earthy brilliance

First of all – I am going to cheer myself on for biking into November. Last year I quit for the season by now. This year, I’m still at it and I now navigate four places: condo, work, farmette, daughter’s home.

My distance meter tells me that it’s only 8.5 miles (biking) from the farmette to my daughter’s place. Whereas it’s 11 miles (biking) from the condo to the farmette.

And the bike route from the farmette to daughter’s place is lovely – you saw it in yesterday’s evening photos, no?

Okay, so there’s the biking.


Let me return to the topic of working the land around the farmhouse. As we dig, clip, prune, weed, and basically de-jungle the place, Ed asks – we’re not making it suburban-like, are we?

That’s where yesterday’s other two photos come in. No, we’re not. We’re staying with the integrity of the farmstead. Which means that it’s never going to be orderly, perfect, lovely. It always will be somewhat strapped, somewhat wild and out of control. No, not as the previous owners had it. I'm not aiming toward "disrespectful," and from what I learn, they were that. In our yard work, we dig up pieces of broken china. Ed tells me -- they threw their garbage outside. You'll find all kinds of buried shit out here.


The farmette will rise beyond its shady past. But it will always acknowledge its very simple reality: the sheep shed – Ed’s current home, and the falling barn too, even as I clear the path to both, because I think people should feel welcome here as well.

Yes, all that.


And so this morning, I speed to campus, cold winds notwithstanding.






And late in the day I returned to the farmette – to throw woodchips (free! from the city's felled trees... thank you city!) on prepared beds and in places where weeds are a threat.


The sun is nearly gone, but those last rays surely make the crabapple (and the robins who pause here for a quick nibble) glow with fire.






We shovel a truckload of chips and when we are done and the sun is at the edge of the horizon, just there, to the side of the porch, I think – maybe I should have been a farmer.







I leave now. This isn't home yet.

But oh, the sun is brilliant there, behind the fields to the west of the farmette. Absolutely brilliant.





But for now, I live in town. Surrounded by concrete. On a comfortable bike path and bus line. I walk to grocery stores and I never worry about mosquitoes. Though I haven't had space for one, let alone 150 daffodil and daylily plantings. Or 50 crocuses and 12 siberian irises.