bright and beautiful

A painfully beautiful day! You could not improve upon it, even as you understand that it is so very rare tp have this confluence of goodness and so you must make great use of it. You have a morning, a noon hour and an evening and then, like a vacation, it will be a thing of the past, leaving you with memories, nothing more.

It is a good thing that I am still waiting to get printouts of exams because it would be very difficult to stay indoors on this superb day.

Morning.  I do as it seems I do every day now. I check for mice (nothing!) and I walk the land.





I note things that need attention and I mull over whether it is better to concentrate on getting a small portion of the land very very right, or a large portion right in small incremental ways. Mostly I do the former: work hard on small areas. But these don't need my attention right now. And so my working sights branch out.





Funny I should mention branches, because much of the work today consists of cutting away dead branches – large and small.

There are the healthy trees with spent branches and then there are the trees that appear quite spent themselves. We have, in fact, a whole dead tree that, according to me, should have come down some years ago, except even this is difficult for Ed (we’re taking away the perfect woodpecker home!). And there are a number of box elders that really should come down as well, but you could spend a whole summer on that project and still be left with a lot of pruning at the end of it all. So we leave alone the big issues and concentrate on the manageable ones.

Did I mention how beautiful this day is? What with the blue sky and the fruit trees nearing their blossoming peak? Breakfast is on the porch. How could it be otherwise! Isis joins us.





In the afternoon we move some ant hills away from the house (that’s a cross your fingers kind of project) and then we bike to our most favorite café. It’s a twenty minute ride and I think how this is the amount of time it took me to bike from the condo to work.

And I am not done with the outdoors yet! In the early evening, I mow down clumps of weeds around the fruit trees and the willow.

I’m spent. How the bees keep on going, hour after hour is beyond me. Hats off to you guys.





In a rare move, Ed and I take the motorcycle to town for dinner. Such a night! Chock full of good warm air. No freeze warning either. Perfect, from morning 'til tomorrow morning.

p.s.

I step outside and consider the risk. Cover all the scattered vegetables, herbs, baby perennials and annuals?

The moon is bright, the air is crisp. A beautiful night, actually.





I'm going to bet on a frost free night tonight. Weather forecasters -- they've been wrong plenty of times, right? Good night moon, good night mice.

learning to love the challenge

I tell Ed, as we mull over ideas for the porch – this will be the last big project for the farmhouse! He looks at me and shakes his head. No, the farmhouse is going to be an ongoing project.

He’s right, of course. The mouse didn’t come back last night, but so what. We know there is the rotted wood which, until replaced, provides quite the welcome mat for this little rodent and others like him. I plug the existent holes with twigs. Ed laughs. And there are other potential entryways, more difficult to fix. We'll keep the mouse trap thing going for a long time still. There will be mice.


I could list in this way any number of big and small issues that we'll want to address.

Oh, why not – let me just mention a small one: The floors. The chairs are scraping hard against the newly finished floors. Yes, we know about chair pads. Utter failures, all. Yesterday, Ed made little terry cloth booties for the chair legs, holding them up snugly by O rings. Cute and functional. Tiny problem temporarily solved.

One big ongoing project is the management of the three acres of land surrounding the farmhouse. So far, we’re attacking things as whimsy strikes us. It’s more fun that way. And we’re making rapid progress in some areas – there are, for example, the perennial borders I’m creating in spaces near the farmhouse.

 


But it’s slow going elsewhere (meaning the remaining 95% of the property).

Still, we’re doing good work. Stiff limbs afterwards kind of work. And let me remind you of the beauty of waking up to a sunny May day at a farmhouse. One flight of stairs and I’m outside.






I note that the truck farmers are already working the fields (this photo was shot at 7:15).





Farm people are up early. 7:15 is not early.



On the agenda for today: I have one last reason to go to the condo – the sale of a table that I left behind there.


Okay, it's done.  It may well be that I’ll not ever go back to the condo again. I don’t mull over that one for too long. Immigrants (and I am one) learn quickly not to mull over change until several years separate them from any particular transition (then they mull aplenty, as I do: yes, all past upheavals get a decent airing. Years later).

One more stop at a plant store to pick up a handful of perennials. More planting – there’s always more planting to do at the farmette.

Evening. Oh-oh.  I read that there is a frost warning for tonight.

