July swan song

A White-breasted Nuthatch is making noises in the willow. The breeze is light, the air is clean, the sun is lovely and not too hot. July goes out with her singular beauty on full display.

Breakfast, perfect (even though it's a two-day old croissant!), on the porch. With Ed and a cat and the cat throws up, but still, the morning is beautiful.

I have a week of no childcare once again. Each grandchild is enrolled in a full day program and apart from some viewing and visiting toward the end of the week, I am not involved in their daily routines. This means that I can be slow, deliberate and thoughtful. (It does not mean that I am not slow or deliberate or thoughtful on days with kids, only that it's a hit or miss thing then.) And I start the day in this way. I read more than I usually do. And I think about what I've read. 

One news opinion piece especially caught my attention. In it, the author, who himself is a psychologist suggests that women know to tone down the use of assertive language in their communications (especially but not only in male dominated work places), because men are hostile to their use of it and will respond more favorably if women sprinkle their statements with disclaimers, hedging and qualifying as they present ideas or make requests. 

Admission: I am prone to sprinkling my posts with a million qualifiers and disclaimers when I delve into an even mildly controversial issue. 

The article would leave us (women) thinking that perhaps in our daughters' and granddaughters' future there will come a day when women will be judged favorably even if they appear to be as assertive as men in their communications. But I'm with those who believe that this is (perhaps) the wrong direction for us all. I think (maybe) women got it right: there is great humility in admitting that you do not have full possession of correct information, and that you are proceeding with the best possible facts, but they are imperfect and so is, therefore, your conclusion. I've said this before: (I think) we have too much certainty being shouted at us from all directions. Too much judgment, too much self-promotion, and way too many people believing that they know better. How to raise a child, how to do someone else's job, how to do every thing in life at every stage of the game.

What if we just stayed quiet and concentrated on gathering information? What if we listened and qualified our responses? Shouldn't aim for that? Shouldn't we want "sensitive to the needs of others" to replace "assert and demand what you think is rightfully yours?"

Just a thought. No certainty there, but it sounds right to me.

In the early afternoon, I took my daughter and her visiting friend to pay a call on my mom. 

And in the late afternoon, Ed and I went biking together. 

We did the 45 minute loop -- he on his trusty cycle, me on my borrowed e-cycle. We paused by Lake Waubesa and watched a boat come in. I suppose if you have to find fault with summers here, after you're done groaning about the mosquitoes (we've had fewer numbers thus far so you can't complain too much!), you would be justified in feeling sad about our lakes, which are being destroyed by algae and weeds. Perhaps there is hope: people are more sensitive to such issues these days. Fewer cavalierly treat their lawns unnecessarily, or pasture their livestock by water streams. But for now, the water quality isn't good.

At home, I water the pots. In late summer and early fall, we will shift our attention back to these annuals to enjoy our last bits of color before the cold takes hold and puts the farmette lands to sleep for the winter. Oh, but that's a long way away. We're on the last day of July. The colors are spectacular and the feeling of summer is deeply with us still.

Sunday tweaks

It seems to me that we are racing toward the end of summer. End of July already? I snipped a lot of lilies today, but I noticed that there are few new buds on most stems. That's an end-of-July phenomenon alright. The days of snipping will soon end and I will return to an idle morning routine. Maybe.

(good morning, world!)

(such colors!)

(a burst of citrus)

(Breakfast)

I was to have the young family for dinner today and since this would have included their houseguest whom I know well and like, I had set out to bake what I imagined would go over well with him as he likes all things citrusy: a lime-lemon-orange tart in a chocolate crust. With berries on top. This one:

All proceeded according to schedule until I got the message that Sandpiper was now sick. Well that figures. First Sparrow, then Snowdrop and now the last one to fall -- the youngest guy. Bringing him here would be foolish for him and for us, so I offered instead to take the meal over to their place and join them in an outdoor supper. Still, the prep work is larger than usual and so the day is filled with kitchen work.

But I'm not neglecting the great outdoors! I pause in stirring citrus curd and snipping beans and take off with Ed for a walk in our favorite park. Because it's beautiful and we never regret the time we take for this short but happy hike.

