after the rain

It's a wet landscape out there. A wet and weedy landscape.  On my morning walk I can't help but notice the hundreds, nay thousands of new weed heads. I no longer dig out roots, I snip off anything above the ground, trying to take out as much as I can. Of course, I dont even make a dent. In these new flower beds, the baby plants take up no space at all and so the weeds have plenty of opportunity to come back and taunt me. But I cannot give in. I've worked too hard to establish these beds. I have to persevere. Bend down and pluck, a million times each day.

Most flowers look refreshed after the rain. And some bend their blooming heads under the weight of the added moisture. It's especially beautiful to watch the lilac curve its flower heads. A final flush of purple color, a final whiff of a heavenly fragrance.

 

(Speaking of purple...)

Breakfast, now routinely outside. It's definitely warm enough.

And afterwards we take stock. We have trees to plant, sure, but I'm the landscape planner here (Ed prefers it that way) and I do not see many sunny spaces left for the trees we have left. Walnuts, for example, love sunshine. We walk the new forest lands and look at the box elders that have created so much shade.

I suppose I can take those four trees down... This from Ed.

I know it seems odd -- take down mature trees in order to plant babies which may or may not take hold, but box elders are like cotton candy: they spin out of control quickly and their life span is short. They fall down at inconvenient times and in inconvenient places. We have dozens of them and apart from the fact that they do give some shade and protection from the winds that blow across the upper midwest, they really are as big a nuisance as creeping charlie. Like noxious weeds, they crowd out everything. I am glad, therefore, that Ed has agreed to take down a box elder grove that's growing right in the middle of our baby forest, but it does mean that we'll have to slow down our planting. We put the remaining trees in the refrigerator and turn to other catch-up chores: Ed needs to lay chips on top of the fabric that surround the new saplings. And I offer to finish planting the tomatoes.

I work in the field taking in that wonderful aroma of tomato plants, digging and planting, digging and planting one after the next until the last thirty-two are in the ground. Will they produce this year? Last year the deer ate 95% of our crop. They may have shared a little with the groundhog -- we're not sure about that, but by season's end we had nothing left. This year we're trying our magic pepper concoction that seemed to work well at fending off the groundhogs and bunny rabbits from my perennials. We'll see how effective it is on tomato plants!

 

 

 

In the afternoon we haul some furniture that Ed put together to my mom's place. We'll still have to help her with wall hangings, but at least in terms of moving stuff in -- we're done. 

The day's not over! I have my very last flower order to pick up from the Flower Factory. They're getting rid of all their day lilies and so they're selling off some pretty nice, mature plants. Yes, there is always room in the flower fields for more lilies!

Lunch? Close to 5 p.m. I know -- why not just call it dinner? (Because it's almond butter on toast, with jam. Definitely not dinner food.)

And still we're not done! Ed takes out his power saw... 

 

 

 

... and I take some walnut twigs for planting. We work until our enthusiasm for being outdoors sags and the idea of dinner sounds so good! But it's late and we are both tired. Want to see if we can get pizza delivered? That's Ed's idea. Remarkable in that the two of us have never to my recollection had a pizza delivered. Nor is there a pizza place nearby. We do live in the country!

But we call an Italian Restaurant and of course these days everyone does take out and yes, they deliver if you're within five miles, and sure enough, if you take the shortest set of roads, we fit!

I think about all that we are planting this year -- all those flowers, the tomatoes, the trees. What a grand leap of faith! A belief that we can do this, despite hiccups, despite the labor, despite all that can still go wrong. We never think in those terms. Think of all that can go right! -- that's what pushes us forward.

(All together now...)

People who grow things are, without a doubt, the world's greatest optimists.

hazelnuts

All trees are not created equal. If a child draws a leafy tree, inevitably there will be a trunk, with a green canopy of leaves above. Most deciduous trees follow that pattern. But then, along comes the hazelnut. If you prune it (and you should), it will do you the favor of growing more like a very full, very tall bush, making nut laden branches reachable to even small people. And here's another thing: hazelnut trees actually tolerate shade. They'll produce nuts (sometimes called hazelnuts, sometimes filberts) even if you plant them in the broad shade of another tree. This makes them very desirable for farmette planting, because Ed did not cut back all the invasive trees that should have been cut back for our forest project and so we do have large swatches of shade.

