Wednesday - 187th

Is it the last breath of summer? It sure feels like it. Warm, so pleasantly warm. Still milky blue skies, but oh, that warmth!











Breakfast is on the porch and maybe you are tired of me writing this every day, but believe me, it wont last. Is it our last one? Maybe.






We must take a walk. Just to our local park. We've been there a million times, but, as Ed points out, with each month it's different. Besides, it's hunting season once again, so the wildlife trails we favor for a longer hike are not that fun. There's something offputting about bumping into people with rifles during your meditative walk. So, local park it is.

But we actually discover a new path! All these years and we never saw it. It hugs the cornfield at the outset.











Then it veers into the woods. Definitely the path less traveled.






Ed likes this, of course. I prefer the sunnier stretch. This one.






Such a gorgeous walk though. And not a soul. Not a single person on any of the trails.

(Sandhill cranes on the motorbike ride to the park: again, I know they are a repetition here, on Ocean, but I'll never tire of photographing these lovely birds. Even at a distance.)






In the late afternoon, I have another outside/distanced visit with Snowdrop. Just as I pack up a bag of books and activities, a bowl of fruits, some eggs for my daughter, I get a call.
Hello?
Yeah, about that posted notice... It's a kid. He's leaving school in Stoughton. He's seeing Cutie. He recognizes her from the posters the prospective owner had put up around town.
Are you sure it's the same cat?
Yeah. You know, like the photo you posted.
Where is she?
By the trees, on the left side of the school. She's been there for a while.

Ed is on a work call. I have my sweet granddaughter expecting me. I call my daughter. Will Snowdrop mind if I'm an hour late?
She doesn't wear a watch. Go for it.

Ed uses my smart phone to get back to his Zoom meeting, I scream the car toward Stoughton.

Seventeen minutes later we're there.

But Cutie is not.

I see the trees. I search and call all around the blocks of the school. I ask kids, construction workers, residents working in yards. Nothing.


I drop Ed off at home and go over to spend a wonderful, if somewhat late part of the day distancing with Snowdrop.






Will we continue this into the cold weather? Who can tell. One day at a time!






Toward the end, I let Sparrow chase me up and down the deck...






And in the evening, I return to an empty house. Ed's out biking. Cats are stretched out on the porch, all is quiet.

Time to bake a frittata. Broccoli and mushrooms from the Funghi Farmers. Corn, left over from Stoneman farm. And lots of cheese. Does anyone doubt that cheese, crusted under a broiler, is like a balm? A wonderful, reassuring piece of melty goodness?






Such beautiful weather here today. So very tough to read about all the pain on the battered coasts of the continent. And elsewhere.

Time to exhale. Ed wont stay awake long after biking. Ed, can we please have some popcorn?

Tuesday - 186th

In the car, I turned the high beams on. The roads were completely empty. If you opened the window, you'd hear only yourself pushing forward against darkness. Every few minutes, we would dip into a low spot and bands of fog would blur the road before us.

You think the fog will get worse coming back? -- I asked.
Not likely.

It was midnight and we were sometimes speeding, sometimes crawling through the patchy fog, heading once again to the town of Stoughton. Ed had read several pieces on how to search for a lost cat and almost without fail, the authors, all who had lost a cat at some points, at many points in their lives, recommended beating the bushes when darkness fell on your community.

We leave the car at the apartment complex where Cutie, on her way to being adopted, was accidentally released into the wild. Or into the suburbs. Or is it the downtown? Or commercial hub of this town to the south east of Madison? Who knows where she is. She's been on the loose since Sunday. But those sage authors of cat search pieces claim that if your cat is shy, she will not go far. She will hide in bushes, not feeling herself to be safe to search for the familiar. So we go out into the dark and quiet world, calling out, not too loudly, hoping that we wont wake residents and scare the daylights out of sleeping folk with our roving flashlight and muffled voices.

We canvas the neighborhood around the apartment building. If she had been hiding there, she would have heard us. No one meows, no little kitten runs out from under a bush.

After an hour of this, we drive home.


The morning is almost perfectly sunny and bright. We should be having deep blue skies, but there is a haze. The smoke from the western states has reached Wisconsin, giving us milky blue-ish skies. Ed swears he smells the burn in the air. I think he must be imagining it. Still, there's no doubt that our skies are showing the extent of the drift of the plumes of smoke.


The garden? Oh, it's in its Fall phase. I like to look at it and admire it for what it is. Different from summer abundance, but nonetheless peacefully welcoming.
















We eat breakfast on the porch of course. It's a beautiful day for it!






And in the afternoon, he and I go back to the edges of Stoughton. It's a 20 minute drive. If we weren't there, we'd for sure be taking an extensive walk in one of our parks today. Why not hike here instead, even if the likelihood of finding Cutie is very very small? A purposeful walk! In the weak but warm sunshine. Until the voice grows hoarse from calling out to the little kittie.
