Now, back to the kitchen. Finish up, pack it up and head over to the young family's home.

And though at first, Sandpiper really does appear to be under the weather...

By the end of the evening, he's up and running with the rest of them!

(the rest of them)

It's wonderful to be eating on their deck and we linger for quite a while. 

I feel just a smidge guilty because when we eat at her place, the clean up is hers, not mine. But, she is way more efficient than I am and by the time I leave, the house is in order once more.

Summer evenings: they are the best, aren't they....

with love...

summer days

I think we're peaking in terms of summer pleasures and vexations. Big storms did pass over us and we kept out power, but many of the tall phloxes toppled and, too, the mosquitoes rejoiced. Party, party! Let's get out there and bight their noggins off! On the other hand, we got nearly three inches of rain. I hereby proclaim the farmette summer drought to be officially over.

Up early this morning. A few minutes after six. The goal is to get things done, but without hurry! I feed the animals and snip most of the lilies, leaving the Big Bed for later. I'm incapable of not cleaning up the spaces around me as I exit and enter the farmhouse, but at the same time, I want to get to the farmers market early today. So, a partial snip and a few moments of meditation as I take in today's flower performance.

Now to market.  My list is medium long: corn, for sure. I love our local Stoneman's (less than two miles up the road from us) but they have been slow in getting their season rolling. I have to think that they planted just a tad too late to catch the early spring rains. So, while we wait for their corn, I want to pick up some other exquisite ears, and no one can lay claim to that honor more legitimately than Mary at Bee Charmer. She mainly does honeys and I have several of hers. But, I know from the years when I was the market forager for L'Etoile restaurant (noted in a NYTimes article here), if you want to rave about exceptional corn, you can do no better than go to Mary's stand, where, behind jars of honey, she'll have this week's haul of sweet corn. 

I'm there before 8 and still she shakes her head. L'Etoile beat you to it: they took all the big ears. Of course they did! The forager is out with her (or his) cart just as the market opens at 6. Damn those early restaurant people! Still, she says she has a couple dozen left and the ears are pure heaven, if a tad small. Without hesitation I say yes to a dozen and within a minute, another person in the know comes up and picks up the last of it and there you have it. 

Another item -- haricots verts. French green beans. 

I realize that I really need to double up on my market buying: spin around once to look, a second time to buy. This, to me, is one tiny fault with our market set-up: you cant easily meander from stall to stall, you have to do the whole circuit, and it's a long walk. Too, by 8 in the morning, the sidewalk space is limited and you are at a crawl. I jump out to the street for part of my walk around, but I pay the price for shortcutting: I forget to pick up a box of red currants. And I really wanted a box of red currants for weekend baking.

Other purchases? Apricots and the last cherries from Door County. Flowers from my vendor -- I go with glads today!

Blueberries from JenEhr farm. I ask the seller -- where's all the rest of the farm's produce? They retired from farming. Just blueberries! I suppose we all eventually retire!

Okay, shopping done in forty minutes! Not bad. But I do miss pulling a red wagon. The bags get heavy!

And as long as I am downtown, I hop over to Madison Sourdough, because I so love having a fresh croissant for breakfast!

It's considerably less hot and humid today than it was, say, yesterday. Nonetheless, the bugs are out and the sun does heat things up a little. Ed and I clip some sagging branches, I finish snipping lilies and now it feels like I've done my bit of summer work. Enough for now. 

In an afternoon of reading (because summer is for an uptick in reading, a special kind of reading that allows you to be swallowed up whole by a story), I come across an article gently suggesting that we should try to give ourselves a period of time (a week? a month?) where we do zero multitasking. No listening to the radio while you cook. No half listening to the TV while you're folding laundry. No listening to anything while you're racking up the miles on the jogging trail. The author of the piece suggests that it is a more difficult challenge than you might expect.

Is it? Ed has always claimed he is a terrible multitasker (so, a real "in the moment" guy), whereas I've always thought I was pretty good at it (the author would dispute that, since according to him, no one is good at it). I could cook dinner, listen to kids talk about school, catch a news story on the TV. All at the same time. Heck, raising kids, doing full time work, cooking dinners, volunteering heavily at the kids' school, planting perennials, moonlighting at L'Etoile -- this was once my modus operandi. All in one day, with lots of overlap. 

