the oasis

There are so many reasons to pick this title for a post!

To start with, we spent a delightfully ordinary hour over coffee/lunch (depending on your inclination) at our very favorite café – the newly named Oasis Café (OC hereafter), just across the newly opened public library in Fitchburg. [The sign still says EVP Café, but don't be fooled, it's the Oasis (though with EVP coffee).]




Paul, the owner/manager, may be familiar to some of you: he once co-owned and developed the tiny Pelmeni (small Russian dumplings) place on State Street (before it changed hands and lost its authentic, food centered vibe). Many people, my daughters included, raved about the delicious dumplings. At the OC, Paul is continuing a tradition of handmade pelmeni, using local ingredients, organic where possible.





...Even though I haven’t been going to the Oasis for the dumplings. Ed and I are regulars – myself for the coffee, Ed for everything else (he loves the tomato basil soup there so much that I no longer make my own at home: I don’t want to compete... what if I lose...).

Today we went to the OC with my daughter, so that she could have her reunion with the fantastic pelmeni and so that we could have the kind of perfect break from work (and writing in my case) that you always hope for on long hard days.

It was a heavenly inerlude.

Thanks, Paul (and Paul’s dad, there in the background, waving). (If you go for the pelmeni, say hi to Paul and tell him I sent you!)






In other news – well, it’s no news really to say here that I am reaching my raspberry saturation point. I have eaten them, I have frozen them, I have baked with them. Canes, slow down on production already! There is more to life than just raspberries! (Is there?)

It has been suggested that, with a more generous impulse, I might want to give the overflow to neighbors and friends. Here’s the catch: you have to pick the berries first. We have no tidy rows, we have a jungle out there! My legs are deeply wounded by the canes and Ed’s cap with the funny cup covered with sticky stuff is full of deer flies. And, of course, today there are the heat and humidity. I can’t remember a day this humid in Madison. My camera lens misted over and refused to focus.






Life is really grand when all you have to complain about is the overabundance of raspberries. Such days never last a long time. But they do come.  For most everyone. An oasis of calm.

Sunday on the porch

A farmhouse Sunday in mid July. Early, (or late, if you’re looking at this from a Saturday perspective), the moon is so bright that you could see animals dart from one field to the next. What animals? Don’t know. When you’re caught by surprise, you miss those details.

A sizzling day. But not yet. The morning is mild, in a humid sort of way.





Time to start cooking. Pastry for the tart, crème patisserie. Need berries, lots of berries. Into the patch I go, pushing past the canes to the good ones, laden with purple and deep red fruit.





Not a complicated meal. Easy. Fresh stuff. Zucchini and spinach frittata. Sausages. Breads, cheeses, rhubarb jam.











And the tarts. Large, small, touched by garden mint.






It is so good to have daughters and friends of daughters here. Their easy manner, without the taint of cynicism or indifference, is so darn fresh and wonderfully fun. Today’s small group stayed at the farmhouse for the night and I thought – this is the very best use of the space here – for their voices and their stories, I’ll make frittatas and tarts any day.





We sit on the porch even though it's getting to be quite warm. But these are city people, all of them. New Haven, New York, Chicago. A farm brunch has to be out on the porch, so that you can look out and listen to birds do their chirpy routines.

For a brief heavenly minute, I have two daughters here.






And now I still have one and she and Ed and Isis and I are out on the porch, watching the fireflies spark and the bats dip and flutter across the not yet dark sky.

darn cat

Five in the morning. Thump. I wake up to the noise and think – are we having mice again? We thought we’d pushed them away, at least for the warmer months of summer. Can’t be mice. They don’t thump into things. I doze off, but five minutes later I wake up again. Standing at the foot of the bed is Isis.

How the hell did you get in? I ask. He doesn’t answer. Downstairs I see his strategy: he jumped up on the windowsill leading in from the porch and pushed in the screen. Isis!
I can’t sleep with him there, I tell Ed.
Oh come on, he’s just visiting.

...shedding cat hairs.

You want to throw him out? It’s raining. I don’t want to throw him out. But nor do I want him to be on the bed.
I roll over to the side and my leg bumps his small frame. He startles, jumps off and runs toward the door. Someone has to follow, as the farmhouse has no cat doors. I follow. Out he goes.