Why all this filbert info? Well, it seems that today was destined to be a hazelnut day for us. We have eight of them to plant and we start in on it even before breakfast. 

You'd think that we would pick up speed as we get the routines going, but we do not. We pause after putting in just three and honestly, it feels like we'd been at it for a good part of the day.

Breakfast is very late, but fragrant! I cut some lilac blooms to keep us in happy moods.

(What else is blooming now? Oh, small stuff here and there. Late May will bring out the irises and early June will bring out the Peonies, but we're not there yet. I'm staying with the lilac here. Plus a handful of very pretty white anemones.)

Back to the filberts. After breakfast, three more, in the ground!

And then it really does start to rain. Not anything huge, but still, I'm not going to fuss: we need rain. We'll take any amount!

I pick up Snowdrop and we go straight to the farmhouse.

Safe and dry!

But as we leave the farmhouse for the drive home, Snowdrop feels a tug. Sure, it's raining, but she hasn't checked in with "her tree." 

 

And the little chickens hover around us, and they're getting wet, and so we try to chase them to the barn, and as long as we're there, the girl and I usher all the chickens into the coop for the night. The two of us are very proud of our accomplishment, rain or no rain!

When I was little, I liked rainy days in my grandparents' village home. You'd hear the rain falling on the roof and you'd smell all the wet trees and plants outside afterwards and if the rain was stubbornly long, my sister and I would go mushroom picking in the forest immediately after. At the farmette, a rain offers gifts as well -- the sounds, the smells, yes of course. And though there are no forests with mushrooms nearby, a rain also offers a chance to sit down and take it easy for a bit. Spring is a time of never ending work for us. It's good to get the gift of a break.

The evening remains wet. And that's okay. I cook up a ton of asparagus (tis the season!) and scramble some eggs and sprinkle them with garden chives. A slice of smoked salmon on the side, a salad with many green and red things in it and we have a meal. I think about the grateful plants taking in the rain and the grateful me, taking in that much needed break. A fine day indeed!

in the heat of the day

What does it say about us hardened northerners that when the temps reach the mid seventies F (about 24C) it feels hot? Short sleeves, no jacket, not even a sweater on my morning walk.

(the colors of May!)

(the final round of tulips)

 

 

 

And a lovely breakfast out on the porch because it offers plenty of northern exposure shade.

But immediately afterwards, we go out back to continue with the tree planting. We're finishing on the pecans and starting in on the English walnuts. Both tree types require sunlight and so we work out in full sunshine.

And it feels hot. 

We mow down another row of prairie and prairie invasives and the soil feels stubborn, and the roots of weeds that took over this once farm pasture land are deep, and the work is hard enough for Ed to say -- I hope that at least fifty percent of these trees make it. It's a lot of work for them all to fail.

Why should they fail? - I ask, more out of defiance rather than curiosity.

Who knows if these young roots can compete with the aggressive stuff that's growing there now. 

But these trees sprout and do fine in forests, where they have to compete with other trees! I say this again daring them to fail on us. "You do well in a forest, can't you managed a weed infested prairie?" The fact is, we don't know.

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school. There are only ten days left of classroom instruction. It's funny to think in terms of vacation -- it's been such a strange school year!

Is it too hot for her as well? She is so in love with her cotton cardigans. More clouds roll in...

 

 

But I had been feeling toasty, so I had decided to clean out the small baby wading pool I have had for her since she was a one year old. As the summer season unfolds, this small nothing will have little to offer for her. But since it's the first time that I've filled it with water (hoping the hose water would warm up by the time she came here), her joy at seeing it (and the handful of the cheap color faded toys that I threw in with it when she was just a toddler) is immense!

Yes, of course she wants to play in it! cardigan comes off, swimsuit comes on.

(The young chicks wonder -- what is this now? Something for us??)

(Splashing Gogs is a must...)

Evening. 

 

 

 

Ed and I had planted only three trees this morning. Time to return to the fields. The sun is low, the fragrance of sprouting plant life is everywhere. But we turn our backs on the trees for now. We have to get going on the tomatoes. Thirty two plants planted tonight, a similar sized batch tomorrow.

