If you were a guest at the farmhouse, sleeping in the lemon room (and you would have to sleep there as the farmhouse has only two bedrooms and we're in the other one), one of the views from your window would be this:
I thought about it as I was doing my usual Sunday housecleaning which included refreshing the lemon room. (Unfortunately, Snowdrop was not there to help me.)
Views are important to me. They connect me to outside spaces, even in the dead of winter. They let my mind rest on something unique. They take me outside of myself. It's very useful to step out of a preoccupation with your immediate space every once in a while.
Ed and I eat breakfast on the porch...
... and then we falter a bit. Over the last weeks, our various to-do lists of routine and even pleasant tasks have grown. (Case in point: unfinished patio door installation.) And so on the one day where neither Ed or I have to be anywhere at all, we lose all ambition to do much of anything.
Want to take the boats out on the Yahara River?
Maybe... Or maybe we should walk?
Or play tennis?
Yes, we should...
And the vegetable garden -- we really should take a look to see how the tomatoes are doing.
Definitely!
We talk like this for a while. Finally, that view onto the garden pulls me outside. I can pull out the creeping never-bearing strawberry plants from the garden paths. (They really are supposed to be ever-bearing, but the animals are so quick to eat the fruits that we never see any.)
I get to work.
And once I start getting my hands dirty, you can't stop me. I attack the path, the beds -- a wide swath of land and Ed comes out and helps by loading cartfuls of wood chips to spread on the cleared spaces.
We work so well together! This is what we needed -- a day of hard physical work. There, too, you can step outside of your own preoccupations and focus on the job at hand.
The flower fields are still peaking, still throwing abundant new blooms...
Working in their midst is humbling.
We don't stop there. We go over to the tomato field and pull out some bindweed, but more importantly, we do our first bigger harvest.
And life feels normal again.
After that -- tennis, yes we do get to the courts and though our games aren't good today, we keep at it for quite a while.
Normal, too, is our Sunday dinner: the young family comes with Snowdrop and suddenly the farmhouse bounces with her energy. Snowdrop is almost ready to help me in the kitchen. Almost.
To the fish main course, I add grilled summer veggies. (Yes, they're our tomatoes. We already have too many!)
On the porch, Snowdrop jumps in her jumparoo with total gusto.
We sit back and let the evening seep in. Ed tells me -- you're all like an image from a Norman Rockwell painting... Couple, grandma, with enthusiastic baby...
Are we?
Maybe.
I thought about it as I was doing my usual Sunday housecleaning which included refreshing the lemon room. (Unfortunately, Snowdrop was not there to help me.)
Views are important to me. They connect me to outside spaces, even in the dead of winter. They let my mind rest on something unique. They take me outside of myself. It's very useful to step out of a preoccupation with your immediate space every once in a while.
Ed and I eat breakfast on the porch...
... and then we falter a bit. Over the last weeks, our various to-do lists of routine and even pleasant tasks have grown. (Case in point: unfinished patio door installation.) And so on the one day where neither Ed or I have to be anywhere at all, we lose all ambition to do much of anything.
Want to take the boats out on the Yahara River?
Maybe... Or maybe we should walk?
Or play tennis?
Yes, we should...
And the vegetable garden -- we really should take a look to see how the tomatoes are doing.
Definitely!
We talk like this for a while. Finally, that view onto the garden pulls me outside. I can pull out the creeping never-bearing strawberry plants from the garden paths. (They really are supposed to be ever-bearing, but the animals are so quick to eat the fruits that we never see any.)
I get to work.
And once I start getting my hands dirty, you can't stop me. I attack the path, the beds -- a wide swath of land and Ed comes out and helps by loading cartfuls of wood chips to spread on the cleared spaces.
We work so well together! This is what we needed -- a day of hard physical work. There, too, you can step outside of your own preoccupations and focus on the job at hand.
The flower fields are still peaking, still throwing abundant new blooms...
Working in their midst is humbling.
We don't stop there. We go over to the tomato field and pull out some bindweed, but more importantly, we do our first bigger harvest.
And life feels normal again.
After that -- tennis, yes we do get to the courts and though our games aren't good today, we keep at it for quite a while.
Normal, too, is our Sunday dinner: the young family comes with Snowdrop and suddenly the farmhouse bounces with her energy. Snowdrop is almost ready to help me in the kitchen. Almost.
To the fish main course, I add grilled summer veggies. (Yes, they're our tomatoes. We already have too many!)
On the porch, Snowdrop jumps in her jumparoo with total gusto.
We sit back and let the evening seep in. Ed tells me -- you're all like an image from a Norman Rockwell painting... Couple, grandma, with enthusiastic baby...
Are we?
Maybe.