Well, the morning’s young. I can will myself back to sleep. Thump. What??? I thought I secured the screen. I go downstairs. Isis is on the sill, outside, trying to push the screen in. Thump again. Don’t do that! Oh, alright, come in. I’ll have to close this window in the future.

But what of our almost finished screened porch? If tomorrow, when it’s done, Isis finds no clear path inside (so as to get to his new entrance through the window), will he rip and shred the screen material? It’s supposed to withstand hurricane strength winds, but Isis is one forceful cat. He kills small critters for a hobby.

We eat breakfast on the porch. Isis is outside, but seeing us there, he comes meowing. Isis – there’s a panel still unscreened and open. Walk that way. Well, maybe not. I don’t want to teach you to walk that way because tomorrow there will be no more that way.

Oh, Isis...


LATER:

The porch screening project is finished!





Or practically finished. Tiny openings still need to be mortared and the last of the wasps and yellow jackets need to be chased out, but that’s nothing compared to the mammoth job of building many tight screens for this place.





Thank you Ed.

And the lilies bloom and throw new colors outside, every day!











In other news – the temps are climbing. Nonetheless, I want to grill tonight. Chicken brats, corn, portabellas. With Sangria. We have ourselves a nice outdoor eating spot for the rest of the summer months!






My daughters and their friends are coming down to the farmhouse – the whole pack of them staying here until tomorrow. It’ll be a hot but jovial night indeed. Delightfully so.

Don't mess with the screens, Isis. Okay? Walk toward the door. Screens are for looking out. Watching the fireflies. And the bat show. That's a good cat! 

days of lilies and raspberries

Days like this make the other three seasons look bad. I think Fall and I see November’s dreariness. Winter? Freezing and slippery. Spring? Unrealized expectations in March and April. And today, in the thick of summer? ...cool breeze stirring the curtains in all the open windows of the bedroom... Outside? Not too warm. Go in, go out – it’s all deliciously pleasant. And speaking of delicious, the berries, warmed by the sun, are especially ripe today. Perfect, in fact.





Let me nibble on them and take stock of the lilies I planted last fall.





So many varieties!





And the summer nasturtium! The Monet flower of my life.





I should stop right there. Except, may I brag for just a wee bit? I chased a dozen yellow jackets out of the porch area today. What? No, no, of course not all at the same time, but still...

Summer. Beautiful, endlessly pleasing and pampering summer.


I suppose if I lived in New Zealand, I would not love July moments.

I do not live in New Zealand.

work day

Even if you take a summer semester off, you never really take it off off. There isn’t a day when a work issue doesn’t cross my path, with deadlines, requests, -- the usual.

Still, this summer of no teaching is remarkably different for me. Not only is there the “no teaching” part, there is, too, the significant time away from campus. I almost never go in.

Except for today.

And it is a shame that I had to spend the day in my office, because the weather was fine and there is the excuse to act in a slightly more holiday-ish manner if you follow at least some French habits. Bastille Day. What did I do to celebrate my enduring love of spending so many wonderful vacation moments in France? I made a French meal. Elaborate? Nah. It was a work day. Salad, omelet with champignon, baguette and cheese. And wine from a box. I tell you, work days are work days.

trapped

I wave a broom to get them to react. They stare at me, but their big bugling eyes don’t show fear. More like: attack! But they don’t attack. If I had wanted to coax them down and chase them out, I failed. They cling to their nest and stay put.

We have at least four yellow jacket nests in the eaves of the porch that we are right now enclosing with screening materials. The little bandits didn’t build their own nests there. They invaded and pilfered old homes of paper wasps. My inclination was to remove them before screening. Ed thought otherwise.

If we chase them out now, they’ll come back and renest.
He has a point. But as less and less space remains without a screen cover, we accumulate quite the diversity of flying insects, coming in through unscreened spaces, but incapable of seeing the route out. I’ve been helping them along with a broom. I was hoping that the yellow jackets could be shooed out the same way.

But, they cling to nests and move around stealthily. We're getting set to wage war the minute we aggress against them. Ed has the arsenal ready: a big fat glass, a sheet of cardboard. Fortunately, I could not volunteer for that job. I’m too short for it. I was useless at mouse removal and now again I am useless at yellow jacket nest removal.

