speed

Even though Ed no longer travels, he and I both subscribe to airfarewatchdog.com -- a moderately reliable website that sends us emails when a bargain airfare appears on any of our chosen routes. If he gets a message first (say because he is on email and I am not at that moment), he always tells me -- ah! cheap fare to Dublin, now! or to Oslo, or to Barcelona. (Those are typically the cheapest gateways to Europe these days.) We look at the dates, the terms, the airlines and if all fits into my travel expectations, I try to book.

You have to be ready to book right away, because these super cheap fares do not last.

In fact, most often, they are gone by the time I fill in all the required spaces, check off required boxes and click "purchase."

This would be mildly annoying if it weren't for the fact that if you try, say, an hour later, they may appear again. Fleetingly. And then you go through the whole rigamarole once more, only to be told at the final stage -- sorry, you waited too long.

Too long? Do you know how fast I am at booking? Everything on those airline pages are by now auto-fill for me (with the exception of a credit card number). I know the planes I want (only ones with two seats off the aisle). How much layover I'll tolerate (never less than an hour, hopefully not more than three). I know me emergency contacts, my seat selection protocol (bulkhead on transatlantic), I can zip through the process faster than it takes a page to load.

Sorry, you waited too long.

The fare alert this morning was so good that I would not let this one pass. (Especially since I know that I have a 24 hour free cancellation period by law, so any mistake I make is without penalty.) So I call the airline. And the agent is nice, in an "I can do nothing" sort of way. And she tells me her supervisor will call me back after she looks into things. And this is how I spent a whole morning on airfares for travel for next year. Airfares that I did not, BTW, manage to land in the end. (Unless the supervisor does call me back with the message -- guess what! the CEO of Delta relented! You are good to go!)

And so breakfast is late. And it is in the kitchen, because I had to be near the computer, in case the agent called.






That's okay. The view toward the garden is good from here as well. Especially when the porch screens aren't drenched with rain.






(Though the garden is always prettier if you just step outside!)






Oh, for the good old days when sale airfares stayed with us for days instead of seconds!


Speaking of gardens and speed, I wanted to mention that this has been a phenomenal summer for birds and butterflies. I do not have any zoom on my daily use camera so I have resisted trying to take photos, but today the hummingbirds were so  outrageous and energetic, that I tried to get closer to them (and therefore to take a few photos for Ocean). The birds are speedy and elusive, but I do have something for you.
















And in other news -- well, it was time for Ed to pick tomatoes again. Today's haul loaded two bags for our freezer.





This year's crop is so good that we are, in fact, packing our downstairs freezer full. Chili will feature prominently on the dinner menus this winter.

But not today. Today's supper was supposed to be eggs and our local farmer's oyster mushrooms, with my garden beans, but I panicked that the beans had been left on the vines too long and so I also threw in garden corn. Just in case. In the end, the beans were fine and the corn was fine (though truthfully, we waited with that also a tad too long; we both prefer delicate, first blush kernels) and so our supper plates were quite full.





Oh, and did I tell you? The skies were outrageously beautiful today! We did play tennis, but mainly, we worked on our various projects -- Ed in the sheep shed, me on the porch. Of course. With frequent breaks for a walk through the garden.

Monday

It's nice how well I keep you informed of the day behind us -- Monday, it was Monday! Even as for me, the defining term that I think best described this day would be "stormy." A restless, stormy night, followed by a restless daybreak, followed by a stormy day. 

The restless part? I blame Isis.

That sweet cat has to stop with the competition as to who will crow/meow first. He has been winning, by the way. Every morning. At five.

And no sooner does Ed do the rounds -- let out Isis, wait for him to want to reenter, feed him, let out chickens -- then the storms come. One after another. All morning long.





You could say I am the lucky one -- not doing animal duty, after all. But staying in bed, awake, feeling somewhat guilty for offloading all animal care isn't exactly delicious or relaxing. Especially as you listen to the world outside rumble and you imagine your garden flowers folding over and giving up for good.

When I finally come down to make breakfast, there is a lull in the air. One set of storms has passed, the next has not yet arrived. And so I take our meal out to the porch...





...only to hear the crash of thunder again.

