has it that I take the first day of school photo of the grandkids. It is a tad exasperating that little Sandpiper does not start school until tomorrow, so that I will have to beat dawn again in my wake-up, and drive over to his house tomorrow, but there you have it. Schools set the rules, we follow.

These two start today!

 

 

Snowdrop, 6th grade, Sparrow 3rd.

So long as I am there with my car, I drive these kids to their respective schools. They are both excited, though Sparrow makes sure that I know that he is NOT happy with his seat assignment next to his MORTAL ENEMY. I say to him -- at least you wont have every class with her. Ever the helpful older sister, Snowdrop chirps in -- in third grade, you dont switch classrooms for classes. I remind her that apart from being a Debbie Downer to her brother, she is also incorrect, as he has music, art, P.E, library, technology -- all in different rooms, with different teachers and different seating assignments. Miss-pleased-with-her-own-life muses out loud -- maybe they'll all keep the same seating chart. She knows darn well that they do not keep the same seating chart, but this is how these two sometimes encourage each other. And indeed, in two minutes, the subject changes and she is reassuring her brother, reminding him that he will not have his OTHER MORTAL ENEMY (a different one -- an 8 year old boy is likely to have more than one mortal enemy) at his Young Shakespeare Players fall show (which in fact isn't a Shakespeare play, but hey...).

(off he goes while we watch...)

Snowdrop's school starts later and she still needs an addition to her lunch box, so she and I swing by the grocery store and then I get in line to drop her off. Mindful of her age and her peers, she warns me -- gaga, you are not going to get out and take my photo as you did with my brother! Can I at least do it from inside the car??  I remind her that she still has a year and four months to go before she is a teenager.

I then go home to eat breakfast with my shaggy waggy Millie.

She is so overjoyed to see me that it hurts. Oh, Millie! Hang on -- I just have to snip off a few spent roses... (she watches... her eyes never leave me.)

 

 

Breakfast in a minute, little one! (For me. Millie of course has had hers hours ago.) 

 

My pup does need a fur trim. She has an appointment at noon and I take her to it, reminding her as we get out of the car that she loves the play time she has there in and around the grooming. For the first time, she hesitates. No bounding in today. And as we slowly enter, two dogs that are in the holding pen let out fierce sounding growls and barks. The groomer comes out to tell me -- they are not friendly. No kidding! True, they are separated from the rest but they are loud and obnoxious. Millie immediately drops her tail to its lowest position and has to be pulled inside the grooming room. Thankfully, there is another pup there, equally terrified. Maybe they'll form a small mutual support group against the monsters behind the gate.

 

A quick stop at home to clean the birdhouse. This is a necessity, unless I want to infect all birds with some horrible disease that will further deplete our dwindling bird populations. There are many birdhouses in my neighborhood and I have to wonder if we are at all dutiful enough about cleaning and disinfecting them. Likely not. It's a yukky job and tough to do well. We can talk ourselves out of pretty much anything if we try hard enough.

 

Lunch: I make myself a cup of coffee from the Cafe Joyeux batch, not because I believe a change from August to September will bring with it a completely joyous and carefree set of days, but because I am of the belief that until you're sick and dying, you can always improve on what's there before you. Sipped in the car, with a granola bar.

And now it's time to pick up Sparrow. He's first to go and first to return. All this will shift a little as the kids will start riding the bus in a couple of weeks, but for now it's business as usual -- I wait in line, at the front of the line in fact, to get the elementary school kids (just one today) and bring them (him) home.

Guess what? -- He asks me right away. She changed her mind. Who? What? The girl I sit next to. We're not enemies anymore.

 

I take him home, feed him, listen to his brother explain all his car and truck formations... 

 

 

 

... and go to pick up Snowdrop. 

Back at their house, Goose, their very large dog is sniffing me and wagging his tail so fiercely that my bare legs (shorts weather) will surely have scars. I think he needs a walk. 

The three of us (Sandpiper, Snowdrop and I) take him for a stroll. 

I've walked Goose before. But this time, two things happened: he spotted a squirrel, and he saw two dogs up the block. In both instances I pulled him back so hard that I was sure my arms would leave their sockets. I think my "walking Goose days" are nearing an end. He is significantly stronger than me.

 

And now I have to dash to the other side of town because Millie is done with her grooming session. I understand she also got a face massage out of the deal. (Did you know dogs love facial massages? I did not, until this week.)

Walk time, my little one!

 

 

And of course, stand on the chair, look out the window and bark time too. Millie needs a dose of this before she can relax.