 

 

 

It is there, out in the tomato field that I pick up a call from Primrose. 

 

 

She ends the day for us, in that nothing else that follows is either memorable or significant. The night brings in cool air. We have no more tax forms to fill out (they were all due today!). Just trees to plant. Still lots of trees to plant.

is it Sunday?

If the goal of a Sunday is to take it easy, then Ed and I failed miserably. We again spent half the night on taxes -- me learning how to file corrected returns, Ed plodding along with his own paperwork -- and we again spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon on the farmette tree project.

It's a warm and pretty day for it. 

 

 

 

I do still have flower work ahead of me and Ed has said that we really have to start putting the tomatoes into the ground, but all this is put on hold: we need to plant the bare root trees (more like pencil twigs at this point) before they start to bud. The goal is to do at least ten a day. Yesterday, Ed caught us up on his own, but today, after breakfast...

... we both go out and get to work. We put in a few maples, then switch to chestnuts, and still in the sunny stretch of land -- finish off with a handful of pecans. 

It takes time. Once again I stop before we reach the magic number of ten. I switch to dinner prep because the young family is here this evening and honestly, these are the last minutes of a life as a family of four for them. In a few days, life will get more complicated, in as much a newborn complicates routines for a bit before a new rhythm is found.

Before we sit down to dinner, we have a few moments of play. It is the perfect day for it -- not too warm, not too cold, not yet buggy. I mowed some paths earlier in the day so that the kids can go further afield. And of course, we visit the newly planted trees.

Dinner.

 

And afterwards? Well, we return to the tree planting, working past sunset to get the last three into the ground. So no couch time, no sip a cool drink outside time, no slow paced time at all. But you know, we did occasionally pause and listen to the birdsong. In the evening, the sandhills came to the edge of farmette lands as well and Ed looked around and said -- we should have done this tree project fifteen years ago: this is such a good place for trees!  Yes it is. And I'm glad we pushed ourselves to finally do it this year.

showers

Oh, the unpredictability of scattered showers! If you look at the little weather chart on your device, you'll get drawn into believing that those percentages actually tell you something: At 10 a.m. there is a 40% chance of showers. At 1 it goes down to 12%. But by 4, it's 35%. Why do we buy into this? Showers spring up like pop corn -- randomly, in one place but not another. They'll try their damnedest to fool you! No, not coming your way. And then boom! The drizzle starts.

Mind you, we could use rain. A steady one. A good soak of all those thirsty roots. But this cold weather fleeting drizzle (thankfully only a day of it) is just a nuisance!

But, we start the day with no rain. Lookin' good out there!

(Still a lilac moment...)

Ed wants to get started with the tree planting right away. No way! Breakfast first.

And of course, life gets in the way immediately after: I need to tidy, clear, feed, put away, pick up asparagus -- I mean, a morning is never totally clear. Well, for Ed it may be. He works according to his own schedule, avoiding most dictates that the world may wish to impose on him.

Finally. We set out to the back of the barn. But how do we even begin? Setting up a step-by-step plan of attack is half the struggle.

Alright, I think we've got one! Here it is:

Mow down parallel rows. 

Till a square spot every 25 feet on each row. 

Dig out a hole. 

Bring in composted dirt. 

Put in the tree. 

Bury it with compost and clay mix. 

Cover it all with a tarp. 

Nail down the tarp. 

Put up the cage. 

Wire it to the ground nails. 

Voila! All that for each tree, so seventy times.

By noon, we have put in three trees.

 

 

 

And then, just as a drizzle moves into the area (completely by surprise of course), I have to stop. I'm off to a planned and predicted shower -- for my daughter, given by some of her friends.

The shower is outdoors and though I am absolutely sure that all adults there were fully vaccinated, we were still mostly in masks (well, not for the photo). Some kids were present, so it's good not to completely go hog wild just yet.

It was, despite the cold and the frequent spontaneous drizzle, a lovely afternoon. My daughter, whom we would all place high on the extrovert scale, has had (because of her work) an ungodly amount of zoom meetings this past year and almost no real face to face time with anyone and I know she has missed these guys (well, mostly women) terribly. Colleagues, school friends, book club friends, family. They make up her world and today, just ten days before the expected arrival of her third child, she got some of it back again. (Far away friends and family participated by Zoom, but we integrated them well I think, with some clever games that used the talents and recollections of all.)

