Zap!

Tomorrow night comes the deep freeze. One such event and the growing season comes to a crashing close. Nature can be brutal.

You want to be prepared. But you're never fully prepared. Have I forgotten something??

But first comes breakfast.





Then grocery shopping. It's not just the regular weekly trip to the store: we're planning a big time cooking marathon tomorrow. I have to keep the ingredients straight!

In a normal week, I would then pick up Snowdrop, but this week is unusual in that her school (and every other school in Wisconsin) is closed for staff inservice. As I wait for her dad to drop her at the farmette in the afternoon, I go over to the truck farmers fields to the east of us. The dahlias are in full bloom. I know that the farmer stocks the Saturday market, but he seems to have given up on this field of half faded blooms. He'd always encouraged us to pick what we want. Now is the time to pick.

The farmhouse is full of dahlias.






Dahlias everywhere!






Snowdrop comes over just about the same time that the farmer drives up to survey what's left of his flower field. Most of the blooms are past their prime. As always, he tells me to pick my fill. And as always, he wont accept payment. We do each other countless favors. I am happy to hear that he plans on planting even more flowers here next summer.

Next summer! That's not too far! And in the meantime, the cheepers hover and Snowdrop enjoys the freedom of plucking her favorite blooms.





(These are they!)






Inside again (oh, does it feel good to be in a warm farmhouse after the hefty winds outside!), I suggest we play school. Snowdrop considers this to be a splendid idea and for the next couple of hours, she is the teacher and I and her babies are the neophytes, navigating our way through the complicated educational system, with one one helpful (two year old) teacher (Snowdrop) as our guide. Luckily, she is warm and gracious, so we manage quite well.






(Reassuring the baby that she will learn to draw circles... one of these days.)






In other news:

Late, very late, Ed drives out to our local bigbox to pick up a disc (for the final day or two of disc golf!). I passed on the chance to replace what I already have. Instead, I rifle through my iTunes and listen to music.

I listen to a song I loved oh some ten years ago, when visiting my younger girl at Law School.

These days, she and her husband live just three hours south of me and still, I travel down to see them far too rarely. When they come up here on a weekend, it becomes intensely their weekend, because it is just so thrilling to have them in our midst again.

They're coming to Madison tomorrow and even Snowdrop knows this -- we've been talking about it for days!

I look at the littlest one and I wonder: will her mommy miss her someday as much as I miss my youngest one? 





Still, we are all within spittin' distance of each other. A drive away, nothing more. How grand is that!