Did I ever mention that I am of hardy Polish peasant stock? Truly! But I'll hide when this particular nest removal takes place.


In other news – it was, indeed, a magnificent day, weather wise. Ed and I take our oatmeal out to the porch and we admire our handiwork (or, rather, mostly his handiwork).


In the evening, I meet up with my older girl and we attended the Concert on the Square. It is ironic that years ago, when our schedules were tight as anything, my girls and I still managed to pack a picnic dinner every week and make it to the Capitol Square for the Wednesday evening summer concert. But when the daughters moved away, I stopped going. It was an era that belongs to the past – I would say to myself. Eras, of course, aren’t that easily disposed of and now here we are again, sitting on the green grass and listening to the music. Well, no, not listening really. You can’t go and expect to listen to the orchestra. There are people sounds all around you and at first, it is slightly disturbing, because you want to hear the music, but after a while it all blends together into a wonderful symphony of jovial sound and nothing seems terribly disturbing anymore.





The moon shines bright tonight.







Clouds drift in, drift out --they're on summer break too after all, over Lake Monona, over our part of the world and yours, too I bet.

crops

If farm animals are a constant speculative element in our talks about the future (and believe me, much has to happen before we would elevate them from the level of discussion to a plan of action), what we grow here is something that we have to confront every single day, now. Mostly, it’s not about what we plan on growing.  Plans -- they cover an infinitesimal portion of space. Flowers. Herbs. Tomatoes. Asparagus (when we remember to weed the plot). And raspberries. The rest? It's out of our hands.

We do have a huge number of raspberry bushes. They proliferate expansively.





This spring, in an effort to contain them and encourage healthy growth, we spent a huge number of hours trimming, transplanting and pruning. When we came back from France, it was as if none of that had ever happened. The raspberry jungle had established itself once again.

We are, however, hugely lucky this summer. I don’t want to jinx this, but for some reason, the mosquitoes have not quite shown their ugly faces just yet. I am sitting on a half screened porch at dusk and I hear no buzz. In July. In Wisconsin. Rare!






And so I can pick berries today (to be preserved for winter use)...


 



...without the need for protective mosquito garb. Fantastic!





After, I take stock. We haven’t much in the refrigerator. Copps free range eggs. An ear of corn. Lousy dinner choices. I leave the farmhouse and walk over to the fields where Hmong families are growing market crops.
Do you suppose I could buy a head of lettuce? I ask. No answer. The two women getting ready to work in the fields do not speak English. They point to a person coming down the hill. I’m guessing it’s their daughter. Maybe. She’s of the next generation. Schooled here. She speaks English.
I ask for lettuce. She translates, but only in part. As a result, the women rush over and bring me a pint of raspberries. Oh dear. I most certainly do not need raspberries. I try again. Lettuce? Green lettuce?

The young girl translates some more. She tells me – it’s further in the field. Go pick your own. As much as you want. I hand her a few dollars. She refuses. I stick it in her pocket but she finds it and hands it back.





At the farmhouse, Ed and I (mostly Ed) put up the final big panel of the screen for the proch (now there are only two dozen little ones left!). The evening is cool before the expected rush of hot air this week-end.

I have my laptop on the partly finished porch. Isis comes, Isis goes. The sky is beautifully tinted. I’m playing music from Scotland. Firefly sparks come in bursts. Like fireworks. Here! See this one! Bats fly around the silo. One comes into the porch area. Oh! Be careful! Most of the screen panels are in now. He flies out, back with his buddies, darting, searching.





I have no complaints.

farm(ette) animals

Ed, Isis is spending every waking minute in the farmhouse. I'm standing poised with the vacuum, ready to catch any hair that may fall from his nape. Last night he watched TV with us all evening long (Hoop Dreams – a very very long movie),  this morning, he is at the door again, asking to come in for breakfast. (He likes to check on everyone’s food, though he’ll be satisfied with his own bowl of milk. Organic, fat free.)

Yeeees?

Sometimes, can we just say no?

To his begging outside?
Yes. He’ll meow and retreat. (I don’t really believe it though. That cat can sit patiently for hours, waiting to be let in so that he can hightail it over to his favorite spot – on the couch, in my corner, right by my computer.)