 

 

A tired girl. Tired me! But happy for the kids. By tomorrow, all my grands will be in school. And I'm confident that all of them will be (mostly) happy there. And that's such a good thing.

 

 

 

Have a grand September all you school bound young ones! Work hard, make lasting friendships, stay optimistic!

with so much love... 

 

L'Important C'est la Rose

My music for this morning came from an Apple playlist of French Chanson. Lovely lyric driven songs from the tradition of French cabaret of yore. I know many of these. I collected albums of such music back in the 70s and even in the early 80s. Add a baguette, a hunk of cheese, and a glass of wine and I felt I was in France. (Baguettes were hard to come by in those years, but I kept searching.) There was a song on the playlist that was new to me and it sounded so pretty and so fitting for these days. Its title is my Subject heading. I wont post all the lyrics (because they're in French and besides, just looking at the song's title -- they are predictable). Here's just one translated verse:

There's a petal and a thorn
There is beauty and there's sorrow
And we all must face tomorrow
Like a rose.

 

 

 

If you want to listen to it, here it is:

 

 

If you look for connections in your life, you will find them!

  

It was, for a while anyway, a most perfect morning. Millie now demands a walk around the block (it's a very long block) rather than her past up and down and back again, and I am happy to give her the extra sniffing moments. And then we have breakfast.

I will say this:I really do not understand why there are so many unfriendly dogs in this neighborhood and perhaps in all neighborhoods, because ours is a good mix of young and old and those inbetween.  Of the maybe dozen dogs that inhabit this block (as I said, it's a long block) not one is friendly. All of them either cross the street or turn the corner when they see us coming. This drives her (and me) nuts. She just wants to sniff butts. But no, the dog owners want to avoid encounters and it's not because she is a threat -- she is pretty much the smallest of the lot of them and her tail is up and wagging.

I feel like the parent of a child whom everyone avoids at recess. 

This is one of many reasons why I take her to doggie daycare. She loves playing -- with dogs and with humans. There are no rejections at doggie daycare. Everyone is her BFF.

I have a full day while she's sauntering about at Happy Dogz. Much of it is weekly stuff -- groceries, compost, etc. And much of it is in the yard: mow lawn, move plants, etc. Catch up stuff that needs to be done because after today, I wont have full days where Millie is engaged in her play and I have no childcare obligations. 

And, as has been the case repeatedly this month, suddenly I do not have a full day at all. Many texts and emails later I have a paltry few hours to fix problems in Steffi's Garden. And because I've put him off for so long I finally agree to have Ed interrupt my gardening so that he can move the remaining bookshelf and cabinet from the farmhouse to Steffi's House and of course he needs help with that and besides, he needs a beard trim.

 

I do get most of this accomplished but it is not a fun, easy going day. It is a crazy rushed day and at the end of it all, I have to ask yself why. Why rush like this? Does any of it require the urgent attention I bestow on it? I could have done none of it and read a book all day in my rose garden. L'Important C'est la Rose...

 

 

with so much love... 

 

getting through the new

A very warm week, coming up! Typically by September I'm ready for crispy, brisk fall days, but this year, I'm less enthusiastic about letting go of summer. It's because of the roses. Many of them still have a period of bloom before them and yes, I have a couple more to put in -- defoliated twigs actually -- and the later that crispy brisk air sets in, the more chance there is of my catching a bloom this year. Too, I love going out with Millie in the same old shorts and a t-shirt. So quick and easy. Add a light caress from a summer wind on bare skin and I have myself a recipe for contentment. 

I cut a few blooms (short but pretty) for the breakfast table, feeling so privileged to be able to do this. Hard to accept that in winter, I'll be relegated to grocery store flowers again. [No, I absolutely cannot afford flower subscriptions, even though I love studying them online and imagining which would look best on the counter at Steffi's House. Lately, I've studied the nursery bouquets at Grace Rose Farm. Plenty of the pastels I love! So gorgeous, but of course, even if I were rich, it's hard to justify shipping fresh bouquets of flowers to your doorstep all winter long. They are beautiful but short-lived. After five days, looking at their wilted heads, you have to wonder what possessed you to do this.

I never was a rose lover. Not until this year. I liked their fragrance of course, and I did try growing a floribunda and a climber in one of my past gardens, but I never really understood them, nor did I want to treat them with kid gloves and horticultural fungus oils. And those trellises and pergolas displayed in photos of rose gardens? That was, in my limited view, for the fanatics. When I thought about roses, I mainly imagined blooms such as you find at the florist or grocery store, especially around Valentine's Day. 

