Wednesday

Beautiful blue skies, shiny and clear window panes on the porch ceiling, golden meadow grasses, purple asters, and the ever persistent white gladioli. That's what awaits me this morning.

Oh, and dont forget about the white Bresse girls.

What's there not too love??

We almost take our breakfast outside, but even in the later hours of the morning, the air is cool, the warmth of the kitchen beckons.

We discuss ovens. The switch to Induction is too complicated and requires too much destruction and reconstruction at the farmhouse. And so we're on a path of compromise: we work with one induction plate and I am lobbying to acquire a mini toaster oven so that we need not use the gas stove for every reheat that I do (croissants come to mind!). 

In the end Ed agrees to get a cheap one if I agree to get rid of one other appliance. Easy peasy: out goes the toaster. Whoever even toasts things anymore! 

Our gas-less cooking future is looking rosy!

 

Now, about those flower fields. I go out to weed the Big Bed. As you have probably figured out, the Big Bed is... big. And prone to weeds. This last characteristic can be applied to all flower fields, but the Big Bed manages to hide the weeds when they're small and before you know it, I have myself a Big Bed of big weeds. I've been spot cleaning it for weeks now, but that means the edges look decent, while the interior sucks. I attack that interior today, which takes forever and at the end of the morning I'm only about half done. The nagging question for me is this: should I even bother? At this late stage, the weeds that will seed a new generation of weeds will have done this by now; I can't take that back. But the weeds themselves -- are some perennials?  Some are, but there are lots that are a mystery box for me. DO I really need to dig them all out? Wont it be easier to clean the beds in spring?

It's one of the many many questions that I have about flower growing that in my nearly fifty years of gardening I've never answered for myself: what to do when. And of course, it's not only a matter of what's good for the garden. There is, too, what's better for me. In spring, I have enthusiasm for gardening. In autumn -- it feels more like a chore. On the other hand, in spring, I have a huge to-do list. In autumn, my list grows small. 

So I weed. To give myself a head start on spring clearing.

 

My second task for today is to prepare the pots for wintering over inside. Which ones? And how best to get them ready for indoor life? You can winter over most anything, but some flowers do best if you give them a quiet and cool winter, say in the basement, with minimal care then, and intense care come early spring. Do I really want to fuss with that? And as every year, I throw out my Big Idea: why don't we construct a greenhouse? I could winter over most everything then!

Ed doesn't want a greenhouse and in truth, I'm not keen on expanding my gardening into the cold season. I need my farmer's rest season! Still, when I look at all that color that will vanish with the first frost, it's tempting to reconsider. 

 

 

Gardening dilemmas! They are such a good topic for a restless mind! You weigh one idea, throw it away, try another. In the end, most ideas come and then vanish. To return at another time, another year perhaps. 

 

And of course, by this time I must hurry to pick up the kids. One of them had a tough day at school. Some meanness occurred, tears were shed. We talk about it.

It's always tough to both comfort and toughen up a child who faces unpleasantness at school. Of course, at some point, bullying can be so severe that adult intervention is the only way to manage it. But the reality is that there will always be kids who are just plain obnoxious and you want your grandkid to manage at least some of that on his/her own. 

Since overall the school year is going well for both, by the time we approach Tati's Cafe, both kids are in great moods. Sparrow, as usual, hits the dominoes.

Snowdrop asks for something special which her friends have tried and I've never heard of -- a Boba drink. She picks one with brown sugar bobas. So far as I can figure out, it's another way to push a sweet beverage on us. I've not been missing much! (Luckily she likes the bubbles. Not so much the beverage.)

Farmhouse.

Books and games, then they're gone and Ed's biking and it's just me. My quiet moment. Eh, overrated. I wait to reheat the soup, to turn on a movie. Ed'll be home soon.