Home again. We walk back to the new orchard, where the bees are liking the meadow flowers and the pears are ripening nicely.











(crab apple visitor; it's been a summer of many, many monarchs)






Evening quiet. We wont be driving back to search tonight. We're both tired. The prospective new owner has put up pictures of Cutie all over Stoughton. Maybe someone will spot her. But realistically, the chances of her returning to the side of her sister are very very small.

Reheated soup, still good for the soul. Followed by popcorn, which is good for just about any mood you may find yourself in today or any day! Eat it warm, with sprinkled light shavings of parmesan cheese!  So simple. So delicious.

Monday - 185th

You know the saying -- "it's like looking for a needle in a haystack." It implies an impossibility in the search effort. But I think it should be revised. I think if you have time, you can actually find a needle in a haystack. Perhaps magnets would help. Eventually you may well find that needle. So I have a better saying which more accurately describes the futility of a search -- "it's like looking for a kitten on the loose in Stoughton."

You'd like an explanation perhaps. Okay.

We woke up to warmer weather. There is a promise of some sunshine. All in all, not a bad start to the week. Considering how horrible things are in California, Oregon and Washington, I think we're doing exceptionally well here.






I walk over to feed the five big cats. (We'd lost one recently -- one of the Friendlys. One morning he just did not show up. It's a mean world out there!)  I throw a glance at the writer's shed where the two little girls had been hanging out for the past month. We're cleaning it up now. We're fairly confident that their new adoptive owner will bond with them. She's determined. They're sweet. It has to be a good outcome!

I come inside and start fixing breakfast.

Nina! -- this from Ed upstairs. I note the "Nina." Can't be good.

It isn't good. Turns out that the adoptive person brought the two kitties home yesterday and, on the advice of her friend, decided to take some measures to protect herself from kittie fleas. Now, since Ed combs the cats routinely, he'll swear to you that none of the cats have fleas, but I suppose people get antsy about cats picked up on Craigslist. For some reason the anti-flea measures were conducted upon arrival, in the large garage of their apartment building.

Why was anyone surprised that when the carrier door was opened, one of the kitties -- Cutie -- escaped.

The new owner did not want to bother us with this news last night. But I guess this morning, she felt she had no choice but to let us know. Cutie is gone.

She tells us someone posted on social media that they'd seen a cat roughly like Cutie hiding in some bushes downtown. Could we come out and help look?

We eat a quick breakfast...





... and drive down to Stoughton.

It's a pointless search, really. By this morning, the cat could be anywhere. But, thinking that we may get lucky, Ed and I set out to walk far back of the apartment complex, past vast commercial venues, up and down main streets, down to the town's periphery, through forests and meadows, all around the parks, and along the side streets of Stoughton -- a town of some 13,000 -- me calling to the little girl with a voice and name that she has long recognized as signaling food and friendship.

We walked and shouted and walked some more...























I grew hoarse, the weather warmed, but there is no sign of Cutie. This is no surprise, of course. Our country is large, there are bushes and trees from here to the Atlantic and Pacific. Even if she had been determined to stay within the borders of Stoughton, she would have six square miles to navigate. And beyond that -- forests and cornfields and the rest of Wisconsin and America.

There is no happy ending, of course. Calico is crying for her sister and her sister is, for the first time in her life, looking civilization in the eye. (She has never ventured beyond our farmette and the forest across the road from us.)

May it treat her kindly. Sigh...


(On the porch, the big cats rest...)








In better news, I have a late afternoon Zoom meet up with these two...






Each of us has had a share of tough moments recently. I surely have had an easy time of it compared to too many others. Still, the three of us are good at aiming for the upbeat mode. On most days, we can find plenty to smile about.


Evening. I had big cooking plans, really I did. Maybe later in the week. For now, I cook up some soup for the soul. With rainbow chard and cannellini beans and lots of onions. Sprinkled with grated parmesan. Really good for the soul!

Sunday - 184th

Of course, if we were to disassemble and clean the stove yesterday, today its cousin, the refrigerator had to follow suit. I mean, you can't leave one looking dusty and forlorn while the other glistens and sparkles. (Perhaps that's a stretch: it's merely free of grime.)

We did this after a porch breakfast. (Garden roses!)






(Friendly the cat is sometimes too true to her/his name!)






I must admit to being impatient with the weather. We've been longing for an end to the cold and the rain and the morning was stubbornly cloudy.






And then, magically, the sunshine came out to greet us once again.

Time to finally have my reading/drawing visit with Snowdrop, in her yard, with social distancing. Some aspects of this are very easy, some are tough. I'm sure you can guess where the heartbreaks lie...






