Tuesday - 109th

And what a June it has been! High on anxiety, on excitement, high on natural beauty, high on love for every day spent with a grandkid or two or three in it.

Low on physical social contacts (outside of family). Very low. And a complete zero on shopping, outside of online purchases, delivered or curbsided. Meaning, I haven't stepped inside a store since the beginning of March.

So, kind of strange, no? Add to it the constant need to stay abreast of what's going on here, and elsewhere in the country, and in other countries, and it's not because I can hope to be uplifted by any of it, right? So, lots of reading of dismal summaries of events past and prognoses of events yet to be.

Still, Ed and I have so much to love and enjoy at the farmette! Distractions abound. Follow along with us as we move beautifully from one distraction to the next!

Good morning cats and chickens! Okay, first feed chickens, then teenage cats, then rush back to get to the kitties under the car before the hoard comes charging back to steal their food and send them scurrying.

Breakfast, on the porch. Ed is not helpful in the photo taking enterprise, so you get just the table.






We talk about the proliferation of mosquitoes. His tolerance for a growth in numbers is higher than mine, possibly because he works less in the gardens and, too, he isn't the one leading kids on nature walks every morning. So I suggest we do our spraying of peppermint and garlic oils. Their odor seems to push the mosquitoes mostly to the periphery. As best as we can figure out, it does not repel in the same way other insects or frogs. We've used the stuff the past two years, with some modest success. Enough to make a walk accross the farmette lands tolerable.

But Ed pushes back now, claiming we're not yet at the breaking point. I share his concern: neither of us wants to discourage pollinators from calling this place home. Still, once the mosquito swarms arrive, it is pretty near impossible to do anything outside, at least not without covering yourself with netting. So I push back on his push back.

We make no decisions for now, but I know it's just a matter of days before I bring it up again.

And when the kids arrive, I forgo the longer nature walk and stick with a courtyard moment.


\



We count how many flowers have turned into little green tomatoes (in our tomato tubs)  -- in other words, which of our two green plants is winning the tomato race!






Inside, we forgo art today. Snowdrop really wants to make progress on a new chapter book and so we give that a shot. By page 36, not even a fourth into the book, Sparrow has had enough. We switch to books his speed. Snowdrop wanders off.

And it's a little bit that kind of a morning: His wishes are strong, hers are stronger. I move between one and the other, never really hitting them both at the same time. Well, maybe once, in this moment:






Music class, too, does not quite grab Sparrow today. He listens, and even though we sing songs he's heard many times before, he holds back.

And of course, when we do work books, Sparrow looks on -- a  little guy for whom life moved just a little too fast today.

Still, as I summarize their day to their mom, I say quite honestly that it was a super good one. The kids don't always have to be in sync to be happy. And I haven't a doubt that both were happy today. Grandmas can tell these things.











In the afternoon, I spend a long time sorting through the week's groceries. For the first time, there were a number of misfires. (Wrong items sent, wrong items charged.) I deliberate whether I should just let it go. I got food. We'll eat the food. Do details matter? We're so used to complaining when we're poorly served. Even now, during a pandemic, we review, gripe, let it all out. Sometimes maybe staying humbly quiet is a better way to be.

I think about all this as I put away the last bit of food and sit down for a good Zoom call with my two southern state friends. Two weeks ago we were in not dissimilar situations, but since that last Zoom call, at least two of our states (including mine) have surged in the number of infections. And still, here we three are, safe, keeping our distances, washing our groceries, continuing to shelter in place because honestly, if you can do that, you are lucky. We are lucky.






A light supper -- of eggs and asparagus and mushrooms. A quiet evening. Fireflies, popcorn. The last piece of rhubarb cake.

Monday - 108th

What do you call a fun weather adventure with kids? Maybe taking a hike in a snowstorm? Or finding yourselves in front of a rainbow?

Probably low on your list would be barrelling in a car through torrential rain and booming thunder on a highway, where you really can't see much and the noise of the rain is so deafening that even the thunder claps seem tame.

And yet -- I'd say this crazy ride was a highlight for Snowdrop. (And since she was squealing with delight, her brother went along, casting only the occasional nervous eye at the pelting rain outside.)


