true colors

The sunset last night was fantastic. A faint layer of cloud created an orange glow – sort of like a tropical mandarin drink, with a whole mandarin swimming in a punch bowl. I didn’t take out my camera because I wasn’t in a pretty location for it. I thought – there are so many pretty things in the course of the day that you see, you note and you have to quickly let go of.

There’s a little bit of snow still on the ground today. A handful of winter, sown on empty fields.





It’s settling down now, life is. And that’s a good thing. Fast pace is great for a marathon. Not for the everyday life of a person hunkering down for the next season at the farmette.

picture perfect

I wake up when it is still dark, but I know we’re getting a whipping out there. It’s not the sound of raindrops, it’s the sound of a thousand lashes. Sheets of rain, sheets of something.

I get back to my paper grading. The light comes in, slowly, tentatively. I look out the window on Ed’s side. I know that stuff! Cold, wet snow.





It’s always thrilling to get that first thin layer...


 


...To imagine digging out some time soon. To think of the ski trail just down the road. To forsee a landscape of thick powdery white stuff.

For now, it’s just an introduction.






And downtown, it’s only a wet, unlikable mess. I look out onto Bascom Mall and watch the usual march of students braced for the worst.





Students. Which reminds me. My students. It’s their turn now. I’m done grading and commenting (for a bit). They’re working on what I gave them, I exhale.

...And eventually I'll catch up on groceries, on house cleaning, on planting the last of the bulbs – all that was on hold for several weeks and weekends now.

But first, we, Ed and I, have our wonderful moment of respite at the café. It’s a brief spell of quiet, because within minutes we're at it -- gnashing over the central issue of our lives:

I would really like to pick it up today. To celebrate my finished paperwork!

Must we?

Yes, it's there, at Walmart’s. Ship to store. Arrived and ready. We paid for it.

I don’t really want a bigger set.

It’ll be beautiful. Consumer Reports said so.

Bigger, everything has to be bigger. Why do you want bigger...

Let’s try it.

How much do you really want it?

On a scale of 1 to 10?

Yes...

7.

Funny, for me it’s 3.

So we’re a complete 10!

Ed threatens to tell Bill that I am lusting for a bigger TV. Bill is Paul's, the café owner’s, dad. He’s here every day, helping out. He and Ed share a dislike for any number of things, including consumer spending.

Don’t tell Bill! 

You're embarrassed, aren't you?

I am... Of course I am. Besides, you know he’ll side with you.

Side with what? – this from Paul as he comes from the kitchen.

Oh, Ed and I are continuing our four year disagreement.

I explain the issue.
...I’m with you, Paul says to me. Movies these days are about the visuals.
Bill comes in and, to my shock, he backs me up as well. Get it, enjoy it, it’s not a big deal.
Ed looks crestfallen.
I’m an 8 now, Ed! I say, glowing.
That’s interesting because I’ve just slumped to a 2.

We drive to Walmart’s. We pick up the set. 37 inches! Twice that of the current one! I think of the nature shows we so often watch. Finally vivid. Vibrant. Luminous.
Ed’s scowling.
We wheel the set out, pausing at the cash register to pay for cartons of mineral water (which are almost as cheap here as it is at Woodman’s).
The salesclerk is pleasant, friendly.
An early Christmas present? She asks.

No, no, not that.

Ed grunts.

Don’t mind him. He’s grumpy. He doesn’t want the set.

It’s big. Too big. Do you have a TV set this big? Ed asks.

Actually yes...I have eight sets. Two of them are bigger. Fifty-five's.
Ed throws up his hands.

At home, the snow is nearly melted. Ed climbs on the roof to take down cans of paint. It’ll be cold tonight. Indoors, he works to connect the set. I eat soup from a box. We watch a library movie -- An Education, then Nova.

Gorgeous.

drops of rain

A wet day, a rain saturated day, so that there is no more room for all the moisture – it hangs, suspended.






Suspended. Everything is that right now. This period of early November, work-wise, is the most intense period of the year for me. A day or so more, then balance will be restored.