It's not safe! Let's go back in!
You're kidding, right?
No, it's not safe!
I'm finishing my breakfast right here.

In the end, I go inside and open the window to the porch, so that we can continue our conversation -- Ed out there, me at the kitchen table. I have to admit, it seems silly on my part, but ask me how much I like being outside in storms! Oh, but why ask, you know the answer!

We do eventually have periods of calm.






The chickens come out of hiding (the barn is their safe haven) and indeed, push the boundaries of their farmette exploration...






Me, I barely go out. A few errands, a few quick runs through the garden...



(see the frog in the day lily?)

...then home to write.

But if you ask me if I like wet summer days, I'll say yes. Perhaps not every day, but still, I do. There is something so safe and precious about being inside when the rain comes down. Warm summer rain. It keeps the flowers and frogs happy. And that's a good thing.

Sunday

Such a glorious summer it has been! What right do we have to gripe now, given the weeks, many weeks we've had of sunny days and cool nights?

It's because we're nearing the end of it, right? You always want the last of anything to be the best of the best. We're greedy that way. End the meal with a perfect dessert. End the summer with a perfect string of days.

Undoubtedly, this week messes with our sensibilities. Days of muggy weather -- that's a coastal problem! We, in the Upper Midwest, we expect blue skies! And cool nights! Well, not this week. Once again I keep the windows shut and the AC on, reassuring myself that in a few days, this too shall pass.

We both went to sleep late last night and so it was a toss up who should rise with the chickens. Isis solved the problem for us by creating a racket even before the rooster first crowed and we have an unspoken understanding that if it's my kids that are causing a disturbance (which they never do!), it's my problem, but if it's a pet that dates back to Ed's bachelor days -- then it's his responsibility. Oh, sure, I can step up and pitch in, but the default position is that it's his worry.

So my first walk outside is later. Much later. To clean the coop and feed the cheepers some stale bagel and even more stale granola (they are a very convenient guilt appeaser that way: they eat our mistakes). And to take stock once again of the garden.






Not great, compared to July, sublime compared to anytime between October and May.






And then comes breakfast. Cheeper eggs for Ed.





The usual for me.

Sunday. This is family dinner day. My daughter's tastes these days drive the menu, so that
I spend a delightful afternoon baking a sour cherry cake (with kefir!)...











...and rolling out spinach potato gnocchi.






True, it is muggy outside, but with the fan on, it's just a beautiful night on the porch. Stunningly beautiful.






In a warm sort of way.

Saturday

The last days of August really do test your resolve to make something of the land around you. Sagging flowers, pocket infestations of this bug or that beetle, the strawberries you never got around to splitting and dividing, corn -- one variety completely eaten by deer, the other, thankfully, left alone, regrets about too many heirloom tomatoes and too few traditional hybrids that actually resist blight even in hot humid weather and of course, the resurgence of mosquitoes and pesky flies that especially love the prairie grasses out by the vegetable patch. You know, the grasses you stopped mowing after the wedding came and went.

I start getting fall planting catalogs in the mail and I throw them all away. You kidding me? I can barely keep up with what I have already planted!

And yet, dreams pinch at you! Maybe we should remove the awful creeping rosebushes that grow by our parked cars and put in some of the divided daylilies? Maybe if we prune the young orchard right, it will reward us next year with more mature trees? And maybe we should move on that last prairie field and clear it for Farmer Lee, or figure out how to do a controlled prairie?

Alright. I gave my future gardens some thought. Now let's get back to the present. Which begins early, on a humid, foggy morning...





I'm out with the cheepers, but not for long. It's just not very inviting outside right now.






After breakfast (on the porch! Our bubble of outdoor bliss!)...





...I meet my daughter for our weekly walk to the downtown farmers market. She is exactly at the halfway point in her pregnancy. To me, she is obviously pregnant, though I can see how to the world, there can still be doubts. We pause on our walk. She has her rather regular bout with not feeling well. As I wait for her by the side of the path, three young men walk past and chuckle. It's obvious what they're thinking -- mother walking with daughter who has one mighty hangover! Well now, in case you haven't yet thought this -- a child is the offspring of two people, but a pregnancy is the burden of only one. I do a quick calculation as to whether I should shout after them -- she's pregnant, for God's sake! -- and decide against it. She laughs when I tell her their reaction. I'm used to it. Every time this happens, people think I've been drinking!