The day did not start out wet. Instead, it began with a sticky heat wave. (I'm keeping an eye out for the next blooms. Here's one of the pretty groupings...)






The kind of morning where you probably would not choose to eat breakfast outside. Unless you're us.






When the kids come, I have to do a little arm twisting to start off on a nature hike. I promise that they can pick a few California poppies in the meadow...
















... and yes, even a couple of sweet pea stems.











The AC is definitely on in the farmhouse. Nothing outrageous -- we rarely bring it down below 75, and yet it feels heavenly cool as compared to the sticky mess outside.










What's on our plate at Gaga's Summer School? Well, in this particular school, the kids have a say in the curriculum. We do a lot of reading -- first choice for both -- and then they vote for free play. I'm fine with that. It's Monday -- Snowdrop especially has missed her various story setups. Eventually I bring them around to geography.

Here, it gets difficult. I think the idea of different countries and different cultures is still a bit nebulous to a boy freshly turned two. Still, we persevere. I mean, the young mind is a sponge, right? (Snowdrop told me last week that my "sponge" was getting old and therefore my memory was bound to be less good than hers.)

We finish. We do some addition puzzles. The rains begin. We rush to the car and drive out into the monsoon-like storms.


In the evening, the thunder rumbles somewhere out there, but the rains move on. The animals come out of hiding. I'm thinking -- it will be time to do some weeding again. But not today. We don't load chores onto a Monday eve. Reheat the shrimp with green mole. Pop a few tortillas into the toaster. Stir up some of last week's rainbow chard with onion, garlic, balsamic. Look at the news one last time then turn it all off.

And here's a transition into a totally calm evening: FaceTime with Primrose in Chicago!






(It's fun to see that their CSA box is not hugely different from ours. Primrose is really loving the first peas of the season! Along with her veggie burger.)


 


After,  Ed and I sit on the steps of the porch surrounded by our brave teenage cats who have been chased out of the courtyard by swallows swooping down on them to protect their young cheeps. We watch the brilliant dance of fireflies...

And exhale.

Sunday - 107th

All my grandkids have had several parentless sleepovers at the farmhouse and I can tell you right now that there is no pattern to the wake-up times. Some nights they fall into a deep farmhouse sleep and wake up at their normal or even somewhat later time. Sometimes they wake up way too early and bounce out of bed as if it were Christmas morning.

Today it was the Christmas morning variant. Even though Snowdrop went to bed an hour past her bedtime, she woke up and got up two hours before her usual morning rise and shine.

I tried to coax her back to bed or, failing that, to encourage her to go play for a while while I dozed on, but she proclaimed that if Ed was up and working on his truck (say what?? at 6 a.m.??), then she could and should be up as well. Thanks Ed.

I thought she'd have a tired and even cranky morning, but that turned out not to be the case. She had an "I am a curious nearly five and a half year old and I have a lot of questions about everything" morning. Why do swallows eat insects in flight, why is gaga's hair still brown in places instead of all white, why do I think there never was a unicorn ever anywhere?

Breakfast is very early.











She and I had already fed the cheepers and cats...





I was definitely ready for my coffee.


I take her home before noon. I have quite a bit of catch-up work to do, but of course, I do hardly any of it. After a coffee/lunch/something break on the porch...


 



... I turn to cooking. Not only do I have the young family here for dinner, but I am just swimming in rhubarb. Time to bake again.






Dinner. First for the kittie sisters...






... then for us.

(Reading while waiting for the food)






Dinner for us all.






Happy. The child, not the rooster.






And finally,  Ed and I take a moment to unwind, with popcorn. The upside of such busy days is that there is little time left for reading all details of all stories that make the news. These days, that's a good thing.

Saturday - 106th

Feeling nostalgic for some event or place from the past can be very pleasant. You recall a moment well lived. How good is that!

But in these times of great uncertainty, it can be hard. Many have said that we all will carry that marker with us forever: before March 2020 and after. It's not that the "after" will remain dismal. The hope is that many, indeed, most of us will pull through and do alright (and it's not a far fetched hope). Nonetheless, the "before" is full of such innocence, especially for us Americans, that it hurts to go there. We so want to reclaim anything that once was deemed merely ordinary.

