Monday - 164th

Hot, clammy, sticky day. The kind of weather that has you muttering, for the first time since winter, "sweaters and woolly socks aren't so bad! I'm looking forward to colder air."

Ed and I are up early. We decided to move Cutie to the writer's shed where Calico has been recuperating. Of all options on the table, this seemed the safest for now. Cutie has been really affectionate with me, but still runs away at the sight of anyone else. At the sight of other cats, she disappears into thin air. So Ed distracts the other cats and I trap her with food inside the pet carrier. She hesitates, but I push her in. I can almost see the look of deep hurt in her eyes -- et tu, Brute?

I release her in the shed. Calico is happy. Cutie -- well, she needs to adjust. The thought is that they'll grow more comfortable with us, thereby opening the door for adoption. Or, we'll release them eventually and in the meantime both will be safe and keep each other company. Or, the other cats will come to the door, sniff them out and finally accept them into the herd.

One can hope.

Gardening. Remember the days when I would clip more than a thousand spent lilies? Today I celebrate each remaining bloom!






Breakfast.






The kids come over soon after. Yes, I take more photos than ever. The last week of Gaga's Summer School. I want my chest of memories to be really, really full.

Despite the weather, they agree to stay outside for a little longer.

To water a few plants.






To chat with the cheepers.






To pick string beans.






To pick cosmos in the meadow and blow tufts of dried grass seed into the air.
















Inside again, things feel a little different.

First, out of the blue, the little girl asks for prosciutto. Okay! I have it! With fruit, just like an Italian!







Ready to delve into books. But not the usual ones. There's no push for the chapter book sequels to her favorite stories. Instead, Snowdrop goes to the shelf and picks a picture book that she has loved for, oh, I'd say at least three years. It's called "Waiting," and it is about just that: toys on a windowsill, waiting for change, for seasonal transformation, for nothing in particular. I've always thought it to be a sweetly meditative book, but today it's just a tiny bit sad. For all the times we've read it in the past, for the very idea of the waiting that's ahead.

And then she tidies. Everything in a neat space, carefully arranged.


 



Sparrow goes along with this, to a point. He starts to rearrange. Of course he does! It's his play space too!






It's funny, but again, in a poignant way. I had intended to straighten up much of the toy mess next week, once they were no longer here. She did it for me. Except a few days too soon!

For the rest of the day we do art. She draws her pigs, I sketch my "family of five," Sparrow draws increasingly more precise doodles. We are a happy bunch.











The afternoon sizzles, my plants whither. I take pity on the front bed and point a hose on each plant there. Ed takes a saw to dead branches on the pine trees that flank the front door to the farmhouse. And of course, we play with Cutie and Calico, now safely in the writer's shed.


Evening. Behind the branches of the towering trees there's a pretty sunset. Muted too by the hazy heat of a hot summer day.






Leftovers. Isn't it a fine time to watch a thriller with comedic twists on TV? Bring on the popcorn!

Sunday - 163rd

Well, it did not rain last night. And it wont rain today, tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. It's time to get serious about watering. Giving up toward the end of September is understandable, but we're still firmly in August. I can't watch all plants wither and fade yet. So this morning I give them a helping hand.

(I have an odd pattern of growing dahlias: they start off the season modestly. Then they're eaten up by bugs -- beetles perhaps. Then, in the middle of the summer, they look like a dried up failure. Finally, they enter their late August stage of bloom -- as if the flower fairy granted them a second life, they bounce back better than ever! They look spectacular! Revived! Happy as can be!}






(Truly the last of the day lilies in the lily field...)






(Visitors)






(The gallant and brave girls of late summer: phlox, bee balm, black eyed susans, and false sunflower.)





At breakfast...




... Ed and I discuss Calico. You know -- the kitty that's in the writer's shed as we attempt to cure her of an acute episode of vestibular disease. Ed proposes transferring her to the bathroom in the sheep shed so that the other cats can sniff her out properly (through a crack in the door) and get more used to her. I'm hesitant. In my mind, she is better left alone. But for how long? We have no good answer.