Really? I’m glad we’re only playing at working the land. And that Ed has many dirty quilts and blankets to place outside.

Ufff....

atonement

Let me pick up where I left off last evening. You remember -- when Ed was sleeping on the floor and I announced that the trap had a mouse.

Ed dutifully takes the mouse up the road. He has been jolted out of a deep sleep and now is settling back to a restful position when I say again – Ed, we have another mouse.

And suddenly, the prospects seemed daunting. What if we have a huge family of mice stopping by? Are we in for nights of catch and release? Sigh...

Ed digs out a large plastic bin and slips the mouse into it for the night. He’ll take it further out tomorrow. I look at the mouse – that is one huge rodent! And she’s eaten all the peanut butter. Of course. First they eat, then they look around for an escape route.

It’s one o’clock. Do you know where you mice are?

And here’s an interesting fact: we have no more mice this night.

Could it be that we HAVE been trapping and releasing the same mouse or two? How far is their range? If you go on the Internet, you get yourself an evening’s worth of readings on other people’s experiences with mice. There are a lot of people out there and a lot of mice. Not surprisingly, they clash. People have a lot of ideas on how to prevent that from happening ever again.


Sunday. We talk about mouse proofing the farmhouse, but it is a daunting task. If you saw how the stone foundation interfaced with the rest of the structure, you’d know that there are perhaps a hundred places where mice could chew and enter the building.

We put it all aside for now. The wind is blowing the clouds apart. It's turning out to be a cool but fine day. Astonishingly green, with dabs of blooming color.





I clean the farmhouse, we stop for a coffee break and then I go down to the condo, to do a final cleaning before I hand over the keys to the next owner.

Between the farmhouse and the condo, I spend six hours on cleaning today. And if you add an after dinner clean up – we’re up to seven.

I cannot say that I enjoy cleaning much of anything, but I especially have a hard time cleaning the condo when I'm no longer there. Of course, you could tell me that I do not have to do this. The buyer is paying significantly less than the listing price, so you could say that distributive justice demands that I hand over a dusty mess,

But I can’t. I feel that I have been so lucky in life and so much of what could have gone wrong, did not, that I ought to now think not about the low selling price, but instead about how to make this transition smooth for the buyer and for me.

And so I clean. Hard and long.


The sun is fading. It's evening at the farmhouse. The light is lovely right now, showing off even the simplest flowers by the entrance door.


 


The mouse trap is ready again.Though it surely would be nice if no mouse came by to visit us tonight.

stuff of memories

Law School graduation today. I remember my own, 32 [correction: 24! what was I thinking...] years ago. My tiny girls were there. I worried that they would last the evening and think it at least a little fun. I was proud, but not nearly as proud as when they then both went through their own law school graduations.

Today I could sit back and close my eyes (insofar as on the stage you can actually sit back and close your eyes) and think about how important these memories really are.

...At the same time that new memories form, nonstop. My older daughter, the one who was just six when I got my law degree, is now on the stage with me, congratulating graduating students – whew! And my littlest one, the girl who was just barely two when I graduated – she's now herself lawyering away in Chicago – oh my, memories are strong during the days of spring rituals and milestones.


And they’re strong at the farmhouse as well. It is such a cold and wet day – the worst of May weather, the stuff you have to put up with in the upper Midwest even as you count the minutes until it all passes and the sun comes out again.

But wait. It’s the middle of May. Aren’t the lilacs blooming yet?

They are.





Is there a person alive (I’m thinking in Madison or Poland) who does not have significant lilac memories?

My own – oh, there are so many! The earliest belong to my grandmother’s village house in Poland. Those purple and white fistfuls of buds! My grandmother would snip off twigs with the richest blooms and wrap them in newspaper – for us to take back to Warsaw when we left after a week-end visit.

That lilac smell! Lilacs and lilies of the valley. No set of fragrances could be more evocative. Unless it's the violets, sold on Warsaw street corners -- dainty little bouquets, tightly pulled together with a rubber band, stems decoratively wrapped with a strip of foil.

So, now the lilacs are starting their bloom at the farmhouse. I can’t take credit for planting them – so much around me is old. The bushes are big and strong and someone out there is probably carrying memories of their bloom with them.



And on the mouse front, you ask, how goes it there? Well, Isis still comes in for the occasional brief visit..





And, too, there's this: it's Saturday evening. Ed has fallen asleep on the floor, I'm working away. Then -- click. Click, click. And more violently -- click, click!