We make the market round. There was a time when I would seriously hunt down the best vegetables and fruits at this market, but now there are so many such markets that I pick and choose selectively. At the Saturday one, I always get oyster mushrooms. This time, I also pick up sour cherries for a cake and more pickling cucumbers. (We may not have grown enough for a year's supply of pickles. We really like pickles.) My girl has her own list. But for the most part, we do not expect to fill our bags. There is great pleasure in just looking.






It's still humid, still quite warm, but we make it back to her place before the storms come yet again and dump the next batch of rain on the now perfectly soaked land.

The cheepers hide under our cars at times of big rainfalls. And these days, Isis hides under our bed during storms. I look at the weather map for the next ten days. This I can say for sure -- there'll be a lot of animals  hiding!






A few photos of lingering flowers. I know they will seem utterly brilliant come November!

Friday

I finally turned on the AC today. That says it all, I think. For the first time this summer, the air is hot, sticky, still. The cheepers hate it and they scratch huge holes underneath bushes where they can rest their feathered bodies in the cool earth. Unless we bring out scraps of food for them. Hot weather or not, the cheepers are programmed to run then, chasing us in a way that is so unbelievably cute that I always wish that I could have my camera out and ready for this moment (they're too fast, so I don't even try).

Breakfast? Oh, we do go out on the porch. The sun is temporarily behind something that is a cross between a fog and low lying cloud cover. So this is it -- our moment outside!





Friday is Ed's machinist meeting day and my grocery shopping day (a split so completely gender predictable that it makes me laugh) and so the muggy weather is rather irrelevant. It comes as a bit of a shock to learn that my '93 Escort has a functioning AC, which I don't use going to the store, but most certainly crank up coming back. And am grateful that the commute is such a rare event for me.

In the afternoon, when I go out to collect eggs and clean the coop, I notice that Scotch, for the third day in a row, has not laid an egg. There are the known reasons -- of shortening days, a molting interlude, etc. One of the white hens had a period of rest and then leapt right back into full production within a week.





In googling things to consider with chickens who pause (or stop?) laying, inevitably I come to the text on the aging chicken. Scotch isn't aging, I don't think. Her owners claimed she was a year when we got her (of course, that is what you're going to tell the enthusiastic new chicken keeper!). Still, inevitably she will get old, as will the others. And it strikes me that we will have to deal with that. There are many Internet instructions on how to kill your chickens. And this is when I realize how short-sighted we were when we get involved in chicken care. With cats and dogs, the vet conveniently does the job for us. The animal is old or sick, you say your good byes, shed a tear, move on. But an old chicken? Get an ax, calm her down and be sure to let the blood drip out before you throw her into the pot.

And if you're not saying ewwww to yourself yet, then maybe you should be the one keeping chickens! And maybe we should be thinking of what happens to these cutest of cute birds when they get old.

But, we're not programmed to think like that and so for now, I close the lid on internet searches and go back to hoping that Scotch is just having a pause. To rejuvinate herself for the months, (years?) ahead of her.

Supper? Well, we have a pot-luck to attend. We're mightily interested in the future of the land around us. In addition to liking the quiet of the farming community, we worry about the potential impact that any large scale development will have on our waters -- springs, lakes, wetlands. And we are surrounded by waters: we live in an area of nine natural springs, feeding the marshlands south and east of us and ultimately, draining into lake Waubesa.  So we go to community events (such as tonight's pot-luck meeting) and we listen to the latest studies and findings and we continue to hope that the prospect of high revenue (we are so close to the city center that we definitely tempt development) for those who have stakes in the land here wont lead others to stay blind to the impact this will have on the quality of the wetlands and the ecosystem supported by them.

I make a mediterranean chicken quinoa salad for the potluck. Why? Because we have the garden tomatoes and the cucumbers and the garlic and the onion, (we have the chicken, too, but as you can see, I'm not ready or willing to wield an ax over our hens, so the meat ingredient has to come from the store), and Ed really wants me to move the quinoa out of our cupboard and onto someone else's plate. Honestly, the man seems to have no stomach for good foods!


