a song

Spring winds are blowing, blossoms are growing, dancing like children, out on the green...

Don’t mind me. Just go about your business. I have to do this – it is the peak of the spring blooming season – I must take note of it here, on Ocean.





I meet my younger girl at the farmers’ market. We always meet right here, by the L’Etoile (these days Graze) food cart.





She’s up north for the week-end; indeed, she’ll be my first overnight guest at the farmhouse. And I clean in preparation for this, as if the farmhouse needed cleaning, as if I didn’t make fun of my grandmother for cleaning in preparation for our visits many years ago.












We walk the market, drinking in the lilacs, the lilies of the valley, all of it and no, I do not need to buy flowers – I have plenty back at the farmette, but my favorite vendors are showing off blooms proudly, inexpensively and so I sample some of theirs, to compare, to enrich what is at home.











At home. Ed and I are tackling issues in the garden. Ant hills in flower beds. Weeds, always the weeds. The horribly invasive bramble that crawls underground, looking for a place to poke through. Ed is dumping shredded bark (free, from Madison; thank you Madison!) in great amounts in any number of places. I dig, plant, pull out – all of it, until it’s time for supper.










At the farmhouse, I am honoring the spring trilogy – the flowers that are such a gift now, a heady mix of – yes, of course, lilac, and (from our yard) lilies of the valley. Childhood pals of mine, now again growing under my nose. And tulips. Don’t forget the tulips.
















Together at last.






Okay, done posting about May flowers. Tomorrow, I’ll try to look beyond the garden. It’ll be hard.

misty dreams

Follow your dream, reach for the stars, don’t settle for less. By the time both daughters went through all their various graduations – from nursery school onwards, I’d heard so much of this that I thought cliché was too generous a word for such repeated advice.

As if we grow up with an image of where we want to be as adults. As if it inevitably includes some combination of fame and fortune. For a recognition of a talent that, in truth, we do not really have.





When I was a teen – the age when you hear the greatest concentration of these messages (except that I didn’t, but that's a story in its own right) – I wanted to have the boy of my deepest affections reciprocate my passion for him and when he eventually did, for a brief while anyway, I wanted to be in couplehood with him for life, so that we would, together, take May walks along the riverbank and kiss feverishly on a bed of pine needles in the Polish forests we tended to pass through. Some dream! Had it come to pass, most assuredly it would have skidded down to nightmare status very very quickly.

In the end, I married young (by today’s standards) and for love, and I had perfect children and a job that permitted some degree of time with these perfect children. I think most would agree that that is one lucky package right there. If I had been offered fame, I would have taken it out of curiosity, but I would have preferred it to be for some irreverent oddity rather than for my life’s work in academia. And though we could have used more money, especially to pay off college costs and afford ourselves solid debt-free vacations with the perfect girls, I did not especially want to be rich. Small and simple always seemed more attractive than the alternative.

I did, early on, want to write in a more serious fashion. But this wasn’t a dream. It was more of a goal. Eventually, I will write in a more serious fashion, I told myself. I still say this and I think I have even convinced myself (if not too many others) that it will happen.

But what of dreams?

When I was a wife and mother, I mean, in the thick of those functions, I often dreamt that I was back in the Polish village where I spent so many of my childhood years and summers. My grandmother, who was my de facto mother for the first three years of my life, often made an appearance in those dreams (she still does). Little wisps of her would come through, a word, a smile, a guest in a dream that was of a time and place where bees buzzed and lilacs bloomed and blueberries came to us in big blue enamel coated buckets.





But I did not want to return to Poland. You have become too Americanized – my friends there would tell me and they wouldn’t be wrong. As I kept dreaming of this Polish village, I began to think that maybe my dream was to have a summer house – say in the south of France?

I read a lot of books about expats who bought houses in the south of France. It seemed, in the end,  a financial drain and burden. And those with second homes in distant places hadn't the strong attachments I continue to have to the perfect, albeit grown up daughters. I could not happily leave them for chunks of the year to make home improvements four thousand miles and six times zones away. Email and Skype notwithstanding.