Still, with the sun on my back and my eyes on the little girl  -- I feel like I've been handed not a small amount of gifts right now.






And then things got a little busy. I return home. Once again Ed has caged the two kitties and we hand them over to a prospective owner. We have great hopes that this time things will be better.

And now I'm even more busy. Time to prepare Sunday dinner! Once it's ready, I pack it up and I go back to the young family's home. This time, Sparrow is up and he and I get to have a socially distanced encounter.






I'm going to say that it's better than nothing. That I can make him laugh, even at a distance.






But we're coasting here. All of us. Finding ways to make it more or less good. And it is good! I mean, downright grand to have these few minutes, chasing each other in hats, happy, happy that the rains have finally passed.

And then I come back to eat with Ed.

This may seem like a slightly chaotic day, but honestly, the weather was so on our side, that we allowed ourselves more than one moment of contentment. And the grandkids are all really fine and the little kitties are in (one hopes) their new home. For us, that's about as good as it gets right now!

Saturday - 183rd

Well now, the two little kitties were not even gone a full day! Early in the morning, the couple calls. They're bringing the girls back.

We rewrite the listing on Craigslist. Even though we emphasized this verbally, we need to put it in writing: no, these are not kittens that will immediately crawl into your lap and shower you with kittie kisses. These are kittens that until about a month ago lived in the nasty, threatening outdoors. They've come a long way. They love me, they love Ed. It will take a few days for them to understand that there are other friends to be had besides just Ed and me.

Phew!

And now we have another interested person. She seems more accepting of the fact that they wont be chummy with her from day zero. They will be scared. They will need a little bit of reassurance.

Was there anything to the day besides cats?

Well, there was my morning walk to feed ... the cats.






And there was breakfast, on the porch, before the arrival of the couple with ... the cats.






And there were multiple conversations and texts about ... the cats.

You're asking (I can hear it!) -- you mean to say you spent/wasted the entire day attending to farmette cats?

Well now, there was that hour in the middle of the day when Ed and took apart the kitchen stove. Does that count as more exciting? [No, there is nothing wrong with the stove, but it appears that the installation of a new water heater requires an analysis and an inspection of gas flow to the oven. I have no idea why. As you can readily guess, I am not the person switching out the water heating system at the farmhouse. Ed has taken on that project. We're changing to an "on demand" water heater. May it work!]

Too, toward evening, I was very happy to get on Zoom with these guys.





A truly wonderful diversion from ...the cats. Even though earlier, I'd picked up a couple of books for them and, coincidentally I swear, they were about ... cats.

Friday - 182nd

Sometime this evening we will have hit the half year mark of our isolation. May it not be the case that it's halfway down and half to go. And may it especially not be the case that in March I'll say -- Ha! Were it that we had had only half a year more...

This is not a moment of celebration, but I'll pause for a small reflection: we have been lucky. Back in March, the growing season was just beginning. And so we plunged into a busy and productive set of months. There is one grocery store that will deliver all the way out here and so not going to the store became a nonissue. Thank you, grocery store shoppers. You've been so wonderful! Until September, the grandkids were here. And to my knowledge, no one in my family has been sick with the infection. All that is a heck of a lot of stuff to be grateful for.

So if we can just continue in this calm way for a while longer and then come out grinning, that would be good. Really, really good.


It's cold still. We're having record lousy weather here (that is my own category, one that combines wetness with unseasonably cold temperatures). Still, we eat breakfast on the porch today. It's 58F (14C), but Ed claims it's good enough. I have to think that either he has made his internal temperature adjustment so that he can now claim that cold does not affect him, or he's feeling a tug to Dance, our oldest half-feral cat, who is complaining that we haven't spent enough time with her on the porch lately.






Because of the bad weather, my afternoon date to read and draw with Snowdrop (outside, with social distancing in place) had to be thrown out the window. Still, I do drive over to her home to drop off some fruits and pick up a pet carrier. Through the back door.

Hi little one!






Honestly, it may not seem like much, but to see her sweet little face in person is to be happy.






I am handed some art work that the kids did with one of the sitters. I hear Snowdrop gave hers the title "Apple Tree of Joy." I need an apple tree of joy! (Sparrow's painting may well be titled the same..)






And so long as we're on the topic of fruit trees, let me roll back to a morning moment when it was still cold, but the rain had taken a pause. Ed and I walked over to the young orchard to see if the pears were still there (or if they had been chomped down by squirrels/deer/birds/other creatures). The wet days have really perked up the meadow!






And yes, the pears are still ripening. For now.






