working

It’s inevitable. These are work-around-the-clock days for me. With two weeks of classes left and an exam season just after (spurring many student emails and pleas for extra office time), there is no downtime on the ten day horizon.

I’ll say this: I am not the only one with a plate full for the rest of the month. As I pull out a chair to do my work outdoors at Ed’s farmette (it’s nippy, but I cannot say no to the gorgeous sky), I look up to see Ed heave truckloads of wood chips into strategic places, and I watch the Hmong farmers who work the land to the south and to the east for their market crops.









And I think – I’m with you in spirit! My work is less back-breaking, sure, but I’m with you now! April is one hell of a busy time, but soon, we'll all reap the rewards -- the money will come in for the farmers, Ed’s wood chips miraculously will beget a hardier crop, and my own tasks will come to a recess point, at which time I will sit back and do absolutely nothing for perhaps two or three hours, without interruption.

Or, in the alternative, I'll retrieve unfinished projects. To be continued. Maybe in the writer’s shed.

one person's pleasure...

If you are at all focused on fresh and local foods and you live in Madison, then you know today is a season’s first: the farmers set up their outdoor market stalls.

This, then, is the beginning of the grand months of good foods and beautiful bouquets.





But the farmers – are they truly happy to be here, during these early markets? It’s so often brutally cold early on an April morning. And the growing season has just begun.

And today, there was the wind.





...causing havoc at the Westside Community Market. Forcing vendors to hold on tightly to their tents and wares.





I’d like to not think too much about how long the hours must be on a cooler, windier Saturday when you’re a vendor, standing at the booth from 7 until 1. (They can, at times, seem very long for me at the shop down the hill, and I don’t have the wind blowing my products around.)

Because for us, the buyers, it was such a glorious morning! A new season, a fresh start. An old ritual: a basket in hand, a walk to the market.

(I did note that some farmers’ kids found plenty to giggle at. In the truck, on a day like today, it can seem pretty darn cozy.)





[All photos are from today's Westside Community Farmers Market]

...all things bright and beautiful

A blogging friend said to me recently – I’m concerned that my blog is becoming all photos of flowers!

Well yes, there is that worry...





But when we are running through days that properly belong to mid-May, warm days, days when blooms sprout in advance of any reasonable expectations...





...well then we become so mesmerized by it all, so enchanted, so energized, that the camera keeps spotting the flowers and almost inadvertently, it records the progress of Madison’s most beautiful early spring ever...





But just for balance, let me include something from today that's not a flower.

perhaps I'm old fashioned...

...but as we continue with another unprecedented (this calendar year at least) sublime day of warm air and partly cloudy skies, I can’t help but wish that we all dressed in prettier summer fabrics.

The switch on campus to shorts (very short shorts for young women this year, it seems) is instantaneous. None of the pretty cottons that are showing up elsewhere in the country. We like denim.

And that’s a shame.


But that’s the extent of my complaining. It is splendid to be in Wisconsin today. Absolutely splendid.

The morning ride is for me, for the first time, outright warm.





And the ride back is extravagantly beautiful.





Gorgeous colors, don’t you think? Now, can we scrap the denim and see some skirts with maybe tulip prints on them? Or pansies? Or peonies?

And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong I'm right, Where I belong I'm right, Where I belong

Taking an afternoon stroll halfway up State Street (the excuse? oh, I’m good at that: an espresso; I needed the jolt of good, solid coffee...) I thought – how different we would be if this was the everyday, as opposed to the single most gorgeous spring day in Wisconsin!

On Bascom Hill, there were the guys and dolls...










On State Street, there were the amblers and ramblers and generally, people of good cheer.

Walking back to my office, I overheard a student say to his buddy – such a gorgeous day! I think I’ll skip class! So maybe there is a downside to it.

Still, it was the kind of day I love to wake up to. From the very first minute, it invokes a smile.





The bird on my balcony, with the wisp of a green leaf in his beak, reminded me of a Beatles song:

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go...

