Sunday, April 12, 2015

Sunday

If Sundays have a certain repetitive pattern to them, this one broke away a little and ran on its own steam.

It was a sunny morning, but I wasn't brave enough to take breakfast to the porch. The sun room is a grand alternative!


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We work outside then, but there is less of a rush and more attention to detail. I have, right now, seven very large flower fields to work with (I began calling them fields when I realized that they have little similarity to a perennial border), and one massive one to add where the brambles have been dug out. All this would be a burden to most, but to me, these fields are my tender babes. I know the soil well. I know the irksome parts, the difficulties, the weeds that threaten -- which ones and from which side. I know what I have to do to make the flowers thrive and I set to it in much the same way I would set to anything looking to me for care and nourishment. It is deeply satisfying work: I'm at the level of the soil in spring and early summer and spraying water on warm summer evenings. At the end of the season, I put my feet up and think -- I've done okay by you!


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(the girls, happily trampling over the new field being readied for flowers)




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(the bed along the gravel driveway is, right now, displaying crocuses)



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(sometimes, when I open the front door, I am greeted by ... Butter.)


And so today, I continue to use pitchfork after pitchfork of chips and I dig out what doesn't belong and I am utterly happy to see the progress my babes are making.

And still, at times, I have to pause. Life is more than the farmette -- I tell myself, as I throw down the shovel, the clippers, the pitchfork.

I lure Ed out on a bigger hike -- one along the Ice Age Trail. We've done every segment within hundreds of miles of here, but this one is especially pretty  and not too far. It starts next to a goat/diary farm and makes its way up one hill and down the next so that in just a couple of hours you can get quite a workout.


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It's a delicious time to be out in the forest!


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(there's just a little bit of green at the edges...)




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(midpoint selfie)
 

In the evening, Snowdrop and her mom are to come for dinner, but since the meal preparation isn't complicated (pan fried trout with a wine and caper sauce and buttered snap peas), I offer to help my daughter with her own yard work just before.

She and Snowdrop want to assist, but glancing at the littlest girl, I see that she is unlikely to be of much help yet...


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...so I send them off on a walk while I tend to the weeds. Working in someone's garden is like cooking in someone's kitchen -- you don't know where to begin and you haven't a clue as to the final vision. And where we have layers of lovable wood chips at the farmette (they let go of weeds with greater ease, even in clay-ish soil), this yard has pebbles and rocks, which create a new challenge.


Finally, I am home and cooking dinner and Ed and mom and babe are here and it is a very Sunday-ish moment indeed -- with time to sit back and take in the beauty of a very bright evening.


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Perhaps it's wrong then to say this Sunday hadn't a predictable pattern. It had the warm April air. Outdoor work. A stellar hike. And a meal together. And a moment to soothe Snowdrop. Yes, a Sunday as it should be. As I would want it to be.


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