But of course, that's just closed mindedness on my part. The world of rose growing has evolved, and my thinking about them thankfully has evolved as well.

 However, embarking on something new means that you have a steep learning curve, with plenty of opportunity for making costly mistakes. For example, the first roses I bought this year (a tree and a bush) came from a place that is... shady. Massive nursery stock sold cheaply. Concepts like disease resistance, own root-stock, one year old or three year old, training climbers, thorns that will kill you if you come near the stems -- zi never considered any of that. 

All this to say that following breakfast (on the porch, with a sampler of rose blooms from my garden)...

Millie and I went out to her yard and she played and I sat down on my wonderful bench and studied the roses. I located the trouble areas (leaves with black spots should be removed, spent buds should be clipped, etc), and eventually I tended to them. I also located a good spot for the next and probably last rose I want to place in Millie's Yard and dug out some of the turf and top "soil" to make room for it. But really, the most productive thing for me was the study of the roses. To look admiringly but also critically at what I planted where and what should be done about it. 

 

(look who has been hanging around my roses! straight from the lily fields of the farmette!)

 

(from the bench...)

 

Ed called while I was in the thick of rose contemplation and asked if I would go with him on a bike ride to McFarland (the town across Lake Waubesa) for a coffee/lunch at Grace Cafe there. He picked this ride deliberately because he knows how much I love it. It's not hard. Just 45 minutes each way. Not too many hills, lots of variety in the landscape...

And at the end, we have the coffee shop.

The outing feels exhilarating and at the same time intimate. The wind going there is on our backs -- a stiff breeze that has the windsurfers flying across the lake...

 

 

 

Biking with Ed across the mile long bridge is always joyful. 

At the coffee shop, we often sit and read -- I always bring my book with me -- but today we talk. Inevitably, we turn to the subject of my sick friend, but after a half hour of updates and speculations, he suggests we put it to rest. We talk about the Ukraine war instead, which is ofcourse even more depressing, but we take it from the angle of technological innovation -- something that allows us not to focus for just a minute not on the horrors of that war, but instead, on the way that despite everything, the Ukraine, with the help from the west, has managed to develop useful technologies both for the war effort and for use outside the war zone. Think pizza delivery by drones, coming to your door next year. 

After a solid hour of this, I reluctantly suggest we head back. Millie has been in her crate for a while now, and even more importantly, there appear to be storm clouds in the west. (Did you ever wonder how it is that stormy skies never sidestep you or go in another direction but instead always, always come straight at you?)

I pedal at top speed. Nothing like a storm to get me to work hard on that bike. A 45 minute ride turns into a 30 minute ride. And I can't help but remember all those bike trips I took as a kid, spending summers in the Polish village with my grandmother. The storms would come suddenly and they would terrify me. It felt like the next bolt of lightening would target me. Trees were suddenly my enemies (they attracted lightening!), but open fields were worse -- they offered no protection at all. 

We got wet, but of course, we were perfectly safe. And at my age, reason took charge. No, lightening would not seek me out and in the one in a million chance that it did, well, I'm 73 and I lived a good life! When you're biking, your thoughts are often not very complicated (though Ed swears it's the opposite -- for him, deep contemplation is best achieved when he is speeding on a bike).

Home is all about Millie: brushing her, keeping her quiet, taking her out again and again. She is still such a puppy!

No family Sunday dinner today. We're still working on schedules for the fall semester and I dont know that me cooking dinner for the young family on Sundays is part of the grand plan. And so I have a quiet evening. Well, Millie is a little hyped up. Must be the changes in the weather. They say dogs can detect and are affected by fluctuations in weather patterns -- drops in pressure, the coming of a rain. Millie has had a lot to work with in that arena today!

with so much love... 

 

roads to nowhere

In the book I'm reading (with the apt title "When Will There Be Good News," by Kate Atkins -- it's the third novel in the Jackson Brodie series), the protagonist finds himself on a road weaving through the desolate Scottish landscape, without any idea if he's on the right path and indeed, with a half thought that this road is off the grid, off the charts, and leading to nowhere. I paused and thought about this: isn't that a spot-on description of where I am with my sick friend? There is no clear vision of what's beyond the bend, and maybe there's nothing beyond the bend, and maybe the weather will overtake us (in the book, Jackson feels the threat of a snow storm in the air) and we wont get a chance to take the next bend, or maybe we'll be stuck on this road until we get so tired that we have to pull over (pull over where? these Scottish roads are so narrow!) and give ourselves a rest.

