rain

Our bucket shows that the night's rain was intense. We missed the dangerous storms that plowed through the Great Plains, but we got plenty of thunder and rain. And the showers continue -- all day long.

Perhaps the only pause in the relentless patter of rain comes in the early morning, when I step out to feed the animals. It's an otherwise very pretty day, if you concentrate on the plant life rather than the darkening skies, and I would have loved to spend it in the courtyard, in the shade and light fragrance of the crab apple, but I only get this one pause in the otherwise wet day and I use it to pick out the weeds that have doubled in size in the course of this one rainy night.

I do give at least a few minutes of my attention to the beauty of all that's around me right now. By some markers, the first week of May -- with that crab apple tree and the emerging lilac flowers -- is the most awesome of them all, because it's not just about the flower fields. It's about all that grows and blooms, whether you're looking down at the fields, or up at the bushes and trees. It's all perfectly sublime.

(stepping out into a la vie en rose...)

(this tree's best moment is now, before the blossoms are fully opened)

(we don't have just one crab apple on the farmette lands... here's another)

(but this one, at the edge of the path to the barn, is our queen of the week!)

The rain then comes back and it's a cool day, so no porch breakfast this morning. Back to the kitchen.

And back to reading and writing. I should relish the break, but what can I say -- the grass is always greener over there, where you cannot be. I miss my gardens!

 

In the later afternoon I start in on dinner for the young family. That, at least, is not weather dependent. I cook the usual, and it is, as always, great to have them here.

 (someone does not mind rain...)

(and if she can walk up the secret path, so can Sandpiper!)

(dinner, inside of course)

Tomorrow -- it's back to outdoor work. I expect the weeds have been doing a celebration dance with all that rain. I wont let them win this round! 

And a happy end of April to you too!

with love...

repetition

You know how older people tell you the same thing over and over again? Each time as if it were something new, something you hadn't grasped or even heard before? Well, guess what -- I think we all live and thrive repeating ourselves in much of that we say and do. Perhaps younger people reign it in better, but fact is, we all appear to like repetition! And people living in northern climes are programmed to love it even more -- we are seasonal in our behaviors. Winter's here? Okay, let's rearrange the closet and bring out the hygge candles. Springtime? Let's photograph those tulips and after that, fruit trees and after that, the lilacs, because each one has its best moment and then fades, until next year, when it again will have its best moment and we will again focus our eyes, our lens on the emergent blooms.

Ocean has a lot of repetition and not only because my days are rather similar and writing about them forces a kind of mechanical thinking about what took place. It has repetition because as a person who loves the outdoors, I'm glued to the screen that is the great big earth outside (or on a normal day -- the farmette lands) and I walk through the steps that are seasonally appropriate. And so in one month you will see the same corner of a flower field, again and again, because that is what I am noticing right now (and it may even remind you of a series of photos taken of that same corner, at the same time last year, or the year before). It's deliberate, because I look for those same blooms each year, often in the same places. And in a few days, or few weeks, I'll turn my attention to something else. And this continues all year long.

There is a lot of excitement in the new, but there is also a lot of joy in the repetition. I loved the concentration of crocuses. I loved our daffodil clusters.  I'm loving the emergence of very pink, bursting buds of the crabapple! And yes, you will see a lot of crabapple blooms in the next few days. It is approaching its most radiant moment and it is so very beautiful!  Let's stand back in reverence and feel the enchantment, the magic that unfolds.

 

Okay, but first, the morning walk. You have farm animals, you better like repetition because you surely have to endure a lot of it.

Oh, but it is such a stellar walk right now, in the last days of April!

This very warm day deserves a special breakfast. From this place (familiar, right? I keep going back because it's so good!):

The day is steamy warm. Windy but outrageously June-like (high of 78f or 26c). And so finally, finally, I can throw down a tablecloth and we can eat breakfast on the porch! And if that isn't heavenly then I dont know what is.

The plum trees and blueberry bushes have arrived, but we are slow to put them in. I clear out some sticky weed from one of the meadows (another nuisance weed, aka goosegrass or sticky willy), I plant a clematis, and a dozen gladioli bulbs (gladioulus murielae) for those white, late summer blooms, and I finally decide to put my alyssum flowers in a hanging basket. I love the smell of those dainty white blooms, but if I leave them anywhere at chicken eye level, then the hens will eat them all. They absolutely adore those flowers!

Too, I snip off some dried limbs from the many trees that line our walkway to the barn. When you take as many photos as I do each day, you notice dead branches and runners that really should be snipped off!

And wood chips! We've been waiting for a free delivery from any one of the tree removal people in our area and yesterday our most reliable guys delivered a half a truckload. So I spread a bit in the new flower bed and I fill in gaping bare spots in the older beds too.

