Thursday at the farmette

People in the Upper Midwest look forward to summer: lazy crazy summer. I understand the attraction: it's rarely (never?) too cool for breakfast or dinner on the porch. You swim, you play ball, you eat oversized ice-cream cones -- summer stuff.

But it comes with its own challenges. You know what they are: the heat, the bugs, the parched earth, the spent flowers. The dusty lilac leaves, the failed garden projects (oh, last year's tomatoes!).

In May, those challenges are few and far between. You may have your own personal struggles with the beauty of the season. I did: my first good friend when I moved to Wisconsin died in May, just two years after we became friends. Too, the only life threatening illness I've had to cope with attacked me in May. It's hard to be giddy under those circumstances. Nonetheless, for people (like me) who are extremely focused on creating great gardens outside (as best we can) -- it is a month full of perfect days. Days like no other!

And today is one of those days "like no other!"

Flickr, my photo hosting site is down for most (all?) of the day, so you may or may not see pictorial proof of this (I'll slide in the photos into their proper spaces as they become available), but imagine being in a place and at a time where color, fragrance, sunshine, vibrancy and freshness all coalesce. This is the farmette of today.































Breakfast, joyously, on the porch!






Immediately after, we plant our tomatoes. This is a project that is both exhilarating and fraught with life's lessons on patience, perseverance, and accepting adversity. I think this year will set us back once again: the soil is good, the plants are strong, the weather is cooperating. But since the last study of our various options, the trees have grown, the shade has crept in and I do not think we'll have enough hours of sunlight on the new patch to hit a home run. Still, we keep on trying, because we have these wee plants and we have this space...


(buckets of water)




















Time for a quick coffee/lunch break, surrounded by flowers because, well, it's May! (Lilies of the valley are the latest addition.)






In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. It's been a stressful time for the school (nothing to do with Snowdrop but rather with the realities of having kids at any school in America today), but the little girl is full of smiles because, well, she is four and though she sees and hears a lot more than we would like to believe, still, there are some things that pass her by.

(teasing me)











I have a surprise for her today -- the kiddie pool. She is of course far too old for it. And in a few days, she will tire of it. But it is a marker of the warmth of the days before us and she absolutely loves to play games in it right about now.






(cherries and juast-picked asparagus in the pool? why not!)






(mesmerized by the cheeper scratch-and-pick routines)






Inside again, I expect her to insist on continued play, but no. She has missed her faves: she wants me to read. And read. And after paging through the new book, studying it carefully to see if it is perhaps too frightening, she wants me to read that one as well.












This is our day then. I expect it to fade out quietly. I'm tired from a week of too little sleep. But Ed and I are not done yet! We must visit our local farmers market. And eat dinner. (I reheat leftovers, we settle down to eat.) And still Ed is restless. The west-facing windows, the ones we see during these long days when the sun pours through them at the dinner hour, are dirty.

Can we wash them? -- he asks.
Now? -- I groan.

We wash windows until the late hours. And I keep checking flickr, until nearly midnight. That's it: no more minutes left in the day! Good night!

UPDATE: finally, by 6:30 a.m., photo loading is complete. Good morning!