To demonstrate my otherwise kind feelings toward animals, especially farm(ette) animals, I throw out a suggestion. Should we get chickens? A friend yesterday was telling me about her chickens in her back yard off of Willie Street. We have all this land! She said it’s easy. Just give them water and food.

We hunt on the Internet for people’s reflections on raising chickens. Sounds not so easy at all. Sounds like Isis is easier. Open the door, feed him milk, organic, low-fat, vacuum up hairs after he leaves. Chickens – if they’re babes, you have to do complicated temperature manipulation. And eventually their “productivity” goes down and you have to... make chicken stew out of them. I’m not going to ax off the head of Martha the hen once she stops laying eggs. Will you?

How about goats? They’ll eat your grass. A regular lawn service. And maybe give milk? And who is going to milk the goat? I will. We look up goats on Craigslist. $150 and that’s before you get the goat supplies. Surely they need toys and bedding and...

I think about the huge amount of work the porch project has been – even more for Ed than for me, though I still need to finish painting today. I’m aware of the front porch that still needs to be replaced and the cedar planks that are in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Let’s think about the animals, okay?

Okay.

In the meantime, I walk over to the farmers’ hut in the fields by our farmette. We hear a rooster crowing and I want to locate the source. Ah. So they keep a caged rooster here. Interesting.





I don’t want to cage a rooster. I don’t want to buy a tractor for chickens and wheel them from one spot to the next. I don’t want electric fencing and I don’t want to chase the old hen once she’s done with the egg laying bit.

Ed, we need some eggs.

We get on the motorbike and zip over to Copps. Organic, free range.

paint

My Cinderella story for today involves drudgery, heat, the buzz of nasty horseflies, stretching on a tipsy ladder to reach high places, cursing as splashes of paint fall to the brick floor (white splashes look awful on red brick)).

By noon I’d been at it for five hours. My hands, shoulders, legs are splattered, smudged and dabbed with paint.

Time for the great transformation. Step number one: the shower. No, not at the farmhouse. That’s a clean shower stall. You have to preclean yourself to go there. To Ed’s sheepshed then. Where nothing is too dirty to set loose in the tub.

Step two: don the frock, put on dangly earrings, take out the sandals with the silver straps and off you go, to the ball.

Not the ball really – just a reception for the new dean at the Law School, but my oh my do it feel like I am stepping into a different world.

Driving home, I think how nice it is to move from the world of laborious work to dainty cookies and lemonade and quiet chatter about this and that. And then, how nice it is to come back to the farmhouse, even though the porch is only half painted and the horseflies are up and buzzing and it looks like screening the damn thing will take many many many days of work.





Now, have I mentioned how wonderful it will be to have a place to sit outside without the bugs? Yes? I have? Okay, well let me not be too repetitive.

on this day

Well, some days are harder than others. You wake up, the sun shines in your face and then slap! You’re hit with one of life’s punches.

This did not happen to me today, but I thought I’d remind you and myself (though I’ve not forgotten) that life is not always easy.

But for these fleeting seconds that make up this day (thus far, because you never know) – I have been lucky. Avoiding calamity is tough. As I said – I have been, on this day (thus far) (more often than not), without major mishap.


In other news, I finally had the pleasure of seeing one of my children. She’s back in town and happy to come over for dinner.





... and also worth noting: the tomato race continues between Ed and myself. His plants are doing well. So is the one that's"mine." I water his to help them along, because a good race is one that is evenly stacked.





In not so good news, I have this to offer: I prefer food over art. Please, do know that I love art. But food is better. So that when I arrived on the Square and found not the Farmers Market, but Art Fair on the Square, I was disappointed.

On the up side, I found, to the side, a few vendors with peas,  asparagus, flowers and berries (other produce as well, but I mention things I myself purchased).





...but it was not the same.

Back at the farmhouse – oh, we are working so hard here! Isis looks on with utter disgust (being, himself, more inclined toward napping). (Please, do not remind us that the grass needs a trim; we know that.)


 




So, the sun was out, the lilies stood tall, other flowers -- well they stood, that counts for something...










...and work continued. On the Book Notes and/or on the porch construction. (Depending on whom you ask.)

Book notes, continued

At 5:30 in the morning, I hear the faint sound of the rototiller in the fields next to the farmhouse. The truck farmers work long hours now. I pick up my camera and roll out of bed.