Evening. You noted that I picked up a pet carrier. Whatever for? Well, it's the back-up plan. You'll recall perhaps that we placed an ad for Cutie and Calico on Craigslist. We hope they'll find an adoptive home. And indeed, after an initial misfire, we have a lovely couple who want to take these girls in. Because Ed and I are isolating, the way to do this is for me to trap the girls in a pet carrier and to hand over the carrier (to be retrieved at another time) to the new owners.  If we can't get both of them into one carrier, I have the borrowed backup to work with.

This whole transfer is nerve wracking. Can we get them in? Just one kittie would be easy. Two -- not so much. They are easily spooked. I give great thought to having a large glass of wine before the attempt, but decide against it. I should have my wits about me.

As I ponder this, Ed goes into the shed, throws some treats into the carrier and boom. They're in.

The couple comes, the transfer takes place. The worry never ends, of course. If it doesn't work out, then the couple will be returning the two girls to us. That's the deal. We'll keep on trying until there is a good fit. But for at least tonight, we are two cats down here, at the farmette. Five of the teenagers remain. So many have been lost to the great outdoors and to speeding cars! We can only hope that the remaining guys will stay safe.

Thursday - 181st

I know we watched for rain, we wished for rain, we hoped each day would bring rain. Well now, we have rain.

Four days of drippy, cold rain. And we're not done yet.

Well, the garden is happy. Me, I'm housebound. We both are. For the first time this summer, I feel like my movement is confined: from one room to the next and back again. And in case you haven't paid attention: the farmhouse rooms are not large.

It's funny and new and a little dizzying to be so limited in my orbit. My daughter keeps me entertained with updates on Snowdrop's second day of school (Wednesday was a non-school day according to the online schedule). Ed is equally entertaining with his renewed (what a surprise) interest in spending time in a warm spot, preferably with a beach and a boat nearby. I say things like -- we're old! We need health insurance! And he says things like -- sharks rarely are a menace and not all islands are in the hurricane belt.

And the rain comes down and the last of the lilies throws up a brave and beautiful bloom...






And of course, we eat breakfast in the kitchen.






For the past few weeks, I have been suffering along through an exceptionally boring mystery novel. It makes no sense to be bored while reading this genre of a book. The whole purpose of mystery reading is to get that buzz of excitement going until the last satisfying pages. And then, just as I crossed the 51% read mark (Kindle readers are so good at telling you exactly how slow your progress is!), things got spicy again. And so I pick up the book and I do a tiny bit of writing on the side as well and I think -- well, this isn't so terribly awful. Maybe I could even stand an extended stay in a wet and drippy place, so long as my Kindle is loaded with many books where you don't have to doze through 51% of the pages before you are roped into the story line.

Yes, days of lock-down due to Covid, and a lock-in due to weather bring up strange thoughts of far away places, ones where we are unlikely to ever go, ever visit, ever live in, but ones which raise the possibility that perhaps we do still have that longing, that curiosity about a lifestyle that is different from what we have chosen for ourselves here, at the farmette. With a caveat: Ed says -- not that it's not great here. It is.

And I agree.

Wednesday - 180th

Once again, I am immersed in paperwork, this time having to do with my mother's care. I have spoken to no fewer than half dozen people asking for clarifications and advice and still, let me assure you, the long term care of a person in this country is one heck of a quagmire, especially when said person has moved to a stage where government benefits are under consideration. I had to laugh when Ed, who was assisting on the sidelines with occasional Google searches, brought up the following from one Elder Law site offering advice on how to navigate Medicaid Long Term Care's field of endless pit holes:

One court described the federal and state laws governing the Medicaid program as the regulatory equivalent of the "Serbonian bog," quoting John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. ("A gulf profound, as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have been sunk.") These laws have been characterized by other courts as "almost unintelligible to the uninitiated," as an "aggravated assault on the English language, resistant to attempts to understand it," and as "labyrinthinan."

Yeah, I would agree and I write as an attorney who, a long time ago, worked in a legal office where my task was to translate Medicaid/Medicare regs to the uninitiated.


In other news -- well, it's cold outside. 50F (10C) out there when I woke up and not much warmer inside the farmhouse. Hey, weren't we giving the furnace a trial run? Why isn't it kicking in? I look at the thermostat. Everything is shut down. Ed is sleeping. I'm not going to disturb him. This can wait.





But by late morning, I'm longing for a warm cup of coffee and my bowl of hot oatmeal, so I make enough noise downstairs to stir him upstairs. Ah, he's awake!
Ed, the furnace, or at least the thermostat is not working...
Huh? Oh, um, I guess I forgot to turn it back on after tweaking it last night.

Problem solved.

Breakfast, in the still cold (but not for long!) kitchen.






And then? Well, you know -- the cold, the wetness outside, the forms, the phone calls, the paper work.

On the upside, we have another inquiry about the calico kitties. We have high hopes for these potential future owners! Scheduled transfer: Friday. Wish us all luck!