A rainy day. That’s fine. It would be so much tougher to turn my back on a deliciously bright, sun splattered late fall day.

home game

I know I keep thinking and saying here that this is going to be my last bike ride to work. Surely the month of November will require a commuting adjustment. But today, the blue skies pushed me to pedal once again. Last time! Really. I’m sure of it. I think.






And here, look how close to winter we are right now. I biked under this new display.






Oh, but the blue of the world around me! This is what makes Wisconsin so sublime, even in the off months. The sky. The great blue sky, so often cloudless. Expansive. Awe inspiring.






The post-work return trip – now that’s tougher. Even though I leave campus early – shortly after three, the sun is rapidly losing its warmth. It’s getting more like November. The blues cease to dominate. I pick up the pace just to get through the hour ride before it gets unpleasant out there.






I meet Ed at the café, but I ask him to come by car so that we slide the bike on the rack and drive home.

Home. Today, after a long period of wondering where home is, it's settled. Home is here. Home is the farmhouse. Here's where I'll stay.

evening walk

For a good while I thought that the day’s post would begin and end with a photos of what I see from my bedside window. Yes, it’s a pleasant little view, especially now, when the colors are still so bold and beautiful...





...and it is especially easy to snap a photo now that the screens are down so that Ed can climb in and out to do his upper story painting. (When I don’t leave him stranded... Yes, well, I apologized!)

The rest of the day is spent on reading and commenting on student papers. Truly, October and November are tough. The work never ever goes away.

But as we get closer to dusk and I realize I have taken no more than two steps in any particular direction, all within close proximity to the couch, I rebel.

Walk, I need to walk. Come with me!

Ed balks. For me, the couch has become the enemy. For him, it is a pleasant place to while away a leisurely day reading.

It’s still not too cold outside. Come on, let’s go to the fields and watch for animals..

A walk in the country is always full of cool surprises. The wind, warm, but spirited, knocks us around a bit, but I am quite happy to have its force against me. It's invigorating!

The sun is setting. Its colors come through vividly now that the trees are mostly bare.





There are no animals to be seen. No deer, no furry beasts. The cornfields that line the forest where they so often play are being harvested. Loudly.  Sunday or not, like my papers, corn stalks can’t wait. They are dry now. Out they come.





We walk further – along the Rustic Road...





...All the way to the Nature Conservancy Trail, there behind those trees, illuminated by the moon now...





Finally, we turn around, retreating toward home. Any animal encounters? No, not really. One black cat, a few distant turkeys. As we approach the corn fields, the machines are still at work, aided by headlights now...





For me, country walks are never ever dull. At home -- eh... I return to grading while Ed naps. There'll be a dinner break. Surely at least that. Sigh...

from markets to rooftops

Hey, let’s salute the farmers! Because it is the end of the season – the last day of the outdoor market and oh, do I ever appreciate all that they have brought to my table the past seven months! So – thank you, men and women of the farmlands. I see you working every day, here, from the farmhouse. The rewards – for us, market shoppers, farm field watchers – are sublime.

So thank you.


















It’s a weekend of tremendous amount of work for me and I dare not take many pauses. The market – yes, that. And in the afternoon, I shout up to Ed, who is on the roof, scraping the cedar siding on the high dormers – hey! Break with me for the café!
Yeah, sure, in a little bit...

No, now! The café closes in a few minutes!

Can it be in ten?

I’ll go over and order our stuff. You come in ten.

I’m at the café. They pour coffee, they pour soup for Ed. No Ed.
The doors close, the last customer comes and goes.
My phone rings. It’s Ed. Where the hell are you?
When you leaned out the window to call me? After, you closed and locked the window. Making it difficult for me to get down.

Oops.

I take soup home, Ed and I sit at the table and talk... about buying a TV. I miss the moments with the big screen.
We look at Consumer Reports, we select the cheapest in its category...
This is the third attempt to reach a decision on a bigger TV set. The last two went back (we purchased one four years back and of course, another just four weeks ago). We’re going to give it one more try. For Thanksgiving. If we can’t find pleasure in the purchase, the bigger TV idea will be shelved for good.

