better

Better weather, better options, better moods all around. Well, in most corners of my small world here, in south central Wisconsin. I can't say that everyone is fully grasping the heaven that has been handed to us just outside our doors, but here, at the farmette, Ed and I sure are loving the beauty of this day!

Up early once again. Farmette summer hours! 6 a.m. and we are reviewing our schedules for the day. I'll need woodchips... This from me. To cover bare patches of the flower beds. And I want to dig out the tulips because if I dont do that now, I wont know in the fall which bulbs are to be left alone and which should be replaced. How about you (this to Ed)? His list is equally ordinary. Except for one detail: the apple trees in the new orchard.

We planted the entire new orchard the year after I moved into the farmhouse (so, 2012). The pears are doing fine, the plums never bore fruit, the cherries have been a success. But the apple trees? They have produced the world's worst apples! Even the birds wont eat them! They are so bad that even Ed, tree loving Ed, suggested that maybe we should take them down and try again, with a credible and edible variety. Did we deliberately buy awful varieties? We did not. What we think may have happened is that our preferred apples were grafted onto a root stock of an unknown variety. The root stock took hold, the grafted twigs failed. We're not growing honeycrisps or pink ladies or any of that. We're growing a horror show that most likely was on that original root stock, developed not for any other reason but to withstand our climate and growing conditions. This morning he talks of taking down the trees, but after some deliberation, he shifts to the idea that we should graft honeycrisp twigs (or whatever variety we like) onto the existing trunk or branches. 

We know nothing about grafting, but that's why the good people on earth invented YouTube -- to teach us how to go about anything at all, including stuff about which we are totally clueless.

After some deliberation and inspection, he tells me that it's too late in the season to graft, but at least we have a plan! (It takes us a while and a heck of a lot of discussion to come up with a credible plan.)

Me, I focuse my attention on the meadows, which actually are doing fine. Meadows usually look good in May, just okay in July and terrible by September. But our two stretches of grasses and wildflowers are in fact sprouting more and more flowers among those tall grasses. Perhaps in time, they really will out-compete the pernicious quacks and charlies and who knows what else.

(The perennial flower fields are very green right now! This is the Big Bed...)

(the color is still in the allium right now...)

Breakfast. Borderline outside! (Meaning, I set the table outside, then decided that 58f (14c) is too cold for outside and so I move it into the kitchen, and then Ed comes down and asks '' aren't we eating outside?" and so I switch again.)

And then I go to a provider team meeting in my mother's room at the Rehab Center, to determine the level of care she needs going forward. Her room is full of staff and I marvel at this level of attentiveness: her occupational therapist, her physical therapist, the social worker from Rehab, the social worker from her assisted living place, a speech specialist, the floor nurse, the nutritionist, the care coordinator. Impressive. 

The thought is that she may in fact regain most if not all her strength as soon as next week, and therefore be able to resume her life at the assisted living place where she had been before she pulled a muscle and wound up in the ER. I have some trepidation about her return to assisted living. Not because I doubt her ability to regain independence, but because, well, she has a very, very tough time accepting imperfection. She wont have eight specialist hovering over her. (Nor will she need eight specialist hovering over her.) Her assisted living facility (right across the parking lot from the Rehab Center!) is good, but it is like a very defined plane of reality -- not all of it always functions perfectly. This, not the physical stuff, will be the biggest challenge for all of us who are involved in her care.

(here she is, visiting with the one person she would call a friend from assisted living)

I suppose one of many lessons to be learned is that if you want to be a model of resilience and calm, start working on it early in life. Today! Go ahead, practice as you finish reading this post! I'm told 100 is a poor jumping off point for entry level deep breathing exercises. 

Back at the farmette, I marvel at how quickly the clock ticked through the morning hours. I barely have time to throw down a wheelbarrow load of chips, and dig out maybe a dozen tulips (Missing the bulbs half the time, which really defeats the purpose of early removal), and now it's time to pick up the kids at school.

Surely they must be tired! Today was the day of the Hotdog Hustle. Kids race for money. Or something. I miss it each year because it always falls on a day when I have a million other things on my schedule. But surely running around a track for as long as your legs will carry you will wipe you out, no?

Nope.

They seem peppy and fine, lending support to the belief that the more you move the stronger you become. 

Such good moods, great weather patterns, and boisterous camaraderie deserve an ice cream treat! We go to Tati's in the new development.

Wait, what is it that I see? Madison Sourdough bakery treats?! 

 

 

 

I ask the cafe manager -- how did you score that victory?! We tried and tried and tried and finally they said yes!

Oh my, a coffee shop within a short walk, with my favorite croissants and cinnamon rolls? That's just heavenly!

From ice cream, to tree climbing....

 

 

In the evening (after drop off), I return home to a quiet house. Ed is biking, I survey my flower beds. There are signs of trouble here and there. A rotting root stock on my heliopsis prairie sunset. A bug on some of the leaves of the true lilies. On a few day lilies as well. Golden rod, where there shouldn't be goldenrod. Lillies of the valley where there shouldn't be lilies of the valley. Apple mint everywhere, where there certainly should not be apple mint. 

It's okay. Imperfection is what gardeners work with all the time. (The kind of gardeners I like and identify with anyway.) We puzzle over it, we learn from it, we delight in the twists and turns and always new challenges that gardens have to contend with all the time. 

And the birds sing (robins, sparrows and the rose-breasted Grosbeak!), and the clematis throws down a dozen more big blooms, and the Bresse girls lose themselves in the thicket of plant life...

... and it is such a very happy place in which to spend my evening. Such a very happy place indeed.