Ed, please wake up. We've caught a mouse. The trap's just around the corner. A mere six feet away.

It's raining.

Ed, a sleepy Ed,  is coming in from the release. I take out the old jar of peanut butter and scrape it, to lay a tad into the trap.

How about a little bit less? We're trying to trap it, not feed it, Ed comments.

The night is young. The trap is set again. A commenter wrote a minute ago -- you are aware, of course, that it is the same mouse? 
No, we've had at least two: one was a lightweight, one a clunker. And last night, the trap closed without a mouse to show for it. Tonight? A returnee? I don't know... There are so many mice out there... So many mice...

spring forward?

Is it that hope springs eternal or spring springs eternal or both spring eternally and ever after?





The mice disappear for now. I’m sure they’ll be back, but for now we have a day of quiet.

The warm air disappears as well. It’s cold and wet outside.

Blogger disappeared for a long stretch too, but for me, it comes back up. For me, but not for others. I don’t get it. Perhaps it’s just a passing thing.

In the meantime, despite it all, the fruit trees and the lilacs continue to push toward the time when they set my spring world on fire. Here we go, almost there...

still of the night

A beautiful Thursday morning of warm air and a cotton-like mist over the faintly green fields.





I can trace the sunrise between the branches of the fruit trees in the orchard.





It’s going to be a fine day!


A commenter asks – is Isis (the cat) a mouser?

Living in a farmhouse – you get the mice. Field mice, house mice, who knows what mice. Mice mice.

So you would think having a mouser cat around would keep the mice away. Indeed it does – from the sheep shed, where Isis resides.

It’s not that Isis wont come into the farmhouse. He’s quite vocal about wanting to join us there, especially in the evenings. And I’m okay with him coming in for a quick visit. But just that. I don’t want him to move in, suitcase and all.

Even as the guilt in setting limits has been severe.





There are two reasons to let him in forever and whenever – first, he wants to be with us and second – the fact that he is a mouser.

There are three to keep him out – first... he wants to be with us. And on us. Sleep snuggled next to someone, claws, long sharp claws digging into soft flesh (I’m not referring to Ed’s flesh which seems indifferent to claw grips), snoring, purring, clawing – all part of a blissful cat sleep. And more than any cat I’ve come across, Isis loves attention from those in his inner circle. In years past, when I used to visit Ed in the sheep shed he would jump up for a petting session the minute I’d sit anywhere at all and if I dared or Ed dared to log on to a computer, Isis would walk across a laptop or a keyboard until I (or Ed) stopped and focused on him. Ed doesn’t mind. His sheep shed keyboard is filled with cat debris. And I understand demands for attention. I do. But I also love my squeaky clean baby Apple to be, well, squeaky clean. And without Isis pawed additions to my text. Isis is very facile at adding irrelevant letters to whatever you’re writing. Or deleting the entirety. Or playing with function keys. The cat’s a regular geek. Like father like son.

The second (and related) reason for a limit-Isis-in-farmhouse policy is that Isis tracks dirt as if the outdoors and indoors were one. Mud? Debris? What, I’m a cat! I can’t be bothered with wiping paws. Sure I jump on tables and poke my nose into whatever you’re eating. I’m a cat! A typical do as I please cat! (Like father, like son.) Come and go out my own cat door, when I want, hey, a cat!

The third reason is the flipside of the very best reason to have him around – he’s a mouser alright. He loves nothing more than to catch the damned little mouse, play with it some, torture it ‘til the bitter end and then drop it down for you (the “entrails,” Ed’ll say) as a gift. Typically by your favorite chair. And if eating part of a mouse upsets his tummy, he’ll regurgitate that for you as well. Conveniently in the middle of the room (thus far, sheep shed), so that you will notice.

And my daughters are allergic to cats and he sheds and the sheep shed smells of cat ... oh, I guess those are reasons number four, five and six.


And still, it’s not an easy decision. Listening to him meow outside sends a worried Ed scurrying to spend quality time with the cat. If by chance we don’t respond to him, Isis goes for any window screen within reach. The most convenient one for him has a nice claw mark to show us he cares.

So for now, it’s peppermint oil for the mice. And an occasional short visit by Isis. With an addition of one little plastic box today that snaps shut if any small critter sniffs around inside. And a dab of peanut butter in it as an invitation.