And then it’s back to work for me. Papers to read, to critique, endless endless papers. Was it nice outside today? Wish I remembered. I read that it was the last warm(ish) day of the year. Okay, fine. Hope you enjoyed it.

beads of frost

Frosty morning. I admire flowers that hang in there. They are few and far between. This is the tail end -- no more pinks and reds, frosted or otherwise, until next spring.





I’m working at home today. I watch the sun move from one end of the farmhouse to the other, I listen to the sounds outside. Isis comes in, Isis goes out. Ed’s at Tormach, doing his Friday Tormach thing. Work, work. Can I pause now for lunch? For coffee? Work, work.

The sun is definitely more to the west than to the east now. Ed calls. Done! Meet me at the café in an hour.

I walk to the Oasis. It’s not a beautiful walk – mostly along county roads and more busy rural connecting roads, but I want to move. The "work, work" thing has made me feel stale and stagnant. Three miles. One hour. Pick me up on the road when you pass! I tell Ed.

He’s late. I walk, on and on. But it’s okay! On a day when the sun is out and the frost has long melted, walking’s good, walking’s calming, walking’s revealing.





Finally, we’re at the café. Not for long. Enough for Ed to lose his socks, lose his credit card – all that. But I have a date with my daughter downtown and so I must get going. A burger night.






An evening to think about something other than work and farmhouse living. A city night. Over a medium rare patty at Graze. Mmmmm

...that countryside

It’s the things you don’t expect that’ll run you down. Not the stuff you worry about. When I moved to the farmhouse back in April I worried about issues that are laughable now. Mice. I was sure I’d be fighting endless families of mice. After the removal of one fat mouse – the one that kept coming back for the same peanut butter trap again and again – pfft, gone. No more mice.

The bugs that were so everywhere during the years the house stood abandoned – not a problem. We redirected the ants and sealed away (most of) the box elder beetles.

Isis – such an issue initially! Now we have a vacuum for the hairs he leaves behind and a motion sensor to tell us when he wants to come in (nearly every evening). He doesn’t really enjoy sharing a bed and so when he overnights, after a while, he’ll retreat to the couch. He used to retreat to the guest bedroom, to spread out on the double bed there, but a closed door and a shake of my head put a stop to that. Really Isis. People who sleep there could be allergic to cats. Stay away from there.

Commuting has been made better by the palate of choices: biking to work when I have the time and weather on my side, Rosie when I have weather on my side, and the red hot lover (the car, people, the car!) when I have neither.

Winter is the remaining unknown mystery. The roads, the ice, the shoveling – we’ve yet to work that out. But the joy of farmhouse living is absolutely in place. Bring on the snow, I say. I’m soon to have a Farm & Fleet shovel.

My mother, herself elderly, throws in an occasional tsk tsk as she wonders out loud how an older woman (and I will be that, in case I'm not there yet) could manage alone in a farmhouse. So maybe I should worry, but I don’t. There's Ed. Or, in the alternative, maybe I'll be like the old Mrs Larson who once grew up in this farmhouse but now lives alone across the road. Maybe she has a cat or dog in her lap and a TV turned up loud.  You’ll need to drive! -- I’m warned. Okay, so I’ll drive with both hands on the wheel peering over my spectacles, going just under the speed limit and occasionally forgetting to turn off the turn signal. And besides, by then, this area will be developed. We are way too close to Madison to imagine that there’ll always be farm fields to the side. There'll be buses and/or trolley cars. Or something.

So I’m set. Maybe. Unless a bird falls from the sky, hits overhead wires in the wrong way and causes the place to go up in flames (I read a case with this exact fact pattern today!). You never know.



In other news, I want to highlight the flowers that are stubbornly hanging in there...





And I want to remember another thing: the way the sunlight still streams into the café as we sit there late in the day, waiting for it to close.





After this week-end, we’ll be leaving when it’s dark.

Finally, I also want to remember that the fields that I pass in the morning are entirely differently toned after sunset. It’s one of the most unexpected pleasure of living at the farmhouse: each vista, each vignette present itself differently at each hour of the day.

the only truth I know...

Oh the drizzle of the rain... A wet day. Not freezing. Some of the annuals haven't collapsed yet.






