I'm thinking that if I water the garden thoroughly, maybe it will rain. Doesn't it always work that way? You see the effect a drought has on plant life, you finally give in and work the hose over the flower fields, and then when you're done it rains. Either that or do a rain dance. Because, oh, do we need that rain! All of April goes by -- you know, the month of showers, and we get almost no rain.
And now, here we are, starting in on May, that stunning month that belongs in paintings that line museum walls, except that it doesn't feel like May at all. It is hot. A high of 86F, or 30C! Oh, not right away: the morning is still cool enough for a light sweater, but by noon the heat is on.
I'm up early. Animals to feed, chicks to take out, garden plants to inspect.
Breakfast, on the porch, just with Ed.
And then I go with the two young families to Eugster's farms. It's just about ten minutes up the road from the farmette and it is beloved by kids, especially in these last days of the lambing and kidding season. But here's something we didn't bargain for: it is a windy day! Really windy, with gusts up to to 40mph. Wind that blows hair in your face and sand in your eyes. Wind that disturbs every photo, every quiet moment with the young animals.
Surely it poses some challenges, but wee do not let the gusts of wind stand in the way of our fun. At Eugster's you can feed, pet, admire, and even hold the animals. We do it all. Here's a mini album of our Eugster's farm adventure:
(Primrose meets a goat...)
(Sparrow is shy about lots of strange things, but when it comes to animals he is right there, with all hands on board.)
(this mama preferred to feed her own...)
(this is the last weekend where you can come and hold some of the baby animals, including the goats. They are getting to be large and wiggly!)
(goats with goats; you'd get this if you knew the nicknames that are tossed around between my two daughters...)
Lunch time. Where to eat? We head back to downtown Madison. The young family picks up pelmeni (Russian dumplings) at Paul's. It's a great day to have a picnic on the Capitol Square. Another mini album, this time of our last meal en famille.
(the wind is so strong that we can easily and safely remove masks for a few minutes...)
(and this is when it starts to feel really warm... summer warm.)
And these are my last minutes with Primrose and her parents. They're returning home to Chicago and honestly, it's a good thing that I have to rush now to the "apples" part, because otherwise the sadness of missing them would creep in and take over the rest of the day.
So those were the "oranges." Now the apples: a while back I got an email from the Cider Farm guys with an invitation to visit their orchards. It's a promo thing they do each year: they offer you a tour of their beautiful hills of apple trees (when at least some of them are in bloom) and they talk a little about their business -- which is getting quite the reputation, at least in our neck of the woods.
They grow apples for quality cider -- the kind that you'll find in Normandy or Brittany in France. Dry, with wonderful aromas of a variety of cider apples (I suppose I should refer to it as hard cider as it is alcoholic, except that the more appropriate term would be wine cider, as the apples are carefully selected and cultivated in much the same way that grapes are grown for fine wine). Too, they manufacture a Calvados-like apple brandy. I'm less interested in the brandy, but both Ed and I do love good ciders. We rarely drink them, but when we do, we're always happy to have done so.
And so I have for you a third mini album -- of our trip to the southernmost region of Wisconsin, where on the extremely wind slapped hills, Ed and I spend some time among apple trees, picnicking afterwards with a box of breads, cheeses and salamis provided by the Cider Farm people.
(Pink blossoms for pink apples for rose cider. Or is it cider rose?)
(picnic)
(Ed took this selfie and in his grasp of the camera, he pressed some color balance setting, creating a rather pink toned picture. I don't mind!)
And now we're home and it is so very quiet. Weirdly so. Except for the sound of that wind sending gusts up the farmette hill, stirring up trouble on parched, dusty fields around us, as the dry air stubbornly refuses to allow for any rain to come our way.
(Doesn't the landscape -- all blossomy and bonny and still a touch pink -- lead you to hum English folk tunes as you take in the heady scene of a blooming apple or pear tree? It does for me!)
Tomorrow -- water and dance for rains. And of course, pick up the planting again.
