urban interlude

I swore I would not go away at all in July. The garden needs me and I need it as well! But there's going to be an exception -- to see my granddaughters in Chicago. If they can't come here (due to visitors, commitments, musical events, what have you), I'll go there. This morning, very early, perhaps too early, I set out. No, no lily plucking. I was happy enough to grab a cup of coffee at Tati's, and a peach and a stale croissant from home -- to drink and eat while driving.

(glance at the fields just outside the porch)

(stepping out with my bag and camera)

It can't be a long visit and indeed, it's imperfect because this weekend, too, the younger family had events to attend and so did I. So we squish in time in between and we make do. 

Hi, kids!

(kids greet me with songs)

It's a beautiful day and we set out right away to the local Wicker Park Farmers Market.

You'd think it would be very similar to ours "up north," and it is, sort of. But in the end each market is unique and special, with a personality all its own.

They pick up produce, I get flowers and some of us also load up on local La Boulangerie croissants. Almond for me this time. Plain and chocolate for the girls.

(walk home, again with song...)

Lunch is at home.

And we do split the time between the house and the great outdoors. 

 

 

 

Primrose is enthusiastically picking up speed on her bike riding. I tag along behind her and her dad while Juniper naps.

(up now: a very musical day!)

Dinner? Absolutely delicious, at Bar Parisette. A new place for all of us. We take the bus there and walk the few miles back, just because it is such a special, beautiful evening!

[And yes, I am aware of the political upheaval taking place in D.C., or in Delaware, or, truthfully, in all corners of this country. I'm sure we will do exactly the right thing. Hope springs eternal.]

With a full heart and so much love...

a different kind of July day

I've never come across a doppelganger -- of me or of anyone else for that matter. Do they even exist? But I did run into someone who had a remarkably similar (in form if not in content) life to mine. I wont bore you with the checklist of shared experiences, but I'll just note that she is an author person and I met her because she had the table next to mine at the Oregon Public Library today at the "Meet your Local Author" even held there today. (Her book is about Palestinian struggles -- something she knows intimately, being married to a Palestinian and raising three Palestinian children.)

As you may know, I do not love doing PR work on stuff I've written. I've agreed to exactly one reading, two interviews, and I did submit my book (Like a Swallow) for a competition and it did bring me a Finalist medal, for what it's worth. And that's it. But the Oregon Public Library event coordinator is a dynamic young woman who puts together great community events and I was reluctant to say no to the invite she sent out. Especially since this Local Author event was to take place on a Saturday, where my one other commitment was merely to snip lilies. 

And so this morning, I snipped only half the beds (no time!). And I took only a few pics.

(good morning!)

(bright and early)

(well, well, the glads --gladiolus murielae-- are starting to bloom! Their white flowers with grape throats, with tall straight leaves are stunning among the lilies!)

And I ate such a hurried breakfast on the porch... 

 

 

 

... that half my coffee stayed in the mug while I dashed about getting stuff ready for the book event. Because, of course, I'd done nothing at all to prepare for it. I wasn't even sure if I had the books to bring for a display and sale. In the end I scrounged up a handful. Thank goodness, because they did sell. 

Embarrassingly, I pulled out the poster boards from the elementary school Poland presentation I did last spring in my grandkids' school, and I dragged out the kid Polish costume I had in the closet. I had to put something on my table! 

Ha! They were, in fact, a draw. People liked to look at pictures of pierogi and comment on how their grandmother used to make some of those as well. Those who purchased the book will be disappointed to learn that I write nothing about pierogi in it.

My publisher (Little Creek Press) was at the event (here we are!)...

... and she lightly wagged her finger at my reluctance to push my book more. She did secretly tell me that she loved the cover of mine still so very much (she designed it, but I suppose you always have ones you're especially proud of), perhaps hoping that this would inspire me to put it out there more than I have done, but it's no use. I like to write. I don't like to promote.

 

I did not get home until late afternoon and I felt all talked out by then. Thank goodness Ed and I lead a quiet sort of existence. I wanted to say absolutely nothing to anyone for the rest of the day. (Yes, I admit it... I'm becoming more quiet with each passing year!)

Still, I felt compelled to return to my lily snipping job. Reluctantly. After all, the day will soon be over and the next day will bring on a new set of unsnipped lilies. Why not just wait until then?!

 

Am I getting garden lazy??

With that thought in mind, I took out my shovel and started in on the destruction of the driveway bed.

The bugs were on high alert, but I persevered. Ed helped by standing nearby and waving the bug zapper that makes a very satisfying snapping sound when it hits a mosquito. Small progress is better than no progress at all. (Can I appropriate this as my gardening slogan going forward?)

(in the afternoon light)

In the evening I reheated the soup and made salads and exhaled. Ed found a show for us to watch, we ate chocolate. A very satisfying conclusion to an unusual July day.

with love...

the garden as...

It's not that you just grow flowers, take a few pictures of them and move on to your next project. Gardens -- creating them, maintaining them, sharing them, changing them -- there is a force behind them that I find hard to explain. 

It's not an obsession, even though many have wondered if perhaps snipping lily heads for two hours each summer morning is a form of insanity. And there isn't an end goal exactly, even though you may have images in your head or on paper of how it will all look as the growing season explodes. 

Gardens are unique creations that bring people closer to earth's elements. They ask of you that you learn something new and altogether different than what you would do for yourself to move ahead in life. You grow flowers, or at least I grow flowers not because I love it, but because it feels right to learn and plant and toil and experience frustration as the unexpected happens. It feels that my time is well spent on this, outdoors, even if it means swatting bugs and pulling weeds that grow monstrously big overnight. 

