Tuesday

You do not appreciate calm if you do not occasionally tussle with it. Today dawned cloudy but calm. How grand is that!

In the late hours of the night I had been reading a book out of my newest mystery series craze. It's written from the perspective of a village chief of police in rural France. He is the kind of guy you love for his wisdom, strength, and kindness to the disenfranchised, and, too, for his appreciation for good food and honest wines. (In the series, he lives in the Perigord region -- plenty of duck fat and Bergerac wine appears in the storyline.) But at the beginning of one chapter, the author -- the very talented Martin Walker -- has the police chief speculating on how it would be if he really was as calm, learned, fair and hardworking as he appeared to be. He had mastered the appearance of virtue even as he thought himself to be less than hardworking and sometimes quite biased and too easily flustered.

I thought about Ocean then: in my repetitive search for calm, do I mean to suggest that I have mastered its challenges? Of course not. I am reminded here of a quote from the Vietnam series now airing on PBS, where one American Army combatant and platoon leader tells us that the war had the capacity to turn good, honest young men, who back home would help an old lady across the street, into men of rage (and worse).

We're not programmed to be calm and there is much in this world that can fuel our rage. I want to steer clear of that kind of provocation. Calm, as a goal, is a far far nicer partner in life than rage or fury (especially of the type that, in the words of Macbeth, signifies nothing).


The morning is still warm, but not so warm as in the previous days. Perfect for a leisurely breakfast on the porch.






I suggest that we take a walk along the rural roads. You'll see the same prairie here that I passed a few days ago! Still lovely, even in these last days of September...






I am reminded of a song about a peaceful prairie. It's a French song that I listened to decades ago. Back then, if you heard something oh, say in France, on the radio, the path to bringing it home, to your own record player (or later CD player) was a long one and success was not guaranteed. How things have changed! YouTube, iTunes, Google -- they'll bring it up on your device or computer within seconds.





Yeah, change: that phenomenon that disrupts, displaces and leaves some wealthy and others angry. I ask Ed -- what will be the next great disruptor?
Oh, artificial intelligence for sure...

We'll see if something else doesn't surprise us first.


I pick up Snowdrop at her school playground. She slept! Oh, don't I know it - she is spirited and happy.






Let's go to the park, grandma...











(At the park...)






On the way to the farmette, we are surprised: two sandhill cranes are still with us, seeking feed in the fields across the road from us. Snowdrop is delighted!
They're here to say goodbye before they fly south -- I tell her.
She is enthralled.





And so am I.

Tomorrow autumnal cool returns. And that's a good thing. We're ready for it.

crescendo

Every conflict has its peak, after which it deescalates, eventually leaving us with an equilibrium once more. You and I are reading plenty about the escalation of conflict on the international arena and so I needn't add to that discussion here. Ah, but farmette life too can offer a valuable study of small deals resolved sometimes with much ado. Sometimes over nothing.

The interesting thing about conflicts is that oftentimes, you think they've fizzled. Phew, what a relief. Done.

But no.

I wake up and I fret. How do you share grandparenting with someone who hasn't shared parenting with you (or with anyone else for that matter)? Someone who has the love, dedication, and energy for the task, but who brings completely new ideas to the childrearing table?

It's not that I do not know my guy. I know to the core that Ed has a solid belief in letting people, especially your best friends and lovers, fashion their own path in life. It is what drew me to him from day one. If I should wish to embark on a Great Writing Project that would take on the topic of the mating habits of a particular insect species in Zimbabwe, he will encourage me to do it. With total willingness to help me figure out how I might get there.

That kind of laid back support from the sidelines is not all bad for dealing with kids, but it gets complicated when you believe, as I do, that kids do best when they learn to empathize and care about the wellbeing of another (say, for example, a grandma cooking dinner for her family).

And so this morning, I'm thinking that the discussion Ed and I had last night about Snowdrop's play while dinner waited is not over yet. We're still crescendoing.

Ed and I eat breakfast together, but my camera is on the flowers...






My, but it's steamy outside!

We really do reach the peak soon after. I use many words, Ed, as always, uses few, but we exhaust ourselves and in the end, Ed lays that gentle hand on my hardened shoulder and asks -- it's hot outside, but do you want to go out for a while and dig up that invasives in the side yard? It's a big project, but maybe we can get started on it?