And I weed. A lot. The creeping bell flower. Always there's the creeping bellf lower. To the racket of the singing Robin and the Song Sparrow and the Goldfinch.

Finally we set out to plant the fruit bushes and trees -- plum trees first. They are just thin sticks and so I dont think we can hope for plums in the near future, but gardening requires patience and a fervent belief in a better future. Ed and I aren't invested in having large harvests, but we're curious types and we try new ideas and yes, there's always the repetition of tasks, but there's also the novelty in the result. Because we can't ever be sure about anything out there. A storm may come and damage everything. A drought may weaken most of the new plantings. A knee may give out, a lung can collapse, a tic may bite (we've found three so far this year, which is sort of a high number for us). We worry about none of this. We think instead about the flowers that will some day (maybe) bloom and the plums that may some day appear.

We dont stop working until the rains come in the evening. We'll work with the blueberries tomorrow or the next day. Right now, I can't say that I'm sorry to see those big clouds roll in. We need more rain and the two of us need a break!

With love...

Earth Week: maintaining order

Last year on this date I had knee surgery. Eventually, the knee improved, but for the rest of the season, I struggled, trying to figure out how much work outside is too much for my new knee. Flower field maintenance had to be sporadic and superficial. 

I suppose my approach to flower field maintenance is always sporadic and verging on superficial, but this year, I'm devoting more time to it and the results should be good, if still very far from perfect. I trim bushes I haven't trimmed well for a long time. I dig out some of that scoundrel weed -- the creeping bellflower.

Let me sound off for a bit about the creepong bellflower. If you have been gardening for a while here is the northern Midwest, you have probably had to fight with it constantly. I have had it in all my gardens my entire gardening life and I can truthfully say it is the worst! It's indestructible! It's drought tolerant and will survive when all else fails! It can put out rhizomes deep into the ground and suddenly you have the plant appearing in a new place and there's precious little you can do to eradicate it. Sure, dig deep and poison the roots, but in an established bed that's pretty draconian. I'm not going to go the Glyphosate route. No way! But yes, I do try hard to dig it up or at least tug at it -- all millions of new plants -- so as to not let it go to seed, because that damn plant, after flowering, can produce 10 000 new seeds (one plant, 10 000 babies!) and before you know it everyone up and down the neighborhood will hate you for it.  So, I pull, I dig and I dont even make a dent, I'm sure, but at least I will not, let me repeat -- will not! -- let that pest get the upper hand!

All this counts as flower field maintenance. It doesn't have the glamour and glory of planting and so it may seem a little weird to count it as part of my celebration of Earth Week, but in fact, it may well be the most important thing that I do out there on farmette lands. I help some grow, I eradicate invasives, I plant, divide, transplant and (so important!) I dig out weeds. (You know who you are you creeping creep!!)

This is the first half of my day.

Of course, I had started with a walk to the barn to feed all six chickens.

And shortly after, Ed and I eat our breakfast.

And then he and I do our gardening tasks and there are many and they are never ending and they are important. 

In the early afternoon I pick up the kids. The rain comes, the kids run from the car to the house, I scramble behind with the various paraphernalia that accumulates on a school day, especially a day followed by music and dance lessons. Typical Friday stuff. But before scooting off for they lessons, the kids need to eat up and unwind. Each has her or his way of doing this.

And now it seems to be my habit that after drop offs, and after chats with my daughter, I go grocery shopping. Week's worth of food. Somehow Friday evening seems right for this. A bit odd, a bit normal. As I fill the cart, I turn toward today's supper. Here's a brilliant idea -- something I haven't done for years -- I buy prepared foods. I'm that tired.

Home again. Feet up, TV on, prepared foods, heated in the microwave, before us. Rain outside. Just what the flowers need. A perfect cap to a somewhat manic planting period!

with love...

Heaven on planet Earth

This is it! One last frosty night behind us and now we are done with it (I'm guessing here, but it is an educated guess). The warmup is here and I can finally take all wintered-over plants outside, and begin planting the tubs that circle the courtyard. The annuals will provide color all the way until October. They may be outnumbered by the perennials in the flower fields (way outnumbered!), but in fact, they are the bedrock of the farmette's flowering season. They will be blooming in mid June when nothing else seems to be showing signs of color, and they will be blooming in September when most perennials will have tucked themselves in for the coming cold spell. Most serious flower people intersperse annuals with perennials (Monet's Garden in Giverny comes to mind), but I've always preferred to separate the two, keeping them close, but to the side. And today, they can finally begin their season of growth and bloom.

Knowing that this is to be my big tub planting day, I get up very early. My walk to the barn is bouncy! First of all, there's still that night's chill in the air, secondly -- I want to get going!