 

*     *     * 

A cloudy and cool morning. It portends nothing. No real rainfall, no cheerful setting for breakfast on the porch. Still, I'm not giving up. I am known for not giving up on things that matter to me. (I give up quickly enough on things that don't - like a boring book, or an excessively sweet desert.) So, breakfast outside.

Now, how to give you an idea about this day... I'm stumped! When that happens, I follow my camera and chronology here on Ocean.  

So, to start with: I began by doing something weird. Not objectively weird, but for me -- weird:  I spent a good half hour grooming Millie (not weird) and then putting ribbons to her hair (weird). I am not the type to favor fru fru stuff for my pup, but I'd seen a cute photo of a doodle with bows and I thought it might be a fun fit for Millie. 

It wasn't. She is so shaggy that the ribbons got lost in her hair and anyway, what would you say is a good color for her, because deep pink just seems so wrong?

Next, I had lunch with the boys (Sandpiper and Sparrow) and their grandfather who is visiting. Now how on earth did that come to pass? Well, everyone was super busy, and Snowdrop was off with a friend and her other grandmother (the kids each have three grandmas), leaving the boys and their grandfather (once my husband) in need of a ride for a lunch and possibly other activities. So I kept them company for the afternoon.

(Sparrow really wanted a croissant!)

(oh, you two!!)

(ice cream for dessert)

 

 

 

 (the library's next; books were ignored!)

 

 

Next -- Millie had been in her crate for four hours so I take her out to her yard for a romp now. She would have liked to have played with passing dogs (note her wistful gaze out)...

... but none here are in the category of "good playmates" so she is stuck with me.

 

*     *     * 

So.... that's it? What's so strange about this day? Sounds pretty normal and almost uneventful. Well yes, but every hour of the day had elements of my sick friend in it. A phone call. A text. Many texts. Decisions. Responding to decisions. Every single hour. Even when I was putting ribbons in Millie's fur (such a mismatch for her!), I had to pause because texts were pouring in and schedules had to be coordinated and changes in plans processed. 

But at the end of the day, I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment, however trivial it may be, so maybe it isn't a road to nowhere, despite the existential musings of Jackson Brodie. And is there really ever such a thing as a road to nowhere? They all have something at the end of them, even if it's a fence with a closed gate. It's still something, somewhere. 

with so much love... 

 

and one more

Might this be the last of the beautiful days? I can always hope for good weather, but I do remember Septembers of the past, where it rained most days, and other Septembers when it was too hot and too buggy, so it's not a given. (When you are 73, you have a lot of Septembers behind you so I suppose you've seen it all, though with climate change, perhaps we haven't seen it all, and what we haven't seen is likely not going to make us feel that great!)

Calm. How older people love calm! I did not see that coming. If you'd ask me at 20, 40, 60 what kind of a pace or lifestyle would suit me best, calm wouldn't even make the top ten. And now, when I think of contentment, I think -- it cannot happen without a long stretch of calm.

And I can find it: in the morning, on the porch, with Millie and a book.

But then, the turmoil begins. Today, for example, was supposed to be a rose day. Millie goes to day care, kids are not yet in need of after school care. Calm. I have a rose to plant and some decisions to make about future plantings. 

None of this happens, There are problems with the care of my ailing friend (and I am so sorry I write minimally about this, but of course, privacy concerns abound). Friends are stepping in. How much can I do? What is helpful anyway? I don't know! 

I think back to my busy July and I see that I may have worked hard and done a lot, and yet there was calm. I wasn't worried. Then came August, and Shakespeare plays, and boom! Right in the thick of Lady Capulet moaning on stage about the death of her noble cousin and her daughter -- whamo! The ax fell, news of illness, news of deterioration, news of treatment, news of improvement, then further deterioration, then holding steady, then down again -- I swear a putty ball could not be more erratic in its bouncing habits than this crazy stuff happening to her right now.

Funny (but not so funny) coincidence: I last attended a Young Shakespeare Players production of Romeo and Juliet some 35 years ago when my daughters were just kids and performed in it. That summer I got sick. My brain exploded. Or something. I was bed ridden for a long time. And I recovered of course. So do we have a repeat of that? A close friend gets sick, struggles ensue, but maybe soon the dips will disappear and she will be on the mend? One hopes, but in the meantime, things are dicey. 