Looking at the farmhouse from the road, I think about how insignificant its color is right now, given that the trees in front are so vividly gorgeous.





(In the back as well. Fiery red there...)






Afternoon. Raining hard now. We are sitting in the café, me with a stack yea high of work, but I’ve dropped it on the floor because Ed and I are embroiled in a heated banter on the subject of moral imperatives. The café owner, a hugely tolerant fellow who typically is happy to see us, is hinting we should tone it down a bit. Other customers may think we’re flinging harsh language at each other.

We’re not. But Ed on the subject of relativism can become quite animated.

It’s funny that I should debate him on this, because there was a time where I would have said “amen, me too.” But, these days, I look around me and I think – no, not so relative. I see gentle and I think – gentle is good. No harm there. No harm is good. And I swear, Ed, in his life that leans so consistently toward the gentle surely doesn’t quite mean his own words. And so we banter. Until the café closes and I pack my papers and we head home.


I’ll make the chili, I tell him. But he’s asleep already. Isis comes in and joins him. I stir turkey meat and onions and tomatoes and cumin, beans, garlic and chili powder. It’s a good meal to have on a stormy and long day. Ed wakes up, we eat, watching Modern Family on the tiny 19 incher.

winter?

These days, when I go to weather.com and check for my zip code, I notice that there is a new box under each day: inches of expected snow. Sure, I see big fat zeros for tomorrow and the next day, but the fact is, we’re in that kind of a mindset now.

Still, if I thought yesterday would be my last bike ride, I quickly changed my mind this morning. Yes, I had an early morning class and so the hour ride in would have to begin very early, but man oh man, if I can’t find time to bike today, when the sun is out and the frost will surely disappear quickly, then I may as well put myself out to pasture.

So I set out. Early. When the light is lovely at the farmette.





The sun is just up, poking through the almost bare orchard trees.





It's low still, so that there are long shadows on the fields just east of the farmhouse.





I’m cold and so I bike fast. Super fast. And I take the unattractive shortcut which cuts a mile off. As I get close to campus I think – I have time for a five minute detour. I swing toward Lake Mendota and I am suddenly reminded that this was my path for four years – along the lake, spring summer and fall – from condo to campus then home again. I stare out toward Picnic Point...





...and I allow myself this question: any regrets about moving to the farmhouse? No. I’m happy there. But there is, as in everything, a downside. There’s the obvious: the longer commute to work. No good bus connection. Okay. Anything else?

Well, this: I live in someone else’s house. No matter how much Ed tries to assure me that it is my home for life, I tend to want to rephrase that. Maybe it’s a place where he’s okay with me staying for life, but it is not mine by any stretch of the imagination. One of us is the gate keeper, the other is the resident.

Does it matter? Not at this second.


I watch a crew of workers load the Union Terrace tables and chairs onto a truck. I know, winter. Must they be so in your face about the change in seasons?






My work day is yet again very long. By the time I am out of my office and on my bike, the sun is almost set. One more little peek over the stretch of water to the west of Lake Monona...





...and it’s gone. I am very much aware that the headlight on the bike isn’t working. Spent battery. But you know, I’m spent too. The battery and me. And still, we spin forward. You sort of have to when you’re on a quiet country road. Another mile, and another...

...and finally I see the farmette with its unmistakable silo, there against the western horizon. I relax. Relieved. Home. Or, as close as I am ever going to come to calling any place home. Home.

cold thoughts

I put the bike in middle gear (to free myself from paying attention to gears) and I set out. A Halloween ride to work.





Boo.





I take the eight mile route which is mostly bike path. So I would not have to think about the road. Occasionally, I look up at the last day of October colors...





...but mostly, I get lost in my own thoughts – of how Sunday had come and gone and I had a nice family dinner and a clean house but not much else to show for it. About how I hate it when I waste a good day. About how cold it is when you’re biking in weather that hovers above freezing, but just a little above. About how the holes in the helmet don’t help in keeping the head warm.

About the grayness of the waters, the blackness of the birds...





...the somber seriousness of a day without sunshine.