And this is how we regain our equilibrium, digging, sweating, digging together, pulling out roots and tendrils and after an hour or maybe it's two hours, we are inside again, enjoying the cool air of the air conditioning, discussing politics and gardens in our usual andante melody of calm.


In the afternoon, Snowdrop is at once happy and tired (one of only two holdouts in the nap department at school).






(At the park...)






(Not so tired that she doesn't give me her very best rendition of a story before climbing into her car seat. She is one hell of a great story teller!)






(... and a dedicated baseball player!)






In sum: on this Monday, September 25, the sun rose at 6:49 a.m. and set at 6:49 p.m. A balanced day indeed! Calm prevails. All is right at the farmette.

Sunday

Most of the time, the fact that Ed and I are so different in so many ways, bothers us not at all. We've grown used to side-stepping around issues that are sacred to the other: my family is supremely important to me and so he, the non-family guy, embraces the new normal (which has a lot of family in it). And, his need to be wholly responsible for his own destiny is untouchable and so I don't touch it. Well, I mostly do not touch it. In the same way that he mostly does not touch my travel plans. We know where the brick walls are and we try not to bang our heads against them.

Every now and then, however, the itch to rattle the other is just too great. Take the very small matter of breakfast: if I want a calm and wholesome beginning to the day, why not just say something devilishly wicked about the world, for no good reason really, but hey, why not? And rather than letting it fly, why not just punch right back with some equally pernicious comment, just because your balance is already disturbed so you may as well topple the whole apple cart?

That more or less describes our breakfast this morning. It started off well...





... and then plummeted into a flaunt of our differences.

Way to go, Nina and Ed!

The remaining hours of the day were spent on my tending the garden, for zen reasons. In that world of water and lilies and asters I found my calm (and Ed found his calm too, in retreating to his design drawings, though frankly it's hard to say that he found calm since he isn't the one who ever suffers its loss).

(The three girls, sharing a drink together. A rare shot for many reasons, not the least of which is the failing strength of Scotch. She seems suddenly very old. The two other hens hover and appear tender and kind next to her as she finds spots in the garden to just rest...)






A few garden photos for you, in case you too need help getting to a calm place today:


(A fall garden...)






(A lily in the front...)






(The ever delicate and beautiful beeblossom...)







In the evening, the young family comes for dinner.





After a hot day we have ourselves a beautiful evening -- perfect for perhaps the last evening meal of the year on the porch. Snowdrop is rested, the family is in good spirits.

And it is a grand night, even as those wee differences that so rarely creep into my everyday with Ed crept in once more. It was as if the day had to end as it had begun -- with a clash of styles. Rugged individualism, meet a yearning for group harmony!

Snowdrop tests boundaries. As I put the finishing touches on dinner, she plays with Ed.

Snowdrop, it's dinner time.
No, I'm still playing!
No, we're still playing!
Ed!
He's playing too!
I'm playing too!






Great, I have TWO toddlers in the house, one more willful that the other!

It takes a while to bring the both of them to the table.

For his disruptions to the enterprise, I am disinviting him from the dinner photo!






And still, the evening is beautiful...





... and the day -- a little zig-zaggy, but restorative after all. And tomorrow promises to be another hot one in this never ending summer that twists things around a little bit for all of us.

Saturday

We hit 92F (upwards of 33C) today. Who knew fall could be so toasty!

(Breakfast on the porch, of course. With a very sleepy Ed.)






(Are the sandhill cranes hanging back? Shouldn't they be on their way south?)





Despite the heat, or perhaps because of it, our weekly outing to the Capitol Square farmers market is magnificent! Many of the recreational market goers stayed home and the less dense crowds give Snowdrop a chance to walk at something other than a snail's pace.

The little one is delighted to discover that many stalls offer apples! She has been gobbling up the ones that come down from the tree in her school playground and at the market she is happy to discover that apples do not necessarily come with huge bruises and brown spots.





These days, a trip to the market always calls for a trip to the Capitol building and a romp on the vast lawns around it...






Snowdrop perks up as she hears the Badger marching Band: this calls for a dance!






She is still sporting bruises from yesterday's school playground fiasco, but you'd never know it hanging out with her. She is in great spirits!






And the flowers are beautiful...






And most importantly -- the shade is plentiful.