But I dont do that anymore. I never listen to anything when working outside, or when walking or biking. And when I travel, I often tune out completely while in my plane seat or at the airport. No music, no movie, no book. Head runs on empty, like taking the plug out of a full bathtub. 

I'm thinking that at certain times in your life you have to multitask. It's a requirement for getting through excruciatingly packed weeks. Think: five days before Christmas, and you're the primary parent, cook, decorator, and Santa person and you have a work assignment due. Sure, tell me that we all should shed some of these responsibilities and opt for a simpler life. Maybe live in a log cabin, all in one cozy room. And still, someone has to chop the wood and make the garden grow. There's no escaping it: life can be one long todo list! 

But, that was then. I'm in favor of being in the moment now, at 70. I dont have tinnitus, I dont have miserable thoughts threatening to converge in an empty head. What a luxury!

But it is a luxury. You multitaskers everywhere -- I am completely sympathetic. Put on the music (or a podcast) while you fold laundry. You deserve the joy of combining pleasure with drudgery. Leave the empty headedness to us retirees and to people writing articles for the NYTimes.

Friday

We are back to a regular old schedule, with the regular old summer bugs bothering us once again and the regular old lethargy seeping in through the cracks so that I really have a hard time getting through the morning garden work and an even harder time motivating myself to head out for some regular old exercise, of the bike variety, because nothing else grabs me today.

I do enjoy the flowers and I admit to even putting in an order for fall bulbs, so I must still have a gardening fire raging within me, why else would my thoughts run to next spring? But my morning work has to now included fighting off mosquitoes and you know how much fun that is!

Photos, taken as always during my snipping session:

Breakfast, alone, because Ed has a work meeting and I do not want to wait. On the upside, I'm liking so much the strawberry rhubarb cake from the market bakers who profit from our rhubarb even as we profit from their snacking cakes!

Fine, I'll do my bike loop. Forty minutes of pedaling past prairie and cornfields never hurt anyone! (Though I did enjoy reading this obit in the NYT yesterday. Ed directed me to it. Note the line about the habits of the studied group of long lifers. Exercise? Healthy eating? Vegetarians? Not this bunch. But then, who wants to live to 112!)

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here once again. 

(I ask her to pick her favorite flower. She reminds me it's... a snowdrop and those are not blooming right now! And of those that are blooming? This true lily.)

There is not question of playing outside. Or even spending a handful of minutes out there in the steamy swampy buggy air. 

Instead, we read. This is what she wants to do, this is what I want to do.

And in the evening the storms are threatening us once again. We'd been warned of their possible violence and indeed, lights are flickering as we speak! I better post! Good night!

Thursday

My vacation from childcare continues for one more day and therefore I give myself time this morning to snip and once again -- think in the rambling fashion one does when the flowers are beautiful and the bugs are only slightly menacing.

I think about the Barbie movie, about the Karen story that flooded social media, and about Karolcia. I'm sure you've been following the analysis of the movie (it's sufficiently "of our time and age" that I will one day watch it. In flight, once it makes its way to airline pics). And perhaps you caught the furor over the e-bike grab in New York? (The story is not so much in the incident, where either a white pregnant woman took a bike that a Black youth felt was his, and then threatened to get the whole pack of youth in trouble, or the Black youth grabbed a bike from a white pregnant woman and harassed her -- it's unclear which version is the true one and it hardly matters, because the story, I think, is in the condemnation that followed.) I'm sure you know nothing about Karolcia. I'll get to her, so that I can weave these three into one thread for you, the thread that was running through my head this morning.

I first read about the Karen story today in the NYT, having missed the whole social media hullaballoo over the incident. My immediate reaction was to think -- wow, two victimized demographic groups (Black youths, middle aged women of any race), caught in a fracas, while the populace roars. Ed had a different take. You know, the white woman isn't going to get put in jail or held down in a chokehold for causing trouble. Yes, but her life is all messed up as a result of the social media posting!  Here we are, arguing who has been dealt a lousy hand! [In the article, the author tells us which one she believes was culpable. This was, in my view, a mistake. People jumping to conclusion and spouting opinions without being in possession of all the facts is at the root of so much of what's wrong with us today!] 