Flowers from today: still delightful. From just by the porch:

how wet was it?

It was so wet, with repeat periods of pounding rain, that my newly supported flowers gave up and fell down again. This time in unison, as they were tied together in a clever figure 8 pattern that turned out to be not so clever after all. And we're not done with the rains: there is a whole week of iffy weather ahead of us.

On the upside, I do not have to water the garden. And so I am making fine progress on my writing.

Nor did I get up at dawn this morning. We had both fallen asleep on the early side so I thought it surely must be his turn. It's a fair division: he'll get the cheepers out, but I still clean the coop, as I truly think my cleaning skills are far better than his. Unfortunately.

Breakfast is not on the porch. I would not have minded the occasional downpours, but there is a constant threat of storms and it seems pointless to drag everything out in crashing thunder.





(Yes, a different yellow shirt! Many hugs were given in recognition of this!)

After breakfast? I never do move out to the porch. The outdoor world feels too wet. Warm, yes, but very uninviting. (Here it is, looking out, briefly, from the porch.)





In between rain showers, I try to straighten the tall yellow bloomers that usually have such an easy time staying upright, but not this year!

And I do some weed pulling. One must pull weeds when the rains come down!

And in the afternoon, we go to the farmers market. The rains pause then and we stock up on corn, cheese and say no thank you to the zucchini. The market has a new vendor today -- a man who appears to keep beehives in locations close to us. One of them comes from a paradise of a garden just a mile or so east of us. I am a complete fan of local honeys and so I add this gentle pale one (bottom right) to our shopping basket.





In the evening I make a tomato-potato stew which sounds so terribly indifferent, but in fact, it is so fine on a damp day and especially if you have an abundance of tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and onion -- all growing in copious amounts at the farmette.

I'll leave you with a pair of flowers that did not give in to the rains today. Yes, you guessed it -- the ever brazen and gutsy daylilies.

Wednesday

Not all days are free of frustrations and wasted hours -- even retired people, I'm learning, can feel the rug of time pulled from under them so that at the end of the day, all they have to show for it is a plate of leftover zucchini sticks.

But, conversely, all days have glorious moments in them, even if, as in my case, these moments may be rather concentrated. Toward the morning, for example.

So let's talk about the morning!

Ed slept in again and so I went out to set the cheepers free. Isis made me do it. It's an animal pact that they have: Oreo starts crowing, which causes Isis to start meowing, and Oreo just keeps on going, so that Isis wont let up either until someone lets him out. Sometimes he'll want breakfast too. You have to get up, have a conversation with him and only then -- go out to release the cheepers.

But the fact is, the rooster crows oftentimes before sunrise. And whereas some of the hens are ready to get out and scratch and peck and search for chicken gold, others (take Scotch for example) look at you quizzically and appear to be asking -- what? so early? what are you thinking?

So you have rushed to set them free, even as they're perfectly content to stay in the coop until the sun really does rise.

The second problem with getting up and out before sunrise is that you're too early for that beautiful morning sky, all orange and pink and gold that accompanies the moment when the sun greets the world around you.



(Oreo, waiting for the sunrise)


So you wait a while, but of course, the predawn hours are not a good time to hang out, unless you relish the company of mosquitoes... Wait, did I say the morning gave me my set of good hours??

Well, it did. The sunrise, in the end, was pretty, in a calm, over the-field-and-through-the-woods sort of way...








(Oreo, satisfied, walks away)


And then I managed to snooze a little more, so that breakfast was late, but lovely (please do not frown at the repetition of the t-shirt on Ed. Let's pretend he just pulled it on for breakfast to annoy me).






And then chores and petty snafus and frustrations followed, culminating in Ed asking if perhaps I'd like to refrain from cooking tonight, to which I gratefully answered yes, resulting in us having the only fast-food take-out that I ever agree to eat -- Chipotle's. All this, while reading a book on the French eating habits which, BTW, never include fast-food take-out. At least not if my generation has anything to say about it.

I'll leave you with flowers. A late set of day lilies. On fire, in their loveliness!

after the storm

When the rains finally came, I was too sleepy-tired to notice or pay attention. But rain it did -- not for long, but heavily enough to get that dusty dry look out of the farmette!