Time for a progress report on the front entrance construction project: Ed has proposed many, many design ideas on how to do this well. I've agreed to all of them, but somehow the ideas did not click for him. Initially, he was going to simply replace the rotted timber, clear out the whole area, and have someone come in to do the job. Perhaps I should have guessed that in the end he would choose to do most of the work himself.





On the one hand, that means we'll be moving along now at a slick pace, because he is motivated. On the other hand, the design is not going to be complicated. Ed does not choose to do "complicated."


That's fine. It will be good to know that going forward, someone exiting the house by this "front" door will not kill herself on crumbling pieces of concrete.


In the evening the young family is here for dinner.











What can I say -- family dinners are always wonderful. I can't remember one that has been anything less than grand.
















The kids dont want the evening to end. Oh, they know how to prolong it -- ask grandma to take a walk.

I'm feeling recklessly bold enough to suggest we go to the barn and put the cheepers away for the night. Into the coop!

It's not a fun project. Most of the hens are at rest now on the walls of the barn.






You need to encourage them to come down without scaring them. We managed! Well, all but Java, whom I had to chase down and carry into her spot in the coop.

Ah ah will be so surprised that we did it!




Yes he will, little ones. Yes he will.

Saturday - 162nd

If you are in total isolation -- no visitors, no family, no one popping it at all, do you clean your house with the same fastidiousness as before?

My guess is that most will say yes. I should think that people who like clean spaces would feel diminished if clutter, dust balls, debris all messed with their environment. But don't you loosen your standards just a little? I know that in normal times, before we have visitors, I clean like crazy. I mean, to the point that I even wash the shower curtain. There isn't a surface that I don't touch. I can say that over the 162 days of isolation, I have not cleaned like crazy. Not even cleaned like normal. I've been spotty, erratic, almost (though not entirely) indifferent.

Traditionally, Sunday is clean up time at the farmhouse. This morning, I shrugged my shoulders and went inside to tend a little to the garden.
















Breakfast, in the heat of the very late morning.











And then I recoiled: I have eight days of kids at the farmette left. Will I truly grow indifferent to neatness once they stop coming? No, that can't happen. Can it?

I take out the vacuum and do a very thorough job vacuuming the floor and sucking in stringy webs from up above.  (We have quite the number of daddy long-legs sharing space with us. They're harmless to us and they do pick up any stray bugs that come around. But every once in a while, one has to reign in their habitat!) We will see how long I will remain motivated to keep this place solidly shiny and sparkly!

In the late afternoon, Ed and I go for a walk. Not around here, and not in the county park, but over in the area of town where I pick up our CSA box of veggies. The streets by the lesser lake have been mostly closed to vehicles and we thought it might be an interesting change of pace to walk city streets once more.






I'm glad Ed came with me, otherwise I'd have let myself give in to the nostalgia of the place. There are too many images of the countless other times I strolled here with Snowdrop, during saner years. Her family used to live in the neighborhood and this, too, is where her school, well her former school now, is located. Sparrow never made it to the playground at Bernie's Beach, and we stopped coming to the coffee shop here once he began school. But Snowdrop knows these spaces intimately. Oh, the ice cream games we played on the playground equipment! She asked me to drive through here last week. I had asked her -- are you sure you want to? Yes.






After the walk, Ed and I pick up our veggies and head for home. Such a heavy box of good stuff! What does late August bring? Well, corn, of course. Broccoli, carrots, more zucchini. Onions, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic. Cucumbers, peppers, edamame. A melon! We are swimming in potatoes and zucchini, but the rest is a welcome addition to our week's stash.

Clouds roll in toward evening and I am hoping for rain. Really hoping. A good, honest soak. I retreat into my computer and shop for school clothes for the kids. I know, right? How strange is that! Only Primrose in Chicago will actually be going somewhere! Still, like house cleaning, this ritual has meaning for me, for them too maybe.

There is comfort and pleasure in imagining that maybe, just maybe the clothes will carry them through to a time when schools will be safe and the two Madison kids can reenter the real world once more. Sweatshirts, dresses, polo shirts. Brittany stripes and dazzling stars. Wear them with a happy smile, little ones.