Essentially Ed is correct, of course: the Black youths are at greater risk of being held accountable for any alleged misstep and indeed, in the comments, most readers are quick to condemn the young guys, even with an absence of all the information. But this should not lead us to dismiss the gender issues that continue to plague that demographic. Black men get shot. Women face aggression and omission.Youth gangs can spell trouble. White women accusing Black men can cause trouble. Both are in untenable positions! 

Recently, in reading comments to the Barbie discussion in the press, I've picked up this new optimism in forward thinking men, often dads of daughters. They write of their "strong girls" with pride. Fiercely independent young women who wont put up with any bullshit! Oh yeah? Have they been tested? And why is it that women need to be strong anyway? What if they're weak? Don't they deserve a decent life? Not everyone is primed to fight just to stay afloat. It all reminded me of how so many were convinced that we were done with racism when Obama got elected president. Ha.

Which brings me around to a kinder, gentler world of Karolcia. It's a Polish book (published in 1959), gifted to me sometime when I was 6. I lived in Warsaw and in those years (or perhaps just in my family), we weren't in the habit of going to bookstores to pick out books for kids, but somehow Karolcia ended up in my hands and I read the book many, many times (and not only because I had few others to devour). The story is simple and lovely and just a tiny bit sad: a little girl finds a blue bead. It has magic powers. It grants wishes. An evil woman tries to steal it from her, but Karolcia is smart. Chapter after chapter, she perseveres. She hangs on to the magic blue bead. But as soon as Karolcia is done with wishing impulsively for small trinkets and dumb add ons, she notices that with each wish, the magic fades. As does the color of the bead. Until it is almost bereft of blue. She has only one wish left.

Karolcia is generous with this one: she asks that everyone has their wishes come true. Sick children heal, the playground is full of happy little ones.

I never really believed that beads could have magic powers and yet, I thought hard about wishing and granting wishes and whether Karolcia could have had greater success by simply wishing for an extended life of the bead. Wishing for more wishes. Or is that greedy? Perhaps more importantly, this book was my first introduction to a spunky storybook character who did not stay home, twiddling her thumbs, but instead leapt from one adventure to the next without hesitation or remorse. In this way, I wanted to be like Karolcia. She was my modern Barbie from the movie. Capable of dismantling patriarchy if it came to that!  

And maybe in some ways I was like the girl chasing the blue bead, and in other ways I was stumped by the enormity of the obstacles along the way. In the end, surely luck played a huge role in the outcomes: I did not get pregnant at 16. I could have, but I didn't. I never really needed to call out for help. I'd walk the streets of south Chicago in the middle of the night and I never was assaulted by anyone. Luck. On a grander scale, I managed to find rewarding work that also allowed me to raise kids. I almost flopped on that one, but in the end, it came together. And, at the end of the day, I responded to that first email from Ed and now here we are. Lucky clams, spending every day in each others company.

Still, I have many memories from being young, that young. Reading and rereading Karolcia, wondering if I could knock down evil people, whether I could make a playground a happy place. 

And here's my heap of flowers from today!

(phlox in full bloom: now lining the right side of the path to the door)

(phlox in bloom: this bed really belongs to them in late summer!)

(this true lily is one of the last to bloom -- it's a welcome sight and scent in late summer)

(Dance and I both want to know: why do the hens do their morning groom on the picnic table?)

(this is what midsummer looks like!)

Hot today. Possibly the hottest day of the year for us. I put on the fan on the porch for breakfast. (Cornflowers from our new meadow.)

(from here!)

And sometime late in the afternoon, I take the bike out again. This time with a purpose! To market!

It is beastly hot and humid, but when you pick up speed, you're flying! 

At the market, we pick up cheese, give over two dozen beautiful stalks of rhubarb, and purchase a beautiful tomato! Oh, and flowers.

(rhubarb delivery to these guys!)

(tomatoes from this guy)

(flowers for this person!)

I fly back on my e-cycle. Ed, with greater sense, rides his motorbike. We have a quiet evening in our air conditioned home. Lucky indeed.