People say that the song is about drugs. So many of the songs from that album (Sgt. Peppers) are thought to be about drugs. But I like the comment of someone on the Internet who seems to have read that Paul explained the lyrics as merely being about the roof of a house in Scotland. There was a leak, and he was fixing it.

I like that explanation. I’ll go with it.

I hummed the song all the way to work in the morning and then again, biking back home along the lake shore path.

rushing the growing season

I’m watching the pansies and violets quiver and shake. They’re freshly on my balcony and they seem so underdressed! I put them there because I like to rush the season. Time for flowers, no?






Separately, I’m watching the tomatoes inside ever so carefully. They need more light than my southern exposure would give them. They need to be outside, but only in the heat of the day.

Small scale stuff. I don’t garden much anymore (except when I am visiting Ed’s farmette, and then I merely want to pull out all the overgrowth). But when days are as good as these, biking to and from work is not enough. Getting hands dirty and worrying about the light for tomatoes helps.

leaving Boston

It’s late Sunday and I am at the Boston airport waiting for my flight. There may be a chance that it’s overbooked and I have already put myself on the list of those willing to give up a seat. I hate the idea of a prolonged departure and I hate even more the thought of catching a before-sunrise flight the next day, but a coupon with dollars toward the next flight would be helpful; I have to put in many many hours at the shop before I see that amount of money in the bank.

Still, I don’t want to be called.

I settle in to do my work, not knowing where I’ll be that night.


It’s an untidy ending to a wonderful day. Very early, the sun pushes the clouds away as we set out for the long walk to Sofra (a Middle-Eastern bakery, where we are meeting my girl’s friend for breakfast). That walk could go on for hours and one would not tire of it. Not on that spring day, not with the delicate colors of the season visible now in every small bit of yard space.






The Turkish breakfast is delicious, the baked goods – sweetly delightful. Such a good beginning to a day!










And then the clock seems to leap forward, leaving too few hours to revel in the gorgeousness of the day.






I gather my pack and we take the T toward Boston's North End – a place I remember fondly, as it had been one of my first encounters with Boston. I had barely finished college and my friend had moved to this part of town (I like it here – she had said then – the people in the neighborhood look out for you). She made dinner for me (chicken breasts with canned peaches – what can I say, the year was 1974) and we looked out at the fire escape and I felt like adulthood had suddenly descended upon me.

Now, as I walk the same streets of the once (and maybe still now) Italian community...





... I think how my youngest is older than I was then.



We stop for a very, very early supper – it has to be, I have a flight to catch and she has work to do – at the Neptune Oyster Bar. Do you know it? The oysters are carefully described, both in terms of source and also flavor. We order a half dozen local ones and then wait for the big treat – my beloved Boston meal of a warm, buttery lobster roll.





After, we have just a few minutes, just enough time to walk to the Modern Pastry store...





...where I can pick up some cookies for her...





...and then, too quickly, we head back on the T and I stay on for one stop before changing for the airport, and she continues on toward Cambridge, and the next time I see her, she’ll be a law school grad, just like her sister before her, and just like their mother before.


At the airport, they announce the boarding of my flight. No, we wont need your seat, not this time.


The skies a clear, all the way from Boston, through Detroit, to Madison.

in Boston

On any fine spring day, but especially on this fine spring Saturday, the thing to do is to walk.

... to cross Cambridge...




...get on the Red Line...





...to cast one glance at the Charles River...





...make your way to the South End...





...for some hearty Shakshuka eggs (with North African tomato sauce and polenta) at the Beehive, where strains of jazz create a sweet backdrop for a comforting meal.





... and walk. Among heady blooms and the promising light green buds of the most inspiring season.





... and then walk some more.





...noting the many ways we all welcome spring.






My daughter an I finish with our usual circuit. This time, the park pond is with water, the skies are blue, the grasses are as green. Such basic pleasures.