Ed was even more sleepy than I was and so I gave him the gift of myself getting up at sunrise to let the cheepers out. The clouds were by then receding. The cheepers were thrilled to be out and about. (I do wonder if they fear storms, or accept them in the same way they accept Isis -- some things just are.)





But of course, a late summer garden will suffer damage from a violent rainstorm. The clinging blooms will give up their hold, the stalks of my tallest of tall flowers will bend and groan... It all looks rather disconcerting afterwards. (Fine, blame me for planting things that grow to be that tall! I admit it, I'm, in part, the culprit here!)





And so after breakfast...






...I go out with a rope and prop things up a bit. The flower beds wont have the same free style exuberance as before the storm, but it's better than seeing them all fall down in a clump of smothered blooms.

Here they are, after my efforts to give support.






Not to brag too much on their behalf, but do note that the daylilies had no problem staying upright!
Note them here:






And in the big bed here:






(Thanks, btw, to my commenter on the sage advice on growing a Gaura that is native to our surroundings! I do like the pink ones as well, but I have to admit, the ones that made it through our beastly winter were white, much like the ones by the creek -- here is mine, along the driveway, flanked by another native -- goldenrod and of course, with daylilies and lavender stuck in for effect. It's into the sun:  lustrous and angelic, not unlike it appears in real life.





I do still try with the pink cultivar, in various strategic locations, including in a pot -- it does fairly well indoors during the winter.)


The air cleared and the wind picked up in the morning and I wish this kind of breeze and spotty sunshine would stay with us the whole week and then some, but I see hot air pushing back at us this coming weekend, so let me just take this day as it presents itself right now -- beautiful and blustery. Perfect for writing on the porch and perfect, too, for a late afternoon bike ride to the library and back. Not a huge challenge, but better than the utter physical (if not mental) laziness of putting my feet up and rocking gently in the chair out on the porch.

Supper is cheeper egg time -- a once a week extravaganza of eggs and veggies (and in answer to your comments -- I'm with you on this: how could anyone find the rather bland zucchini distasteful, especially when it's spiked with fresh herbs and garlic and all those magical things that come from our garden? N.B. Ed also does not like eggplant much! What's with you eggplant detractors? It's so... mediterranean! Is it the name that makes you recoil??).

I'll leave you with a photo of two of our three hens. Thanks, girls, for the eggs. (You're seeing them standing in the driveway as I take my Gaura photo. Obviously they're gossiping: why is she here? She never comes here with her camera! What's so special here?)

before the storm

I hate to look forward to a storm, but really, it's been far too long without rain. The drizzle that keeps British gardens in line just isn't the norm here and it's not unusual to have hot dry spells like we've had this summer. Gardens don't like them. Farmers don't like them. I suppose the one upside is that it keeps the mosquito population at bay. Still, let's forget about the mosquitoes: we need the rain.

I tell Ed (with a touch of optimism) that the good weather will be with us only in the early morning hours.

We eat a lovely breakfast (forget the shirt: it's what's within that counts!)...






I spot check the flower beds...











And when after all that the skies remain a hazy blue, I go for a walk.






It's such a simple thing in the summer! You decide to walk, you go out, you walk. No preparation, no bracing for the cold gust of air, no path to clear of snow or ice. Prairie flowers are at their best in late summer...






... and there are always surprises: like the wild gaura I find blooming at the edge of the creek. I bust my knuckles to get gaura to repeat itself year after year in my garden and here it is, growing like crazy without intervention!





Alright. I feel the rains can come now.

I stay on the porch, writing, editing. The farmette waits with anticipation...





But the storms do not come. Not now, not in the afternoon, not in the evening. We have a lovely game of tennis before supper and still -- no rain.

(For supper I saute some shrimp and cook up a pot of ratatouille. Ed does not especially like zucchini. I'm trying to make a convert out of him.)






Evening. Still warm. They say now the storms will come past midnight. Well maybe. Or maybe I'll wake up to a dry landscape once more and I'll have to put my faith in the next set of days. Hot days at that. Summer came in with pounding rain. It's choosing a different path for its grand finale.