Sunday - 135th

I am a cleaning machine. I suck dirt and remove debris. I attack the bathroom, I vacuum and polish the kitchen, the mud room, the living room. I pull off spent flowers and attack weeds. I mow paths. I trim porch flower pots and vacuum the mess. All day long I am creating order.































When I pause for a very very late breakfast, I speculate about caring for the yard going forward. I don't want to drag Ed into more outdoor work if he doesn't really like doing a great deal of it. In future years, should we scrounge up the funds and pay someone to come out and help me at times like this, when the whole three acres seem to be one relentless competition for which weed will grow the fastest, tallest, densest?
You could just stick with tending to your flowers and let the rest go, Ed tells me.
No, I really can't. I see the prickly weeds that will soon coat everything and everyone in sight and I know I must pull them out. Same for the million other things that fill in every corner of farmette land if I don't exercise some form of control.

He offers another breakfast table idea: we could move.






In many ways, the farmette is a disaster in the making. It has far too many trees and shrubs and they all crowd out each other and provide the dense foliage that mosquitoes love to call their own. And it's difficult to control the duff that covers so much of the shaded woodsy space. Do you mow it? Do you plant mushrooms? Woodland flowers? We've tried it all. And, of course, we live very close to wetlands. The bugs belong here. It's their territory. We are the invaders.

Still, there's so much to love here: space, privacy, a comfy little farmhouse, good internet (!), and a ten minute drive to the center of Madison, so that nothing is far and yes, a grocery store will deliver food to you! And of course, you don't really understand the benefits and drawbacks of any place until you've lived there for a while. We do get this place. We don't have so very many years to discover something new.

All this is idle talk: hiring help, moving, or maybe just cutting down about a dozen trees and calling it a day. And then planting two or three hundred little saplings to make better use of the northern most acre of the farmette. But these musings are a funny thing: toss them around often enough and suddenly you have a plan.

We will see what, over time, will percolate to the top. I'll let you know!

Our evening is a little different. We switched the family dinner night to later in the week and so today it's just Ed and me, watching the clouds form into a tempest outside. Good. We need the rain.

And isn't this a fine time to bake a frittata? With broccoli, mushrooms, garlic scapes... Yes it is!






It's the summer of many rainbows. Storms, followed by rainbows. One more thing to love.