I am sitting on the farmhouse porch. Gorgeous weather. Sunny, but not too hot this week. The familiar sound of known to me birds. Two cats, Dance and Friendly, taking in the sun -- one on a chair and one on the table. Before me, a felled gladiolus murielae with some false sunflowers, in a Brighton Blue vase from Sissinghurst.
Nothing is as calming, soothing, and brain unscrambling as a day started in just this way.
Oh, okay: with Ed, over breakfast.
This is why my posts always include this morning pause at the table. It's like a pill popped by people who depend on pills: it sets the mood for the hours to come. It is so important for me that I post it again and again.
It isn't that I returned to a perfectly wonderful state of things. First of all, Unfriendly -- my second most favorite cat of the seven that are here -- disappeared the day after I left. Ed called for her, he walked the roads and searched the farmette lands. Nothing.
Unfriendly liked me best and one tiny part of me thought that maybe she went out looking for me once I left, but that's highly speculative. Much more likely is the sad reality that she lost it to predators or to some fight in the wild. She was the most fearful of all the cats and so she was prone to start fights with anyone and everyone except for Dance. Fear breads that kind of cat behavior. Dance and she were buddies. Dance understood her and took her under her fold. They'd often snuggle together in the farmhouse.
Her absence is palpable.
Then there's the house -- I cleaned stuff all evening and unpacked stuff all morning and still, there's work to be done.
I wont even mention my mother: I have voicemails from her that came at all hours of the night in Europe and there is much that I have to figure out with respect to her care going forward. For now, we are back to our daily "visits by phone" (she prefers it that way).
Perhaps most pressing is the issue of the flower fields. Obviously after a two and a half week absence in the height of summer, they need work. I expected as much. What I did not expect is this back issue that clicked in a couple of days ago. Working in the garden with a whacked out back is... uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I worked. From just after sunrise until Ed and I sat down to breakfast at 9:30, I worked. Pulling weeds (only the tall ones! bending down is not a great idea for me right now) and snipping spent stalks. Lilies, yes, but those are long past their flowering period (with some exceptions).1 snipped off spent rudbeckias, spent phloxes, oh, why even list them! Everything needed a snip and a tidying hand.
A few photos from a late August garden, because, well, it is late August.
(Big Bed)
(these are my tall, long lasting, late lilies...)
It was interesting working in the fields so closely to the time I was in Sissinghurst. On the one hand, my flower fields are so familiar to me! I know their issues, their strengths. At the same time, I looked at them with new eyes. I'd snip off a hollyhock and mutter -- how come you're so tall and need to be staked? Sissinghurst hollyhocks were shorter and remained upright on their own! And of course the glads -- I liked the way they looked in big tubs on the Estate. Maybe I should try that here? And speaking of tubs, maybe I should change things around next year, following some ideas from one of Sarah Raven's books?
And I hum songs to myself that are still with me from my visit to Poland. And I move through the day in this way - immersed in my farmette life, more confident now in keeping at it, moving ahead in the way that I have chosen to move ahead.
Supermoon tonight. Blue moon (the third in a season of four full moons). Very rare to have these coincide. Maybe you happened to look up? Did it make you smile?
with love...