 

I do clean up some black spot fungus on some of the roses. This is what I learned through trial and error -- if you are picking roses for your garden and you dont want to be fighting with black-spot disease, pick roses that are resistant to it. Color, size, fragrance -- they're all fine, but a fungus can take down all the leaves and then it's just a matter of time for the poor rose. 

Mostly, my flowers are doing okay. A couple of failures, a handful of regrets (why oh why did I think that was a good choice?), but for the most part, it's all good. But dry.

I spend the afternoon watering. Half of the front beds, done. The rest? No time. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

I pick up a playful joyous Millie. Perfect. I open the gate to her yard, she frolics, I plant the rose. Rather randomly. Into a pre-dug hole. Because it's there and because I can do it with Millie. My best gardening buddy, I'm exhausting you, aren't I?

Earlier in the day, I drove by something that I'd seen many many times around the farmette, but I rarely see (or hear) now. I don't know why they aren't in the fields here this summer. I miss them.

with so much love... 

 

moments of pleasure

Which wise person reminded us that the greatest pleasure, happiness, contentment -- call it what you want -- comes from the smallest things, events, moments in your day? Was it Epicurus and his philosophy of modest pleasure? Socrates, for whom the secret to happiness was not in seeking out more, but to figuring out how to enjoy less? I'm thinking actually of someone like the German poet Wilhelm Busch, who claimed that happiness is found in paying attention to everyday, minor occurrences. I think Tolstoy made a similar claim. Beauty in small things. It's an idea that has been repeated over the centuries, and yet, here we are, waiting for the big events to sweep us away. A wedding, a lavish cruise, the best camera to take the best photos. All good, I'm sure, but I had to smile as my daughter wrote this morning how much joy she had in seeing her two younger kids, and especially Sandpiper who starts kindergarten this year, enter the school on go-to-school day yesterday. His own space to hang his jacket and backpack, his own school supplies, his own classroom. Here, let me post (with her permission) two photos from that first school visit (as a student -- he'd been to the school as a sibling numerous times for various sibling events): 

 

 

 

 

 

 Also from yesterday -- an evening photo of mine, this one of Millie being blown away by the sight of the moon (or so I'd like to believe!):

 

 

 

This morning is again beautiful. I know this endless string of gorgeous days will come to an end. I will miss them. 

(here's a delight: the return of my hummingbird)

 

 

Though I must admit -- I do not last long on the porch. Breakfast, and a brief reading spell...

... and then Millie and I retire indoors. Without a breeze, the sun can get quite intense, even in moderate summer temperatures. I wonder if that warmth will make it possible to sit outside on a sunny winter day, as you would, say, in the mountains, where the sun's heat can often have you pulling off your jacket, even on snow covered hilltops.  

Millie's coat is getting long again. She gets hot quickly and so I pass on taking her to the park. We do walk over to Tati's and I'm happy to report that if you tell her "we're going to the coffee shop," she gets excited.

 

 

 

And once there, she looks expectantly at me. Don't you owe me a pup cup? -- her eyes ask. 

 

 

 

Later, we do spend some time outside in her yard. I have to water and snip the roses there. She loves going out to it with me. She runs, she rests. She very much believes it to be her special place. And it is. And I'm glad.

 

 

Much of the rest of the day is a throwaway.  I have a good Zoom call with Bee, but I can't say that anything else was productive (meaning there was an unhealthy amount of screen time in the mix). I'm still in shock how quickly everything flipped on that first weekend of the month when I found out my friend was ill. Trying to keep tabs on how all that is going, keeping in close communications with her family and friends -- this takes an enormous amount of time and it's draining. Ed can tune out trouble like you wouldn't believe. Me -- I can function alright (resilient!), I can find those pockets of pleasure, but just that. I aim for nothing higher. A real Tolstoyan attitude, no? Low expectations, eyes wide open to the beautiful day, the flowers and sunshine. My cool home. My pup. My cup of coffee at Tati's. Lovely moments, all of them. It's just that half of my head (or is it more?) is wrapped up in the gauze of that other happening -- the unraveling of a person that I've been very close to for a very long time. I suppose we all unravel in some way at some point, but when it strikes close to the heart, well, you close yourself off to the pleasures of the type Socrates told us we should give up on anyway. The big stuff. 

Okay, time to walk Millie one last time. If anyone is my round the clock source of tickled pleasure it's that girl. Always there. Always anxiously watching to see what's next. In reassuring her, I reassure myself. Good stuff ahead of us, my girl! Good stuff ahead!

with so much love...