First job: take out all the prefilled baskets onto the porch. Yes! It finally looks beautiful out there. The kitchen table is adorned now by grocery store tulips, garden daffodils and asparagus. Because guess what -- Ed found this year's first spears of asparagus in the farmette fields!

And now I'm ready to head out for my third (and last?) trip to Kopke's Greenhouse to pick up the tiny pots of annuals that will fill the tubs. And there are many containers to fill! [Ed saves last year's hanging baskets and I feel compelled, yes compelled to fill those as well, in addition to the tin tubs that we now use for annuals.]

But wait.

What's that noise up above? 

Five big hawks, swooping into the peach meadow (where the young hens often hang out), swooping into the courtyard (where the older girls like to hang out). I rush out and wave my arms wildly and ...hey, is one of them clutching something white? I run to the barn where I find five chickens. Five?! There should be six!

Ed! The hawks took one of the young girls!

Ed comes out. Are you sure?

Count them!

He counts the five. Have you looked everywhere?

I saw something white flash as the hawk swooped down to the meadow!

Two minutes later, Ed is calling from the barn. The sixth one isn't missing. She is laying an egg in the coop. Your reasoning is off: you see five chickens, you see hawks, you conclude one is taken. Poor deduction.

He's been after me with my hurried, unsound conclusions lately, pointing out a trickle of fallacies as I rush to move from one thing to the next. The guy has the luxury of time! Me, I'm in a perpetual hurry.

Too happy to see all six girls, too happy to be finally planting annuals, too happy in all ways to bother defending my honor, I wave good bye and head out to the greenhouse.

I fill twelve containers with flowers before I have to throw down the shovel and go get the kids. (Ed's in the old orchard, cutting down dead branches.)

I'm not sure the kids notice the new plant additions...

But the UPS delivery person sure does!  

And I notice. Indeed, I'm so determined to finish my planting that I go back to it after the kids are gone, working to fill another half dozen containers before dusk finally sets in.

Yes, dinner is insignificant (spinach and scrambled eggs) and very late.

As I toss the spinash and chop up lettuce for a salad, I think to myself -- it's April 25th and most of my planting work is done for this year! Remarkable. Truly remarkable.

Earth Week when you're... older

It's cold this morning. We didn't quite hit the freezing point, but we came close (and we expect to actually hit it tonight). I had grabbed my thick sweatshirt for my morning walk to the barn and I felt it was not good enough. Nonetheless, the sun's out and the plant life is looking just fine and the birds are everywhere and we are to have another lovely day. Cooler, but still radiantly beautiful.

So of course, given that it's Earth Week (at least in my head), you'd think that I'd hurry through breakfast and rush outside to continue with tending to the flower fields.

You would be wrong.

Breakfast is leisurely and loaded with flowers, because I'd snipped some more fallen daffies and I brought in the outdoor baskets that do not like this cool front that's passing through.

And then neither of us goes out. Too cold -- I say. Too lazy -- Ed mutters.

The reality? Too old. 

Too old to work day after day without pause. Too old to go out in that chilly air. Too old to run out and start digging immediately after breakfast.

 

Finally, after a very long pause, I head out. The goal today is to clear the space for the incoming blueberry bushes. I thought I could also dig some preliminary holes for those guys, but the clearing of the space took so long (saplings to cut back, sticky weed to pull out, old grape vines to redirect, fencing to take down, blackberry canes to cut back -- you get the picture), that I gave up on the digging and finished up the morning with some extra weed pulling in one of the flower fields instead.

Ed worked with me in the new orchard, tending to the neglected blueberries already there, and the chickens came out as well to see what we're up to...

And it was downright bucolic once we got going. But it did take us a while to get going. We are getting... older. The pauses are regenerative. We need to regenerate!

 

In the afternoon the kids are here.Happy to spend a little time on the farmette lands.

(with a violet behind the ear...)

(hugging the recycling can which, by the way, has all my purged papers and files in it!)

(tree frolic)

(making rainbows with the hose...)

(are there any strawberries yet??)

In the evening, Ed is off on his longer bike ride. I run the hose on the newly planted perennials. That's an easy task. Watering will get much more intense in the weeks ahead if we dont start getting our regular spring rainfalls. 

Tomorrow, I get to finally plant the annuals. A marker of mid-spring for sure!

Earth Week

Considering how closely related my activities were today to those of yesterday, I have good reason to call it Earth Day redux. Or simply -- day two of Earth Week.

I worked the earth. From early in the day, all the way until grandkid pick up time.  Yes, after animal care and garden inspection...

And after breakfast (for which I brought in the handful of fallen daffodils)...

(Dance, joining us)

I planted the strawberries in their funky hanging baskets in the new orchard. I planted a couple of milkweeds. I broke up and replanted a few false sunflowers. I moved some irises. And I weeded madly.