UPDATE:
As we all know, Blogger has been down for the past day. (Indeed, as of this writing, posts from the last two days have been taken down by Blogger, with promises of some later date fix.) I go to sleep without publishing the above text.

Halfway into the night, I wake up to a muted clatter, coming from downstairs. It’s quiet in the countryside. You can hear most any noise within the farmhouse.

Ed, I think we caught a mouse.

Go to sleep.

No, really, I’m sure of it.

Ummm.

Ed, can you check?

You check.
I realize I cannot. I am not exactly scared of mice. But it’s dark and I’m not sure how to handle the trap – it seems so flimsy. Easy to spring from and pounce, claw and maim its holder. Can you please go down?
Ed is deeply asleep.

Please?

Please?

Reluctantly, he does. You’re right. I’ll take it down to the road.

And so begins a life of catch and release. Ed is out delivering the mouse to the fields. Isis comes in to sniff the place out. It’s 2 a.m. at the farmhouse.


UPDATE:
It’s 4:30 a.m. The noise is unmistakable.

Ed, we caught another mouse.

Wednesday

An oddly mixed up threatening but beautiful and ultimately so very rewarding day.

How could that be? Let me recall...

Morning: breakfast on the porch. Positively inspiring.





And so immediately after, I work on changing the ten hateful pages of my book.

Noon hour: I pluck out handful upon handful of weeds from the flower patch leading up to the entrance of the farmhouse. Got ‘em all. At least superficially.

Afternoon/evening: coffee break, shopping break, then return home to cook dinner. A zucchini leek goat cheese roasted garlic puffed pastry thing. Kind of a special meal. Ed typically bikes on Wednesdays, but the freak storms keep him home. And, too, my girl is over with a her friend -- enough of an excuse to eat leisurely, with attention to the food and to each other.

During this last stretch of evening hours, it rains, thunders, hails. I know. Others have had a rougher time of it. Still, it is a mess out there.






One more observation. We have mice in the house. I haven’t seen them yet, but I know they’re with us. Earlier, at the store, I’m looking around for peppermint oil because I’d read that mice hate the smell of it. Next week, I'm likely to give up on the eco-friendly gestures and go for big time trapping. Today, I'm still dabbing the oil in key spots and making sure no food is left uncovered. I was born with this kind of optimism. Nice to see it hasn't completely abandoned me here, in the farmhouse.

hot air

A hot day. Where did it come from, this wave of summer air?

I am up early: this morning I must go into the city. This is the way I think of days now: ones where I must go into the city and days when I needn’t make the trip downtown. It’s such a short drive, really it is and yet those few miles keep me apart from all that is Madison.

And so when I do go in, I make a list of all that I must do there, because who knows when the next big trip into town will take place (actually tomorrow, but never mind...). Appointments, office stops, bank stops, Trader Joe’s, this way, that way – and because it is such a warm day, I feel like a season has passed since I was last in Madison. I lived there once! Oh my, it looks so different now!







By noon I am at the farm again. I have exams and papers to read and more will come my way this week, but I am not ready for this yet.

Instead, today, I open, for the first time in two years, the file with my book draft.

I hate it.

I put it down. Outside – time to go outside. There is so much work now around the raspberry jungle.





Ed drives several truckloads of wood chips into the barren center of the patch and I spread these with a pitchfork. Grueling work. And, as if heaving loads of wood chips isn’t punishing enough, Ed tells me – I’ve lost my crank for the truck tarp.

Neatly spread bark has to be lifted until the tool is found again. Please do not misplace it again! I say, as if anyone needs the reminder.

By 2:30 I need a coffee break. Any break actually, but let’s make it a nice peanut butter sandwich at the café type of break because I am getting awfully close to feeling spent.






I regain my energies. I return to the farmhouse while Ed continues to heave and spread wood chips. I take another look at the book project. This time I’m more forgiving. Of the forty pages I wrote some two years back, I’d like to rip out ten. But thirty are alright. In line with what I would want to put down now, two years later, older, wiser.

I go back outside to check on Ed.
I’ve lost my crank for the truck tarp, he tells me.
I help dig into the chips until we find it, buried deeply, in the same place where it had been buried before.

a Monday in May

Thankfully, the day was cloudy and cool, with a sprinkle every time I dared step outside. Farmhouse notwithstanding, my work life orbits around paper and computer screens. I needed the time to put in some solid hours of crunching work product.