For me, music and photos are the triggers. There are songs that recall visits and travels with my daughters when they were just entering adulthood. Lovely memories! Then there is this one song on my shuffled playlist -- je t'emmenerai -- you can listen to it here:

I first heard it on French Radio during one of those car rides with Ed in and around Sorede -- the village in the south of France he and I returned to many times before he had enough of travel. I don't think any period of time was ever so free of worry for me, so perfectly attuned to the moment as those weeks in Sorede. Life moved seamlessly from a croissant on the main square with a cafe creme and a good book, to a lunch in the shaded garden, and a dinner sometimes at home, sometimes at a favorite pizza joint, once in a while in a real restaurant. In between, we visited markets, swam in the sea and hiked up daunting trails that took you to the Spanish border and back. True vacation stuff. But more importantly, we took not a single worry with us. Our days were squeaky clean!

Still, you can look at the upside of "now:" Ed and I know each other far better than in those Sorede years. We may not be living through calm times, but our understanding of where we are in life is far greater now than it was back then.


And photos? Well, I don't have much from the years when my daughters were growing up. Somehow the pics all got moved to Chicago and so I haven't great access to them. That's okay for now. I have them etched in my memory. But then along came Ocean. It's only a year older than my life with Ed, so you could say that the blog traces perfectly my time with him. And it traces all the years of my being a grandparent. I don't go back often to posts from the past. Not now, when I'm still so insanely busy with life in the here and now. But in cleaning out my (overloaded) computer drive, I did have a real run through my earlier years with my grandkids.

I don't know what you miss most in this strange period of social distancing or isolation. I'm sure it's time spent with people you love who are just too far away and perhaps not safe for an elderly person's visit. Of course. For me -- I miss the stupidly simple acts of going places with my grandkids (the two here and the one in Chicago). What makes me shake my head in disbelief is how suddenly we lost our excursions to the park, where Snowdrop loved to play ice cream store on the playground equipment. Or, with Primrose -- a walk to a coffee shop where she and I would play with the camera over a mini-lunch. Sparrow never got his adventuring moments. Last summer he could not walk and so trips to the playground were less interesting to him. How would he treat them now? Would he chase his sister and try to figure out why something that looked like a metal post was suddenly being called an ice cream stand?

These are, of course, sweet memories. Not necessarily of happier times -- all my hours with family, with Ed (those are the only people I see now) have plenty of happy times, even now. But they were of another era. The "before we had to deal with all this stuff" era. Life was far simpler and that simplicity can be very beguiling!


Today, it is hot. I mean, steamy hot. We should be bringing the fan to the porch. Breakfast, close to noon (after a morning of cleaning up and out all rooms of the farmhouse -- Ed is doing a haul to Goodwill as we continue our attempt at downsizing even more)...






More chores, indoor, outdoor, food related, garden related...






And I plant some peas. It's totally the wrong time to plant peas, but I had not imagined we could get away with a crop. The groundhog had always found ways to get to the shoots before I could snip off any pods. But this year, the decorative peas are doing fine and so we thought we'd give the edible ones a try. Even if it is nearly July. Way too late to be guaranteed any peas at all.






Finally, as it's Saturday, I attend to the pick up of my Community Supported Agriculture  box. What additions this week? A cucumber. A bag of peas. Oh, how ironic, given my own late planting. Cabbage, of the salad variety. And some spring favorites that I've seen before: green onion, broccoli, lettuce, kale.


And toward late afternoon, Snowdrop comes for a sleepover.


 



She hasn't had one since... winter. Or was it fall? Now, at nearly five and a half, she knows her own mind and she has planned out all meals and many of our activities: book reading, movie watching -- we do it all.























It's late by the time the farmhouse is completely quiet. Snowdrop sleeps, Ed and I put our feet up and read. Well, I read, he dozes. I have lots of fizzy water, a glass of wine, a piece of chocolate and the cool air from the AC. Incredible luxury, don't you think?

Friday - 105th

And they're back!

I'm thinking of the clouds, the rains, the storms.

I'm also thinking of the two kitties -- Calico and Cutie, the sisters that keep being chased away by the teenage cats who call the farmette lands their home. (Cutie has actually been coming back daily for a feeding or two, but Calico has been gone for over a week. Every time I think she surely must be dead, she reappears, starving, thin, but happy to see me answer her incessant meows with a bowl of food.)