And here's the grand part -- I'd look up and see fields of daffodils, with a few surviving tulips mixed into their yellow mass.

And in the courtyard, I'd see the plump pink bulbs on the crab apple. And in the new orchard, I'd see masses of blossoms on the cherry trees...

And the hens grazed underneath pink buds,  and the the white clouds came and went...

How can you not feel overwhelmed by the beauty of it all -- that fresh green, the poking through colors. Magic, everywhere.

The kids were in their age appropriate after-school moods. 

 

  

 

Neither wanted to linger outside. Both were hungry, one was tired, one was thinking things through. The usual. Eventually they let go of their day's challenges and frustrations and exhaled.

And after they left, after our farro-cauliflower supper, after cleaning and clearing for the day, Ed and I exhaled too. Feet up, a chocolate split between the two of us. 

Frost is possible tonight. And tomorrow night. Earth Week let's me know that I am not the boss here! And that's okay...

with love...

Earth Day

I have not met a person who is more of the earth than Ed. Who feels subservient to its flourishing ecosystems. Who presumes nothing is his for the taking. It's not that he preaches restraint and respect for the environment to others. Not at all: Ed doesn't lecture or judge. Most likely, he assumes that the human species is flawed and hasn't the capacity to restrain its destructive ways. So long as there will be people, there will be environmental degradation. I'm guessing that this would be his view. [He once said, jokingly though not entirely, that he wonders if a sapient planet Earth invented humans merely for self protection: if we dont destroy the Earth first, we will figure out a way to keep it safe from being hit by an asteroid. At the rate we're going, I'd say that Earth did a gross miscalculation: we are too smart and too dumb -- all at the same time. This is our failing.]

On Earth Day, Ed does nothing different. He just goes on, setting an example to me (maybe to others, though probably not) on how to care about living things.

Me, I of course bring out the bells and whistles. Earth Day! No plastic use or discard on this day! Do the small stuff! Pick up the garbage! Don't acquire! Buying plants? By ones that are indigenous to your region. At least on this one day! 

None of this will make much difference, and yet, I subscribe to the idea of Earth Day, because it does raise awareness, especially in impressionable minds that haven't been totally warped yet by our profligate ways. I know that Snowdrop is out with her troop picking up plastics today, for example.

And so I love Earth Day, for the same reason that I loved my birthday -- it provides a focus and it makes us feel grateful for being here, today, on what is still a salvageable if a bit leaky ship -- the parched, overheated, overextended, dirtied yet still so very beautiful Earth.

Happy Earth Day. Stay focused. I dont agree with Ed that we are inherently out of control in our lifestyle choices. We can still plug up those holes....

*     *     *

I begin the day as usual.

And we have breakfast as usual. With the cat.

And then I go to Kopke's Greenhouses. It's trip number two this year and it wont be the last one. (I'm hoping the third will seal the deal.) I cant plant the tubs yet, but I can bring home trays of annuals and stick them in the mudroom until Thursday -- my bet for our frost free clearance this year!

I have no kids today -- they have a day off from school and a sitter to be with them. It's great timing for me because, guess what, the lilies have arrived!

Yep, the rest of the day is spent planting. Not so easy today. The bare root plant needs a deeper hole and the new extension of the Big Bed has a layer of good dirt, but it isn't thick. And underneath? Gravel. Worse than clay! I work the shovel with such vigor that my smart watch wants to call 911 for me because it is convinced I've flipped. Or something. 

And one of the older Bresse chickens is on my back, poking in her nose to get a worm, or two, or ten! 

And the tree roots weave their way underneath the soil.

And I see that the groundhog has been visiting: at least two of my plantings from yesterday have been dug up. I've been there before: once these guys hit a favorite spot, they keep coming back. I put the plants in, they dig them up. I put them in, they dig them up... and so on.

These are the challenges of spring gardening. I'm used to them. Again, I drink a cup of milky coffee, eat a Kind snack bar and get back to work. Until all 20 lilies are in the ground and some transplants are in their spot and the extension of the Big Bed is officially filled. Of course, it doesn't look filled. With perennials, you really cant revel in their magnificence until year two. Still, there will be growth and it will (eventually) look good!

Now comes the meditative part: the watering. 

And just like that, the perennial planting for this year is mostly done! Oh, there'll be the occasional transplants, and I'm sure to pick up a flower at the market every now and then. Too, I hadn't the strength to plant the strawberries today, and the blueberry bushes haven't arrived yet. But bringing in several trays of new baby perennials, and an armload of bare root lilies -- that's done. 

And I am one tired 71 year old! 

And dinner is late.

But it was such a good day once again!

with love...