You could say that the day is consumed by work and by untangling snafus associated with the move. Most anything these days can be accomplished on line. Indeed,  this is the first time I have moved without sending a single notification of a change of address by mail! Impressive. More computer clicking.

Ed, can we speed up the Internet connection here?

What can’t you do with the basic service?

It takes me forever to upload stuff!

Like what?

Photos, for example!

What’s the hurry?

Yes, Ed knows no hurry.

By late afternoon, Ed is ready to quit replanting tomatoes and I am ready to pause with clicking away on my baby Apple. We zip over for a coffee break (Ed does not drink coffee, but he does not mind the concept of a coffee break) and follow it by a trip to the second closest grocery store for a quick restock of essentials (milk and fruit and Klarbrunn... everything else can wait). Why second closest? Because truthfully, Walmart is closer (4.5 miles, where as Copps is 5.1), but the idea of shopping for groceries at a mega-Walmart store makes me slightly unhappy.

It feels chilly outside. All that talk of warm weather? Forget it. Not today. Back at the farmhouse, I pull out a few random box elder twigs from the raspberry patch. Ed and I discuss the problem of the front steps of the farmhouse (they’re crumbling, useless and unsightly) and then put the project to the same side where we’ve wedged back porch renovation ideas. Call it the "sit on it" side.

I look over at the constantly multiplying daffodil patch...





And then back at the sheep shed, now made pretty by the fruit tree buds and willow branches.





Even on a cloudy day, this place is a charmer. In my eyes at least. And especially in May.

sweet day

These are the kind of days when not much can seem wrong in my world, when wisps of ideas, forgotten pleasures and images come to form a very serene, very dreamy kind of mood.

I am quite aware that it is Mother’s Day. I’ve always loved this day, maybe because it focuses on small pleasures on a day off from work in the middle of May – what’s not to like! And today, I wake up to a sunny, warm enough Sunday, with the smell of freshness still around me and I think – it smells like a day in your country house, the one you have in the north woods or the south of France, or wherever your idle thoughts have carried you over the years.

Yes, it’s Sunday, so I do have to do the house cleaning routines. I turn on the opera, open the windows and finish with lemon oil on the kitchen table. Yes, it takes a little longer to clean this place, but I don’t yet mind.


 



Keeping it fresh has value for me. And, I’m not the only mother along this road working today...







Ed and I finish up the curtain rod project and we hang some paintings on the walls as well... the final strands of this stage of the reconstruction.

And we take our breakfast to the porch. We’ve had ideas on what to do with this outdoor space, but right now we’re a little reluctant to undertake anything big again. Construction burnout has set in.





As we linger beneath the wooden eaves and watch an occasional paper wasp return to her nest there, I am convinced that I am back in the old world across the ocean, some more distant place where there will be an outdoor meal and after that we’ll sip Muscadet and talk about how the vineyard is doing.

Isis, happy to be included on the morning meal, sniffs my muesli and kefir and retreats.





No vineyard here, true, but there are many weeds in the yard to dig out and I want to plant some freesia bulbs and finish filling the giant clay pots.

In the later afternoon I get on the motorbike with Ed and we go to our favorite café, just up the road from us, just as we so often do for a late day pause. He eats soup, I drink my frothy espresso and we go through the papers lying around the place. It’s a good thing that the café (EVP) closes these days early or we’d stay into the hours of dusk, then wonder where the day has gone.

I talk to one daughter who is away on the east coast today, and the other who’ll be coming over for supper this evening and I think the day could not be a whole lot better than this.

A happy day to all mothers out there. Such a sweet idea for a holiday, isn’t it?

yellow and red

I didn’t take many photos today. Every once in a while, I put camera thoughts to the side. I mean, the clunky thing dangles from my neck constantly, but sometimes I really don’t want to be looking out for good shots.

Now, running through the dozen photos from the day, I notice that they all are a variation on two colors: red and yellow. Coincidence?

Maybe. But a weird one. For instance, why take this picture? What caught me this morning, as I was leaving for the market?





As we biked toward downtown Madison and the Capitol Square for the Farmers Market, there were the pigs. You photographed them already... Ed reminds me. Yes, but this particular face, the one staring right at me – how can I ride by without pausing?