In the late afternoon I am back at the farmhouse and my first goal is to dry off and warm up. Ed asks -- you want to plant some more trees?

No, I do not. Tomorrow, we can plunge into putting in more trees. Today -- I'm turning my back to the threat of showers. A nice tea with a stolen cupcake from the planned shower. That's my idea of a perfect late afternoon. 

Evening. He does taxes, I do taxes. And in doing my mom's, I realize I omitted something in mine. Outcomes the X form, amending my omission. Gotta now do this one too. It's not only just late by the time we sit down to dinner -- it's stupidly late. Like maybe around 10. Take-out sushi, because it's the only place we know of around here that delivers. Rain, snow, sleet, late night, wet night, tax night. They will deliver.

taking care

I would like to believe that ultimately, we are destined to take care of each other. That aberrations in this regard are flukes, based on temporary strays down wrong paths and eventually we default to concern for others in our behavior. 

I would also like to believe that we care for all living things, and distraction rather than selfishness leads us sometimes to act with vindictiveness or indifference to the plight of flora and fauna with which we coexist.

I would also like to believe that if you care about people, animals, plants, they do better, you do better and we reach a sweeter place in life, thriving rather than wilting, withering, disintegrating into a heap of rubbish.

I thought about this yesterday as I surveyed about half a dozen sick day lilies in my yard. Day lilies that received my utmost attention: proper care, even deadheading religiously each spent flower, promoting more vigorous growth. I read on the internet that they are likely infected and they pose a danger to the rest of the lilies in the yard. And yes, I have hundreds of day lilies here, in the farmette flower fields.

Last night I did several things: Ed and I stayed up until some late night hour (or was it early Friday morning?) starting in on our taxes (due on Monday). I have mine and my mom's to do and the process is always tedious and time consuming. My tax work was interspersed with an online search for Mom furniture and for sick lily remedies. The lily news I picked up was not good. The verdict appeared to be a fungus infestation and treating them requires frequent applications of a fungicide that may poison who knows what in the area. Or I can dig them out and burn them (or throw them in a sealed bag in the trash). Otherwise, the spread of the fungus may take away even more lilies.

This morning then, after the walk (and after Ed puts out the tomatoes for the day)...

And after breakfast...

I take stock of the sick lilies. And I can't get myself to toss them. I call Oakes, my favorite day lily farm. I talk to the woman in charge there and she tells me to forget about what I read on the internet. The day lilies may be stressed from the heaving weather we've had here in Wisconsin, but they are not dying from any fungus. Take down the bad leaves (which in a couple of cases means take down most of the leaves) and leave them alone. They will rebound once the weather stabilizes. And so yet again I come to this same old conclusion that seems to evade us so often: be careful in accepting at face value anything you may read on the internet. Right? You think you're a seasoned researcher, but you're not. Watch your sources and the application of facts to your particular reality. Wisconsin is not a place where day lily fungus thrives.

In the meantime, Ed, groggy from lack of sleep (he wears tiredness right there on his sleeve), slogs out to the farmette lands which are soon to be converted to a forest. He is still pruning, mowing and clearing the land. I'd say 90% of the job is done, in that we can start planting when the trees arrive. Still, I hear that power saw going back there so we are not totally out of the woods (ha!) yet.

In the meantime, it is a lovely day -- ravishingly beautiful. May beautiful. In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. 

(watering the lilac...)

 

 

I have to say, if Snowdrop was to pick one color (and outfit) to wear again and again this spring, she chose well for this brilliant month! Blues in the fields of lemon green and yellow dandelions... Colors of a painting.

We walk to the field which is to become the young farmette forest.

She is especially exploratory today. I can keep up, but just barely!

As I get ready to take her home, Ed asks me -- you want to plant trees when you get back?

But, but, the taxes! Dinner! Everything else on this planet!

Still, the trees have arrived. We're set to start digging. Tomorrow. Tonight? A sweet moment with Primrose...

... then a work night, to make progress with "everything else on this planet."