Sunrise.





Nice.







I consider starting the day then as well, but I’ve been writing on and off all day and part of the night and I’m feeling like it would be a real effort to get anything out of me right now.

But I think about this project as I lay there half resting, half dozing. I should do what wannabe authors do: I should pitch this book project to some agents. That’s how writers proceed, no?

What agents?

Some while back, someone handed me the name of her agent. You’ll love her. Write to her. Oh sure, a reputable agent is going to want to hear from someone who is only now getting serious about book writing. And whose first language isn’t English. And who blogs.

Does anyone know of any other agents out there? I’d like to start collecting rejection letters. It seems to be part of the process.

Eventually we push the day forward. Ed goes off for his weekly design meetings at Tormach, I return to writing. Isis is feeling terribly neglected, what with Ed gone and me inside. I go out and have a serious conversation with him about disturbing a budding author. He looks at me with wise eyes. You? Budding? – he seems to say.

He ambles off toward the shed. Cooler down there. I return to the farmhouse and my book notes.

book notes

Book notes: that’s the file name of my Great Book Writing project. Once again I open the file and take stock of what’s there. I think afterwards – I have read (and reworked) this first part hundreds of times. Surely someone other than myself would read it once?

This is the kind of faulty, circuitous reasoning that leads explorers and inventors to take great risks – only to fail, but I cannot think that way. If I did, my Great Book Writing project would be nothing more than a Laughable Nonbook Writing Fiasco. I’m not there yet.

If I’m to write my Book Notes draft, what’s to become of Ocean in the weeks ahead?
Well, I could recycle photos:












Ah! Had you fooled? These aren’t recycled at all, they’re fresh from the Tuesday (sorry, Thursday) afternoon (today!) Fitchburg Farmer’s Market. And if you think those baguettes look as wonderful as the ones from France – you’d be right, because they are, thanks to La Baguette of Madison. And the sunflowers look much like the ones near Carcaconne, but they are from our fields here... Oh, markets! You are genuinely pretty! And forever interesting.











I have to say that the return home has been made much easier knowing that there is a café waiting for me here (EVP Fitchburg, with the affable and wonderful barista – don’t ever leave!). And a market, too, with La Baguette’s best of the best breads delivered hot, really quite hot from the ovens every Tuesday afternoon.


All this leads me to think that perhaps I wont have to recycle life or photos in the weeks ahead. There's always something fresh and honest to take note of, even if your sole trip is between a coffee shop and home.

Home. Where weeds grow and trees lean under the weight of seasonal success. Where my one tomato plant stands tall, ready to face fierce competition from Ed's arsenal of  of tomato plantings.







Home. Happy as anything to be home. Pain au chocolat breakfasts and rosé wine lunches belong to a time and place. Not here, and not just at this second. Soon. I always hope it's soon. But not now.

connecting

Airplane flights allow you to find a personal link between the world you leave behind and the one you’re returning to. I don’t hate them in the way most people seem to. For me, they offer time: essential time during which you can reconcile world one with world two. To figure out how you can take the best from one place and make it your own in the next.

Oh sure, there are, so often, miserable moments to flying. For instance, the ventilation wasn’t working for the first hour as we sat in the airplane in Paris (where we connected to Detroit and then eventually to Madison). The hot, still air felt more oppressive than the hottest hours in Ghana. The plane was full. Everyone sat in silence waiting for that magic moment when we could take in cool air again. The minutes dragged.

But most air travel is mundane, straightforward and therefore, a good time to close your eyes and think for a bit.

I did that. Flying up and over Barcelona.





Flying into Madison.






The next morning, I wake up at the farmhouse, look outside and see the beauty of a sunrise over an overgrown with grasses and weeds farmette.






Today, my arms ache from pulling and tossing. Returns to the condo were easy. To the farmhouse? Hard, yet beautiful.





The music in my head is Abba (so popular over European airwaves) but the memory of speeding on the twisted roads to La Franqui beach in France, listening to Dancing Queen is tempered by news then from home. I didn't mention it much in my posts, but it wasn't always good news. One thing I will always remember from this trip is being insanely happy one minute, then thinking I should be home for those who needed me to be home.