Thinking back to my teens, I would not have said that reaching for stars would include hoping to live in a small, old, but greatly improved farmhouse that resembles in some ways the Polish village house I loved (notably both have lilacs and a roving cat). And that I would maintain a challenging but also flexible work schedule, with periods of time to write, or not write, or plant perennials in the way that my grandfather did. No, I wouldn't have thought any of that and that would be a shame. Because when I wake up now, not exactly alone, but most certainly not, thank God, coupled with the boy of my teen dreams, I think that, when all is said and done, what I most appreciate and love about my days now, is that on this misty morning, I have the freedom to take my breakfast out to the front porch, take in a whiff of that lilac and think – now, what should I be doing with this day?

hopscotch

Hear that?

What?

In the attic.

No, not mice. Something else. We don't know what. We talk about laying some traps, but the idea of crawling up there once a day to check on them is enough to put that idea to rest. For a while anyway.


Warmer today. Breakfast, late, very late, after some work is done late, on the porch...





...Where the robin has come back and removed the twigs she had used to start a nest. That’s one bird invested in her building materials!

Isis gets his dish of milk. Satisfied, he picks a choice spot in the flower bed and dozes off.





I have got to stop spending all spare dollars on perennials.

Even as it is an irresistible thing: so many spaces begging (in my mind) for flowers! So close (maybe five miles) to the Midwest’s most wonderful perennial greenhouse (The Flower Factory)! And the drive there is utterly lovely.





We arrive just as a bus is loading up -- passengers and trays of flowers. Members of the Quad City Botanical Club (based in Davenport, Iowa) are down here for the morning.  I don't blame them. I'd travel this far for good flowers.

I add some favorite performers – penstemon, coreopsis, lupinus.

At the farmette, I dig out (with my hand – you can better feel the roots that way) lots of weeds. Then put in the new guys.






The rhubarb is spilling onto the path to the farmhouse. I mean, really spilling over. Whatever am I going to do with all the rhubarb? No, don’t say pie. No pie.





Ed gets on his John Deere. The grass is seeding, it is that tall. Ed gets off his Deere. Blade issues. Engine issues. He works on fixing one thing, then another. I use the standard mower to get to places that a Deere can’t get to.





Isis is here now, in the farmhouse. Begged his way in for a short while. I want to know – how do you ask a cat to leave when he lets you know with his whole being that he loves being near you? Darn animal. What’s the exit strategy here anyway?


At the café this afternoon, I read papers. The sun is out, but I read papers.

Is there a pattern to my days right now? No, I don’t think so.

exclusion

One chance flutter and I think the porch project – my top priority porch project, the one that was to give us days of outdoor life in the heavily buggy months of July and August, has bitten the dust.

I wake up to a drizzle. Fine. I had a beautiful day yesterday, time for the rains now – good for the earth, good for my work, too.

And still, it is a lovely, dreamy world out there. I look out the kitchen/dining window, past the porch. The lilacs are gently arched, dripping lightly on the flowers below. In the background, the crab apple is a glorious fanfare of blossoms.





Then, the flutter. I look up at the porch eaves. There’s an old nest up there. Is it being revamped? No – you’ll notice this about birds and wasps – they like the fresh and honest. They’ll build their own rather than move into something already there.

But a few feet away, in one of the free corners, a robin is at it. Building.





Oh dear. If there is one thing I know about my landlord is that he will not exclude animal life to make his own world (or mine) more comfortable. Screening the porch while a robin is nesting there? It won’t happen.

Of course, my landlord is also frugal. He dislikes waste and unnecessary acquisitions. Perhaps I should stay quiet and wait until he purchases the nonrefundable screening materials...

Nah. He’ll just hold off building anything until next year. Or the year after. Or whenever robins quit mounting nests in the eaves of the porch.


LATER:

But as the morning progresses, I notice that the robin has abandoned construction. As if the mortgage was denied after all. A robin nest foreclosure? What happened?

I open the front door. Isis is poking around. Good old mice chasing Isis, who just two days ago left half a critter for us to admire on the wood chipped path.

And there you have it. Now that there are people in the farmhouse and a cat lurking, the porch eave values may have plummeted for the robins out there.

Cats, mice, robins, people. You help one, you kick out the other. Sad how that works.

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?