see-saw, porch and morning walk with cat

What’s see-sawing is the weather. From a cold foggy Sunday to hot sunshine today, gray skies turned brilliant blue, with a wind whipping the sticky air around so that everything feels suddenly vey very warm. If this doesn’t feel like a summer day then I don’t know what does. And blessedly without the mosquitoes.

I’m up early. I can’t resist it.






A morning walk around the perimeter of the farm. With Isis, looking awfully cool strutting along the brick path to the farmhouse door, then, too, in the tall wet grass that grows madly and competitively everywhere.
















...and back again. To settle in on the porch.





Oh, it’s an outdoor eating day alright. Breakfast – oatmeal, fruits (including the much talked about rhubarb compote), honey, frothy coffee. A good beginning.











Ed has a never ending catalogue of chores around the farmette (plant the remaining tomatoes already, clean up the place where we compost – because the number of trips I make to the pile is actually quite large, and most importantly: start hacking away at the rotten wood that currently is what defines the porch. The maybe soon to be screened porch. The porch that has so many problems and yet offers so many good possibilities if done right, in the months where the bugs are too horrible to confront without protection.





I, however, am physically inactive. I sit in a chair that has a half-rocking sway to it and I read exams. My goal is to be done soon. I cannot take lovely summer breaks yet. I cannot.


I listen to the sounds on the road that runs past the farmette. Sundays are the noisiest by far. We are a shortcut to the boat ramp onto the lake and the number of happy people speeding by with radios on and trailers hauling heavy boats is significant.

That’s them. I stay with my papers.

...Until the light grows golden and the breeze cools the air and I light up the grill – on the porch still, same old porch – I’m stuck to it today, for our own brat-fest, alternative indeed, with chicken spinach and feta brats piled high with sauerkraut and mustard, and roasted veggies and salad greens and all the good things that spell summer. Ed says he's never felt so suburban. Me, I feel all-American. Our images are very predictable.






We, up in the northern Midwest, are a happy people when the days explode with summer warmth. Even those stuck on the porch grading papers.