With love.

Frday - 161st

We're slowly warming up again. So typical: kids are about to face school and the air gets hot. It's that parched heat the makes plants brittle and turns grass a lovely shade of yellow. I'm pretty laid back about the outside gardens. Maybe in some parts of this country gardeners rev up and plan out their spring flower beds right now, but I can't think about that. I'll pull weeds when I have more time. Right now I glance at what's blooming, smile a little encouragement and move on.











Breakfast on the porch. Of course.






Ed has plunged into a project and I'm happy about it: he's pulling out rotten boards and fixing up the front entrance in preparation for (finally!) fixing the face of the farmhouse. The stairs have crumbled, the concrete patio is no more and in general, it all looks like something you'd find in a haunted house. It seems that this will finally be the year where we attend to it.






I pick up the little girl for her Friday at the farmhouse. Again, I push for the outdoors and she resists. A brief bike ride...






("Can we go inside now??")






A quick run up the path...






And  we scoot indoors.

After a great big reading catch up, we turn to art.






Smooth today. Snowdrop explains to me that her picture (of super pigs) does not match what her imagination put in her brain, but for now, she seems reconciled to that discrepancy.

(Adding a gray cloud to my own doodle...)






Next, we play. Or rather, she plays. I stay in the background and try to tidy up old Lego arrangements. I'll never figure out what you're supposed to do with the million microscopically tiny pieces that come with these sets. Since Snowdrop has always preferred working with the domestic Lego scenes, we have a million cupcake tops, flower petals, paint brushes and who knows what else.

The girl herself moves between different places in the play room where she has invented stories and relationships between, well, anything. My small collection of European birds? She has been playing delicately with them for years.






The afternoon passes quickly. I try not to think how empty the farmhouse will be once the kids stop coming. Best to think about how grand it has been to have had them here this summer.

Evening. A supper of hot chili on a hot day (we have all those tomatoes!). Quiet time. Thoughtful time. Popcorn time.

Thursday - 160th

It's hard not to call this "another cat day." We seem destined to deal with these guys and of course, it's like with children -- the more there are, the greater the bag of issues. Eight cats can generate a lot of issues, even if theoretically they live in the wild rather than in our home.

It starts at 3:30 in the morning. Meowing and pawing at the screen of our open bedroom window. We look out over a sliver of rooftop and Dance decided that maybe this would be a good way for her to get us to pay attention to her. She is always trying to get inside the farmhouse. It's her curiosity, sure, and it's also her belief that she should have the run of every farmette space. She is the new matriarch. She, not us, makes the rules.

Dance, you are a sweet and gentle cat, but no, you cannot come inside at 3:30 in the morning. Widow closed.

Morning. Still warm, still sunny. Still very dry out there. I choose the next patch of flowers to water. The ones that still may bloom this year.
















Breakfast with a sleepy Ed. Why are we up so early? I've been up for hours! Okay...
On the porch.






The kids are here soon after and this time the message is clear: can we go straight inside?






I bargain. How about just after you water the tomato pots? And after we give the chickens some bread?






I have an agreeable bunch here.






Inside, both kids want to find some common ground: a game, a pretend set up -- something that can draw all of us in. It's not easy: she is five and a half, he is just two. But in pretend foods, there is always a place for everyone.







In the late afternoon, I pick up more medicine for Calico. We don't really know if it's addressing her problem, but she is getting better. The vet says three more weeks.
Three more weeks of lockdown?? Poor kid.

At home, we line up five animal carriers (some borrowed). It's the designated day for capturing the six teenagers and getting them to the place that gives rabies vaccinations. I've not looked forward to this at all, though I don't know why I should mind so much since Ed is the one who basically does the capture. He gets the scratches, the bites and carts them off for their shots.

We manage to get only three. The others get spooked and run away. Ed almost wants to release the victims and start again another day. We'd gotten only one of the twins: how could we ever tell, going forward, which one still needs the vaccination? Still, I urge him to start with the three.
We'll paint his tail some color! He shakes his head, but drives off.

Three cats down, three to go. 

Remind me why anyone would say tending to feral cats is fun?