Was there anything that filled the space between market time and bed time? You'd think not. I have no photos of those hours!  Still, they were hours well spent. A bit of yard stuff, a game of tennis, some good moments of quiet reading. A week's end of the best kind!

Friday

Thank goodness it's Friday, and thank goodness it's the first day of fall (because this heat wave is just too much), and thank goodness that the call that my daughter got from school that Snowdrop was in an accident proved to be not such a big deal after all.

Breakfast, out on the porch, just before it got to be too hot to be out on the porch.






A quick walk through the garden. I make a mental note to water the pots and then I forget to water the pots.





I pick up Snowdrop with trepidation. She was injured during outdoor recess. She did not nap. It's the last day of a whole week without naps. I mean, we have a stacked deck here...

Hi, little one...





Grandma, can you pick an apple for me in the school playground?
I don't know... they seem high...
There is an apple picker over here.
Maybe we can just get an apple in the grocery store.
I like the apples here.

One way or another, I shake down an apple.





I suppose that's an indication of how our afternoons proceeds. I look for ways to keep things calm. It may not be the best strategy, but it is what I did with my daughters and honestly, it is what I do in most matters of the everyday.

One last comment on this day and perhaps it is the most important comment -- my daughter is celebrating her fifth anniversary with her husband. I take a commemorative shot ... of the two of them plus babe. Happy anniversary indeed!






Ed had suggested we eat out this week -- we haven't done that in months! -- but I kept putting it off and then finally tonight I just blurted out -- let's just do take out sushi at home! The idea of ending the day with sushi rather than with another foray into the humid and hot air appeals to me greatly.

what do you like to do in your free time?

I've posed a question which I think is silly. It makes no sense to me at all. At best -- I do not understand it.

Here's a shot at a better one: what goals do you like to set for yourself, had you the time to work toward them?






All this talk of what tickles your fancy came about as a result of a walk I took this morning. Alone, because Ed had a really tough time waking up. So breakfast was late...





And the threat of a hot day meant that I did not want to wait for him to feel up to a brisk saunter around the rural roads. So I set out on my own.

When imagination fails me and I do not want to get in the car to go somewhere to walk, I usually take the scenic rural road to the east of us. It has little traffic, lovely views, some of them onto a terrific prairie...





... and the whole round trip takes about 45 minutes. Perfect.


(The farmers' fields just to the east of the farmette...)





But as I pass a property we'd been watching for a while now, I halt in my tracks. To gawk. I'd never seen anything quite like it in Wisconsin -- certainly not in the greater Madison area.

The place is owned by one of the top real estate developers in town and it is huge. Looking later at the maps with Ed, we note that the guy (and his wife) owns acres and acres of forest, prairie, wetlands, pasture. Oh, but this was obvious even without looking at the maps. Walking along the road, I see that the land here has been transformed! The forest bed has been cleared of all honeysuckle and other noxious invasives that choke so much of native growth. The wetlands have been "trimmed." A prairie will surely extend over some of the flatlands (burned turf tells me that this is the plan).

The developer built a spectacularly modern house and then added other structures. A recreational building (that's my guess). Barns, out buildings -- all beautifully restored. There are paddocks for grazing donkeys. I mean, who has donkeys these days anyway? Must be the family's Greek (I'm guessing) heritage at work. The whole place is so vast and so carefully tended that it reminds me of estates out in the east coast where money flows like honey in a bee hive.

I want to believe that he is doing it with the environment at the forefront of his considerations. And I think this is so. But what really sticks in my mind is that in eliminating or reducing some growth, he is encouraging other growth. The land is tended, so that things may grow. I surely believe in that!

Which brings me around to the farmette land. Remember how I resisted moving here? It would swallow my time!  -- I used to protest. There are three acres here and every inch requires care. So much to do! And so I did not move here and for years Ed commuted daily to the city (where I lived) and I stuck by my words: the farmette would need an overhaul and I haven't the time for it.

Yet here I am. Something caused me to change my mind and it would take a whole 'nother post to answer the questions of what and why.

Oftentimes (most times?) I think I am not keeping up with the demands of the place. Flower beds -- yes, I work hard on these, but so long as all farmette trees are allowed free reign (even those that should never have entered into the picture), I will be waging a losing battle, as sunlight is choked out and beautiful birches, maples and spruces are pushed back by boxelders, lotus and black walnut. But not honeysuckle: gives us some credit, we pretty much stay on top of eradicating the honeysuckle.