It never cleared up. It was supposed to, but it didn’t. Still, it feels good to pedal vigorously and be in one’s own safe haven of thoughts. Truly, time well spent.

drizzle

Two hours into movie watching last night, I said to Ed – are you still wowed by this crisp new 32 inch TV?
Now that you mention it, maybe should look for something better, cheaper...

No, it’s not that. It’s that after a while, you stop noticing how much better it is than what we had.

It’s true. It suddenly looks very normal.

Exactly. It's no longer astonishing. Not after the first hour.

It sort of blends into the background.

I hardly see the picture as large anymore.

Football – if we watched football, we’d notice the difference.

...But since we don’t watch football, we'll never fully appreciate its size.

The movie ends. The credits roll down the screen.
On the other hand, it sure is nice to be able to read these... (this from Ed.)

After Rosie, the TV (or my share of it) is by far the biggest purchase I am likely to indulge this year. But Rosie has proven herself. Rosie is dangerous, Rosie is fun. Rosie is useful. A larger TV is not dangerous and not useful. On the fun issue – initially, yes. But for how long?


Sunday. A drizzly day, a quiet day. Ed gets his beard trimmed, I tag along. For the promised cup of coffee at the café...





...and out of habit.

I should worry about my future, I say to Ed on the drive home. I should not spend money on a larger TV (or half of it; we split the $300 cost).

After, I finish cleaning the farmhouse. I hear Ed bringing in the cardboard box and disentangling the chords. Fitting the new TV into its original container. To be returned to Walmart’s later in the day.

I suppose the larger screen has come to stand for much more than what the TV really is. Ed, in his playfulness teases me about my wanting a bigger set when we are in the store. I walk away from these irrelevant displays depleted. I don't think it’s entirely an exchange about the set.


Sunday evening. The house is golden!





A warm home.

A couple of days ago, Ed and I filled out applications for credit cards. They're discontinuing our favorite 2% card,  the one with no foreign transaction fees. On the address portion of the application I am asked: "Own? Rent? Other?"

I checked off “other.”


Hands down the best part of the day is when my older daughter comes home (whose home?) for dinner tonight with her boyfriend.


 


In my mind, my daughters are (blissfully) what we are not: unencumbered by past mistakes, free to buy (or not buy) a TV at Walmarts or elsewhere without giving it weighty emotional consideration.

standard fare

It’s been a late fall. I compare photos from October 29th last year – when I spent the day planting bulbs at the farmhouse, a bleak, moldy, crumbling farmhouse – with today’s pics and yesterday’s as well and I think wow, we’re still golden this year!





Saturday. My daughter and I thought it was the last outdoor market day on the Square and so we were sure to be there, taking in the usual late fall stuff...











In fact, the last market day is next week. But who knows what the weather will be then! Cold, yes, that’s a given. But will the sun be out like it was this morning?





My older girl had purple hair today – a nod to Madison’s official Halloween. I have a soft spot for this day, maybe because I remember so vividly when Ed and I ventured out onto State Street six years ago, freshly learning to be with each other. It was very crowded and I had the uncomfortable feeling that in chasing down photos, I would lose track of him. It was on that day that I learned that there’s something to be said for hanging out with someone who is six foot four.


We're at the café. It's just as it should be: people dropping by, standing at the counter, talking.





When the café closes, Ed and I drive to the nearby Walmart’s. He needs shoelaces and I always enjoy being horrified at how much cheap stuff they sell there.

We find adequate shoe laces and are about to retreat when Ed, to be annoying, says – let’s look at the TVs. He knows I want a bigger one (the current 19 incher is not digital and, well, it’s tiny) and he knows I wont spend money on it. So he tortures me by leading us past the coveted 32 inchers every time we're in a store that sells them. I fall in love with the sets, urge us to take the plunge, he makes a tsk tsk don’t be foolish noise and we retreat. This has happened more than a dozen times over the past few years.

Except this time, there is a Sony 32 incher for under $300. That’s Walmart for you. Ed, we can do this!

We buy it. We drive home.


 


And it’s a good thing. I’m too spent to go out tonight. Too many hours devoted to paper reading. State Street kids can have fun parading up and down in various states of undress in 40 degree weather. I’m going to sit back and let technology impress me.