At the market, flowers are coming in from the fields.





And Ed picks up the last bag of cheese curds from Hooks cheese makers. Tomato and garlic flavored. My daughter has joined us and we stop by Matt’s stand for a brief visit. Matt typically has mushrooms, and soon there’ll be his ever wonderful asparagus. For now, we merely chomp on cheese curds.





What else is there to admire at the market? So much! Tomatoes! Red and... gold.





Across the street, we watch a golden haired girl greet a very very large dog. Against the backdrop of Graze’s red umbrellas.





And then we bike home. Past fields of yellow dandelions. If you look really carefully, you’ll spot the deer. It’s like a “Where is Waldo” game, except the deer you’re looking for is not wearing a red shirt.





...even as Ed is.

moving into May

You’d expect this, of May... flowers, narcissus...

And we’re getting it – the full palate!

Thank you, White Flower Farm, for sending these bulbs last fall. The variety is stunning!






You’d expect this, too. A big sky hovering over the farmhouse. I pause to admire it as I bike to work.





And these – young gosling... I mean, quintessential May. (I do sometimes wonder if perhaps we’re too welcoming to these birds. I mean, shouldn’t Canadian geese move up north when the weather gets warm? They’re just a tiny bit... messy.)






May. Such a month. I try not to have favorites, but May is so easy to love!


I've been at the farmhouse for two and a half weeks now. So why am I not getting my mail? I called my post office that belongs to my previous address. We're on it! We're forwarding! Be patient!  I call them again today. We're on it! We've been forwarding!  But I'm not getting it! Talk to your new post office.

My new post office is laid back. Hmmm. Maybe I'll try to catch your delivery person. Our computers aren't fully functional. I'll call you back.

He doesn't. He's a good guy -- Ed tells me. I call again. Yep, I know, I have a note to look into this. Haven't figured it out yet...


Late. I bike from work to Whole Foods, then home. Ed's there. He's fixed a leaking pipe and is about to adjust curtain rods, in line with a new idea he has in the matter of curtains.

Biking home with groceries strapped to the frame. Overloaded again. You’d expect this, of me.

uncomplicated

I like sunsets, I do. And sometimes, though not often, I even photograph them. You have your camera, the colors are pretty, why not.

But what I cannot resist, what pushes me out of deep sleep and makes me run outside is a great sunrise. And really, any sunrise is a great sunrise.

Ed tells me this morning – the sky is pink out there! For a second I hesitate. I just did the leap and dash outside thing yesterday morning. Perhaps I should pass it by... No, I cannot.

Outside, I pause for a long, satisfying moment just to admire the world around me.





It’s always such a happy time, to see that sun, especially now, in early spring, coming up from behind the fields tended by the truck farmers. I watch the ascent for a while and I think – my, this is going to be one fine day!

I’m not alone out there. This is the time that most birds go to market. I mean, the chirping that takes place at sunrise!

One last look, toward that sun, making the golden willow look dazzling in the blazing light...





Outside. I get distracted by the raspberry canes again. I have indoor work to do today, but in these pre-breakfast moments, I am again clipping canes and pulling out roots of young box elders (aka ash maple – so invasive here that truly, I have pulled out well over a hundred of these guys). It is grueling work, and oddly satisfying. As if you’re really getting a grip on your environment. Life dragging you down? Pull out some box elders! Take control!

Eventually the rain does come and I retreat to my indoor work. But I take short breaks, just to step out and admire how quickly the fresh greens have come to dominate the yard around the farmhouse.





The rhubarb is exploding, the lilies are healthy and happy (and the new ones, less standard than the tigers, are also coming up well), and the new perennials have so far held up against the wildlife here.

Yes, May is a good month to be on the farmette. One could say the very best month.

We take a break from work and head for the closest local coffee shop. I think about the month ahead – I’ll have well over a hundred exams and papers to grade. Yet, it all feels so calm and timeless now. The sun rises, we work, we eat, read, listen, and go to sleep again. Weeds grow, we pull them out. Straightforward. Uncomplicated.

after the cold night

Working the land is perhaps like engaging in acts of combat. You think you know who the enemy is. You want to eliminate the enemy. And so you invade. But, like in military interventions – you gotta have a plan! An exit strategy! You can’t just destroy and leave!

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of the day.


I wake up to a clear sky. And, having a bedroom with an east, south and west exposure, I can sure tell you the state of the sky just before sunrise.