Private as my flower fields are, they also do draw people to the farmette lands. Today, we got a call from an old friend -- the wife of Ed's former business partner. She and and a visitor from China -- also known to us for many years for the same company work reasons -- wondered if they could stop by for a visit. Seemingly to say hello, but really to explore the farmette flower fields.

I was glad, therefore, that I had done an adequate job of snipping lilies this morning. 707 today! This has to be the peak! And I do see that some big time bloom producers are slowing down. (Dare I say it -- thank goodness! Snipping sticky wilted flowers is tough, especially if you do it as I do it -- in the wee hours of the morning when the bug activity is on the higher end of normal.)

Here's my morning walk-through:

(good morning!)

(sunlight...)

(I have to be careful: sometimes the little green frogs sit in opening blooms, sometimes they hide inside spent flowers...)

(a pair of doubles)

Because I have a somewhat crazy day tomorrow and I wont have time for much in the morning, I decided to drive out to Madison Sourdough today to pick up croissants for the week. And cinnamon rolls for today's breakfast.

(Stopping to take a look at Steffi's House: it's finally finished on the outside!)

(breakfast)

And now comes the truly nutty moment: I decided just yesterday that most of the flower bed that abuts the driveway has to be redone. It hasn't been good for years now. I keep hoping that tweaks will correct it, but it hasn't happened. I need to dig it out and plant afresh. Typically that is a spring project. But here's the rub: if I stick to lilies as the backbone of this bed (and I will, because it has to be in harmony with what grows immediately behind it, along the secret path), putting them in next spring means that I wont see much in the way of flowers until the year after. 

But if I put them in still this year....

So the crazy idea is to dig out the bed now, right in the middle of the blooming period, and put in replacement plants now, this month, before it's too late!

I contacted my best lily growers. They were on board. I picked out some plants. And I sat back and wondered how exactly am I going to fit this in next weekend. If they come by next weekend. And if not? Gulp. I'm leaving the week after. 

Gardens are created with care by some. I'm planning on visiting just such a garden later on, in August. But mine have never grown that way. They've been whimsical and off the cuff ideas, implemented in great spurts of caring and love, building on what's there, making do, given my time constraints and of course resource constraints. Flowers can be expensive if you aren't careful.

And just as I finish dealing with the lily people, our friends arrive. To walk, look, take it in.

And to sit down over a cup of tea, on the porch.

Would we have seen them now were it not for the garden? Maybe, maybe not. I'll stay with the idea that flower power is real and it does bring people together.

They leave, I go to pick up the kids for solid hours of farmhouse time.

And toward evening, as I drop them off at home, I linger there to chat with my daughter, on her porch, enjoying the fading warmth of a beautiful summer day.

A supper of soup. With corn -- in the soup, on the side -- sweet, delicious corn. I'm thinking about all that must be done now to get the garden ready for its next incarnation. The garden as a social magnet,  the garden as a place to lose yourself in, the garden as a source of stories, the garden as a great motivator to do the impossible.  

with love...

a string of bests

It's July and yet I haven't been griping about the weather or bugs. That's because the weather is just about perfect -- sunny and mild, and the bugs -- well, they're there, but in manageable numbers. I can work in the flower beds without being eaten alive.

And work I do. The number of lilies snipped today rose to 690. Some of the garden clearing is pleasant, but some is a daily reminder of what I need to improve next year. There are plants that are planted incorrectly, completely shielded from view. There are portions of beds that fail to do much of anything important. They really need to be replanted next year. There are places that are so dense and hard to get to that I have to wonder -- what was I thinking when I worked out this part of the garden? And of course, there are the more distant beds that need significant weeding and reimagining. So I hum to myself (Cat Stevens music this morning), and I count the lilies that fill the bucket, and I think about next year: what should I change? Will I be up for a major reworking of some of the beds, or should I just slog along and maintain as best as I can what is already here? After all, there's plenty that's solid and good. I do not aim for better than "very good!"

(good morning!)

(bucket at work)

Breakfast, on the porch.

There is an annual meeting or get together or celebration or something of the company that once was Ed's but now is employee owned, and this event takes place at a barn just to the east of us, so we both bike over to put in our time. I dont know most of the 40 or 50 people who form the company now, so I don't linger for long, but still, I'm quite proud of all the work Ed has done to help grow this company, so I stick around long enough to pass on my congrats to the people in charge. Then I pick up some free company t-shirts and bike home, along the path that allows me to see the farmette from this other side -- across the prairie that separates us from the New Development.

Thursday is just Snowdrop day and here's another twist -- I pick her up (and the dad picks Sparrow up) at the Dane County Fairgrounds, where the two had spent a terrific time with their summer camp program.

The girl and I don't immediately go home -- I have to pick up corn at the first official day of bi-colored sweet corn at Stoneman's Farms. They saved us a dozen ears and it is truly exciting for me to bring it home. (It's exciting for her to visit with the Stoneman cat and then to be given a bag of scraps to feed to their summer farm residents -- the sheep and the goat.)

(think about her cat...)

(Rosie the goat...)

(the black sheep...)

(yay, Stoneman's!)

At the farmhouse, 

 

 

... she keeps herself busy while I trim and store the ears of corn. The drill is always the same: take off some, but not all of the husk, stick it neatly in the fridge. The sooner you do that, the better the taste when you do finally cook it.

(stomach as a comfy pillow...)

Snowdrop and I have work to do -- go over lines for her forthcoming Young Shakespeare Players performance. This does take time and still, we have plenty left for our ongoing reading of the next World War II series that we're thoroughly immersed in. 

Evening now. I steam corn. This is going to be a repeat performance for the next month! Nothing, nothing is better for a summer supper than Stoneman's corn. Best weather, brightest flowers yet, best corn. Summer at her finest!