In the late afternoon, she suggests a museum that is unknown to me -- the Institute of Contemporary Art.  It's in Fort Point, across the waters leading up to the Harbor.





We have a fine hour looking through the exhibits, liking especially the candid photographs, yes, very much so, but loving also the views from the beautifully modern building.









Just a few blocks away, on a street of tall brick warehouse buildings, is a place that serves drinks on demand (aptly named Drink).






Tell us what you like, we'll come up with something to suit your cravings. I say -- spring like and refreshing! I watch mint being crushed with citrus juices. Sinfully good.





... and maybe with a bubbly addition? Such talent.





The sun is almost gone by the time we find the T stop and retrace our way on the Red Line across the river.






We eat at Helmand in Cambridge. The most satisfying pumpkin dish, followed by spicy meats and herby veggies.









In the end, a day to savor. Spring in Boston. With a daughter. What more could you ask for...

moment of joy, morning of sadness

We ate at the counter of Boston's O Ya. Plates of food that astonish and please all the senses.




The rain has stopped. We walk to the South Station T stop, pausing just for a split second to contemplate the perfectness of the moment.



I wake up to a bright and beautiful day.

...and I spend the hours reading all the Polish press online about the tragedy in Smoleńsk. Eighty-eight precious lives. A president, senators, military leaders, the grandchildren of those who died nearby, in another tragedy not too many years before I was born.

Today, it's hard to be a Pole.

from Boston

I’m in Boston tonight. Ed asks – why are you going now? You’ll see her at the end of May...
End of May! As it is, this will have been the longest time I’ve gone without a visit with her (I saw her last at Christmas time).

And it’s a last, of sorts. Sure, I’ll be back in Boston for her graduation, but this is the last East Coast daughter visit for just me. Her older sister is already back in the Midwest. And now this one is finishing her East Coast years as well, returning, too, once school is done.

So I’m in Boston. Wrapping up eleven years of being mom to one student, then both, and now just this one. And in a few weeks it all ends: from preschool, to high school, college, law school. All that school! Done!

I walk in the drizzle from the T to her home in Cambridge and think how there is much to like about this place. The university is a presence – overbearing, some would say – but I like its historic countenance and I like that history here intrudes in other ways as well.





And the modern angle – I love that! The food. We’ll be eating a mix of everything – from Japanese tonight to Afghan tomorrow and modern-ish New England Sunday. With New American and Middle Eastern breakfasts.

I meet her, finally, and we walk to Petsi Pies for a predinner nibble and a cup of coffee.





It’s a wet day alright. But so lustrously green and pretty too.

pushing luck

No one I know would admit to being a pessimist. People tend to view themselves as generally optimistic about their own lives (even as they may feel everyone else’s is falling apart). A small handful may tell you they’re not pessimistic exactly. More like realistic. Non-delusional.

Okay, but here’s a true indicator that generally, I belong completely to the band of optimists out there:

Perhaps you may remember that my purse rolled out of my backpack, most likely on the flight from Milan to Paris. That was Monday. Four days later I still have not cancelled my credit cards.

(If the finder of the purse and cards and licenses googled my name and came across this blog – let me assure you, there is a reward for a prompt return of everything. If you’re thinking you can use the cards – don’t go there. That plasma screen TV is not worth it. The New York Times reported that money and in general, the acquisition of consumer goods do not bring happiness. Returning missing goods, on the other hand, does bring happiness. The NYTimes did not say that, but I know. When I was 8, I returned $40 dollars that I found on the ice skating rink of Rockefeller Center. I still feel really pleased when I think about it.)

Why am I holding out (on canceling the credit cards)? Because I believe in the eventual return of the missing bag.

(I did buy a new bus pass. I can’t live without transportation. Though I did not yet get a new driver’s license. I can live without driving.)



So, yes, the jonquils will recover from the overnight snow cover, and yes, the tulip will release it’s tight hold and bloom its heart away for us.










At the core, I'd say  I'm an optimist.