So let me return to the question of what makes you happy and how you fashion yourself spending free time. Today, when I returned home after my walk, I was, of course, motivated to clear some of the crazy growth that I believe is coming at us from all sides. Ed was busy with his engineering projects and so I worked alone. When I took a break, I commented that I was now fighting back the marching troops of vines, trees, shrubs and weeds on my own and that it was a shame that he did not have a passion for tending this land.
Ed looks up, surprised:  but you like gardening. It makes you happy.

I thought long and hard about this as I pulled out lotus seedlings and creeping charlie tendrils. Do I like this? If I had all the time in the world, would I choose to do this? The answer to the first is -- eh, in optimal conditions, maybe, to a degree. But the answer to the second question is yes. I would choose to do this. If I had all the time in the world, I would be out there toiling.  Because the goal of doing right by this beautiful land is a noble goal. Setting a goal and working towards it makes me happy.

As for Snowdrop today -- well, the recurrent concern is that she is not napping in school. You may tell me that perhaps she does not need her nap anymore. You would be wrong. My daughters could get by with very little sleep when they were little. Snowdrop cannot.

Still, the girl will rally when life offers her exciting play possibilities. And so this afternoon, she rallies.

(She watched other kids on past days climb up on top of this and so she wanted to do it too...)






(Out of the stroller, leading the way to "music class..." -- a favorite pretend game of hers.)






I tell her we need to stop by the Thursday night Fitchburg farmers market on the way back to the farmhouse. She is tired. I want to go straight to the farmhouse...  But I need the tomatoes.

Ed meets us at the market and there happens to be a horse-drawn wagon there and she is reluctant at first, but Ed nudges her to try it (I go along for the ride, Ed takes the photo)...






... and she is thrilled. She wants to do it again, with him. Okay, just once, but really -- we need to pick out some ten pounds of tomatoes...

When it's time to get the tomatoes, I place her right inside the truck and she is thrilled! Just thrilled! She laughs and works and works and laughs and I can tell that this act of being up in the truck, loading a bag of tomatoes, is making her really happy.






When the bag is filled, she runs over to get cheese curds...






And this is cool too, but she really wants to go on that horse and wagon again, this time with Ed...






(She pats the horse's mane, tentatively...)





And then she asks to go again and what, are you going to say, no? Is there any reason to say no?
You have to wait a while, Snowdrop... 
Okay, I will wait...





And there are musicians at the market and they fire up the accordion and the little one just cannot resist this moment of dance!





But I'm sure as anything that this evening, at home, she will crash. She is one overtired little cookie. Oh! Here's a text from her mom telling me that this is exactly right!

We trade off good times and tired times, her parents and I. Today, I hit the jackpot.  

Wednesday

Many thanks for your comments (yesterday) and emails. Hearing from you is always very very cool!

Let's do a quiet day today, shall we? To settle that buzz in our heads when we think too hard and worry too much.

I want to show you the shift in the garden: from the summer deliberate, to the autumnal crazy beautiful.






Occasionally, a flower will rally and put forth an extraordinary second bloom. This delphinium gives us the truest blue you're likely to find in any garden.






Cheeper update: only Henny (in the background) is giving us eggs. One green one, everyday. Java (in the forefront) is no longer brooding, but nor is she laying. She just is: her clunky lovely self. Scotch -- who knows what her game plan is. She no longer fights with the other girls, so that's a good thing.






Breakfast on a hot muggy September morning.






Late morning walk with Ed in our local county park. If you doubt the beauty of the midwestern prairie, this is the time to walk trails that push through these grasses and flowers.






And the music! Oh, the music!






Were I a painter, this would be my canvas:






Motorbiking home, we pass the fields of gold: soy gold. Corn gold.






The truck farmer fields to the east of us...






Picking up Snowdrop at school...






She is pushing "her babies" in the swing.






But she is a tired girl. No nap again in school. It shows.





So tired, that she falls asleep in the stroller, on leaving the playground.

At the farmhouse, happy again.





And of course, no matter what new stuff I introduce, she always comes back to her favorite: serving ice cream and cakes to her babies, to gaga, to ahah.






And now, as storms rumble but do nothing to push away the heat, the humidity, I reheat bowls of homemade chili and offer some quiet time for us, for you...