And I'm thinking of the return of Snowdrop's pictures, which she stopped working on for a while.

But again, I am getting ahead of myself. The day starts very early. With animals.






Some flower appreciation...






(that's a close up of this...)






And breakfast.






The kids come immediately after and even though it is lightly drizzling when they arrive, I push for a quick nature walk -- to the barn and back. They love visiting the coop and the adventure is made more exciting by the fact that Ed joins us there.











As we walk back to the farmhouse, the rain picks up, so we don't linger. And as I watch the two kids, I think to myself: who needs the other more? Your guess may be -- he does. Sparrow does everything Snowdrop does. She sits on a ball, he sits on a ball. She wants to go to art room, to read, to play with Legos -- he follows close behind.

And yet, I see in her a reliance on his presence that is touching. Even when she is pointing to his misstep -- gaga, he pushed me yesterday! -- she does it with an understanding that he is part of the family and the dynamics are complicated.
I have a hypothesis -- she tells me in the car and I smile at her choice of words. I think he pushed me because I had been wanting to do something alone and he was not happy about that.






As I said, Snowdrop is inspired to go back to drawing. This comes after reading the sweet, sweet Catwings stories (she begged to read through all four books at one sitting, but I believe in deferred gratification! If I have to wait a day for the next episode in my Crime Dramas, she must sweat it out too!) where a family of cats has wings. Her pigs in her super-pig sketches have wings. She is on it again!






It is the last day of the second week of Gaga's summer school and only now do I suggest to them a video after lunch. It's raining and I want them to have a bit of an easy moment. Olivia stories provide just that.






In the evening, it rains. And storms. And rains some more. I stir fry some fish, go back to my asparagus, and settle in with Ed for a quiet and lovely evening on the couch.

Thursday - 104th

So we're rolling in summer once again. You know how rains often clear away hot humid weather and usher in a cool spell? Well they did the opposite. Yesterday's storms chased away the brisk cool air and today we are back with the heat.

It's summer at the farmette.






But not yet July and so the garden still waits to really open up. (There's a reason why in past years I always took my travel break in the last weeks of June, coming back just in time for the flower power of July.)

(the sweet peas are just beginning to bloom)





I have the usual set of activities today: farmette chores, kids, food washing, file deleting on my overcrowded computer. But I do have a resolve: to get to Ocean writing earlier than in the past few days. Yesterday I did not finish until right about midnight and I did not have time to do a quick re-check this morning. As a result, I managed to bungle a paragraph and two photos and they sat there in a sorry state until I had the time late today to fix it.

I will try to do better.

Even as there is so much to do!

Let's start the day together with breakfast.






From there it's just a hop and a skip to the kids' arrival.











Our time outside is modest. The mosquitoes are starting to appear in the shade and the trucks are rumbling loudly on the plot of land next door that is supposed to be someday converted to community gardens. Sparrow thinks it's too noisy.

We go inside.






As we work through our Summer School program (loosely, very loosely), I think about how the kids are growing up quickly and how old worries seem so dated and new challenges are forever cropping up, only to fizzle the next day, or next month, or next year.



 


Today, for instance,  I notice that Snowdrop is unreasonably hard on herself when she draws. She has a vision. If the execution isn't up to snuff, she is despondent. Sparrow, on the other hand, has grown tired of running a marker back and forth across a page and way prefers these days to read a book than to slump over a blank piece of paper with a marker in hand.

Art class is very brief.






But the kids are bouncy and playful and Snowdrop has returned to making up games with her dolls and so Sparrow, too, will follow along and there is this cooperation now that grew out of many months of struggling to find a way to play side by side.






(farmette cherries make great earrings!)







Later, much later, in the early evening, Ed and I walk over to the plot of land just across the road from us. Much of it has been handed over for conservation as well as for educational farming.

It is like a painting right now. Stunning.







We return home to our evening chores, to animals clamoring for food and attention, to leftovers for supper and a quiet evening on the couch. So quiet that Ed falls asleep even before we're done with the night's episode of Stewart and Bailey.