It was a cold night. Maybe the last of the deep frost nights. I think about that. Must be so pretty out now, with a touch of frost on the fields.

I go out and take stock.





There is a smell of burning wood. The air is crisp. Magnificent, really. I look up at the farmhouse. Solid. Pretty now, in the morning light.





I have a day of student emails and exam question reviews. I go outside, then inside, then out again. Water. Let me water some new transplants. And I paint some wood curtain rod supports that Ed carved out for the windows.

There are new flowering shrubs that I need to find room for. I look around. There is so much land here! It’s easy for plants to get lost. I moved a peony bush just the other day because I was afraid that, tucked where it was, no one would see its fantastic blooms.


I walk down the path to the sheep shed. We’d cleared the beds to the left of the path just a few days back. I want to see how the transplants are doing and if the coreopsis – a favorite of bunnies, chipmunks and who knows what else, survived another day. It did.

My, the sky is blue! Curly willow, plain old willow -- you both look so good this day!






And now I face the raspberry patch to my right. This is what I noted about the farmette when I first came to visit it back in 2005 – that it had out of control raspberries. Ed was incapable of pruning out live canes and so there was a field, a jungle really, of wild, scratching, leafy raspberry growth. Some of the canes worked overtime and delivered magnificent fruit. Many did not. And the patch grew and expanded, and as my traveling companion and I continued to occasionally travel together, I would be inspired to come out to the farmette and work hard, scratches and all, to reign the canes in.

The canes always won. Even as they delivered less fruit, they won.

Ed is fussing now with his old John Deere in the barn.

Ed, I have an idea!

Okay...

A plan...

Okay....

I think you should mow down the center of this patch. It’s half dead anyway and invaded by box elder. Cutting things back will only help deplete the mosquito population come summer...

Okay...

An engine starts. Hey, Ed’s on his tractor, heading for the patch. In he goes.





Dry canes, young box elders (so many of them!) fly to the left and right. I follow, pruning what the Deere has left behind. Burs from burdock stick to my shirt and, too, they get in my socks, shoes and scalp.

Ed! My hair is tangled with burs!

He stops the Deere, takes the familiar and reassuring patient moment to untangle tightly matted hair.
I do this to Isis (the cat) all the time.

Isis has short hair!

Stop thrashing.

The burs are out. And many of the invasives and dead canes are gone from the patch.
What now? – Ed asks. Now? I don’t know... I survey the bare, scalped earth. Truthfully, I did not think Ed would get to this project so soon (or even, let’s face it, ever). I don’t have a next step. The box elder shoots are gone, but what’s left?

The upside: the fruit trees have breathing room. The aggressive box elder population is depleted. But, one should have a “now what” strategy. Because if you simply aim to retire after taking out the enemy, you’re leaving room for anything, good or worse, to fill its space.

I'll be sure to think of something tomorrow.


Evening.  Ed is biking with the Wednesday night riders. I'm working on exam issues. One curtain is up, several to go. No frost expected tonight.

a spring surprise

Just go to sleep and forget about this day. It’s not spring – it’s not even pre-spring. Brrr.

Oh, but wait. The UPS truck has left a package. I’ve been told to expect something like this. Indeed, it is THE package. With the work of one of Ocean’s most loyal and supportive commenters.

Snip, cut, open.

There they are: daughters. Two different portraits, two methods of achieving something memorable and beautiful. He’d done the first after seeing a photo of a daughter on Ocean. The second followed soon after. (My apologies for the less than adequate presentation. I was in a hurry!)





I’ve been dazzled by his generous impulse before. Here, remember his woodcut of a Florence picture I put up on Ocean?

And he’s done another – of the Paris bridge in a furious burst of wet snow, again, from an Ocean photo. He has this habit of making me feel happy about the occasionally good photo here.





My artist friend (and he is that, even though I’ve never actually met him) works with many art forms, woodcuts, paintings, yes those, and, as well – he’s a professional photographer. You can see much of his art here, on his website.

You can learn a lot about doing art (however small or large your skills) by viewing the art of others. And, you can learn a lot about friendship by watching those who know so intuitively how to be a good, rock solid friend to others. Using all their best talents to bring specks of joy and a smile to the people they encounter.

Thanks, Dan. Treasures, all of them. Now happy in their new farmhouse home.