and I'll be there...

Would you like to go to Ravinia?  -- she had asked when we were talking about my coming down to see her and her boyfriend.

It’s sold out for that night, but we can still find tickets.

Who’s playing?
James Taylor.

And so after work, she picks up sandwiches and wines at Pastoral and the three of us take the commuter train from downtown Chicago to Ravinia.

...downtown Chicago. I'm here, looking around for them.  Crazy downtown Chicago...

Oh, I see her! In workday darks.

On the approach to Ravinia, we’re slightly dazed. There's nothing accidental about this vast concert space. It's not a what the hell, let's wing it venue. It’s carefully tended. As we look around for a space to spread our tablecloth and set up chairs (imported, from Madison’s concerts on the square!), James Taylor begins to sing and right away you appreciate how really excellent the sound system here is.

For those with lawn tickets, the performer is remote, invisible. But you can hear him alright, as if he were speaking to you in the same room. (You can also stroll over toward the open auditorium and catch a glimpse of him in person. I did that.)

We find a lovely spot and the food is so good and the wines, too, are great and it’s really just so sublime to sit on a cool evening, listening to music from those days... days when everything, absolutely everything seemed so tenuous and uncertain. That was then. Years pass and now here you are thinking --  uncertainty is how it is. Always there to keep you on your toes.

But maybe that's just the way things played out for me. Each one lives her or his life differently. And that's a good thing.

James Taylor’s last song is one that’s too familiar to so many of us. A few stand in circles of embrace, swaying, singing. I remember handwriting the words, carefully, in a letter to a friend, back in 1971 -- the year when I was freshly in the States for who knew how long. It was a lonely time for me.

...and that old north wind should begin to blow

keep your head together and call my name out loud

and soon I will be knocking upon your door...

I wanted someone to be knocking upon my door.

The train ride back is crowded, beautiful, swaying in the darkness of a perfect night.

Brunch in the morning – city brunch, which is where brunch makes sense because at the farmhouse it would have been called late breakfast and it would have been just oatmeal with fruit.

And then I’m off, driving home. Sigh. I wish they lived three miles rather than three hours (on a good day) away.

But, I remember what she said to me – in all her adult years she has had a home that she loved to come back to at the end of a long day. And I have mine now. After a half dozen years of groping for it, it’s there – the door I’m so happy to open at the end of any day.

Immediately I hit the garden, making adjustments, pulling dry stalks, watering the new babes that seem to need it most.

In the evening, we play tennis, Ed and I. I’m not ready to keep score yet, but I’m awfully close to it.

We’re on the motorcycle, zipping after to Roman Candle, where we pick up a mushroom and extra garlic pizza. It’s tricky to carry a large pizza on a motorcycle. Ed places it on his lap, I hold onto it from behind.

We watch the Olympics. Or at least Isis and I watch. Ed gives up after the first hour.

Why don't you like the Olympics? 

I don't know... People cheering for their country...it  promotes feelings of nationalism. 
No, of individual excellence! As if on cue, I wipe a tear for the Australian, for the Irishman, for the Dutch. Isis merely looks on.

...then take the garden to her

Early in the morning, I finish planting the last (I hope) of the damage control plants in my suffering flower beds at the farmette. And I try to be nice to Isis, even though he and I need to have a little talk about his love of going in and out of the farmhouse all night long.

And early in the morning (for us) – Ed and I eat breakfast on the screened porch.

Late in the morning I load the car with potted flowers – the ones I picked up for my little girl who, too, has moved – still to a Chicago city apartment, but one with outdoor deck space. One that can hold nice, Wisconsin flowers in big clay pots. Off I drive to the big city.

Early in the afternoon, I unload the pots, place them on her deck, see my working girl briefly, admire her stellar new place (now with Wisconsin flowers)...

...and set off for a brief stroll through her neighborhood.

...which is delightfully serene and residential, but very urban, all at the same time.

And, late in the afternoon, on a bit of a lark, I get my hair cut. I had been tempted to do it myself, but in the end, I gave in and let “Liz” do it – a quick and straightforward job with the cheapest cutter I could find within a twenty block radius. No more braiding at night, like some Dickensian character, walking up the stairs with a plait of tangled mess. Of course, I pander to my boss at home (yes, you, my dear!) and so it’s still long-ish.

We have plans in Chicago – my daughter, her boyfriend and I and it’s going to be a late night, so the post goes up early, afternoon early! How is that for a clever idea!

Tomorrow, I drive back home.

minute by minute

The clock moves forward. At night, the rains come, during the day, the sun heats and somewhat dries the wet fields. The committee on the proposed ban on moped parking in the city of Madison meets and listens to the arguments on both sides (you can guess where I come down on this issue). I think about how most people aren’t affected by committee meetings and council decisions – you wont notice it, you wont care, but for us moped commuters, it’s a big push back into the car, with all that it entails.

Still, tick tock tick tock. 

The Fitchburg market is selling the usual, though less of it. One of my reliable vendors isn’t there for lack of product (though she promises to return later in the month with tomatoes and corn). Others show up, grateful that it’s *only* in the mid eighties outside. There is  corn, but some of it is dry at the tips while another vendor is warning that they’ve got worms at the tips  -- it’s as if this year, nature is going to get at you, no matter what.

Kids come to the market. Preschoolers, in bunches. These have cute clips in their hair. Maybe that was the morning activity: put cute clips in hair.

Slightly older kids pick up honey sticks which, I suppose is healthier than the Bit o’ Honey candy bar I coveted when I was their age.

Ed and I pause to play tennis. A bad game and then another. Tick, bounce, tock, bounce... Sorry! Out! We motorbike home. Tick, tock...

Another minute and another. I add pages to my book at home – pages! – and plant the rest of the tired bunch of flowers and herbs. Grueling work. The earth is hard and unforgiving. I tell myself – I should be grateful for having anything come out of it this year.

Isis comes up the brick path, tick, step, tock, all the way...

We eat a humble meal of eggs, scrambled with market mushrooms and a salad at the side. The crumbled cheese in it is local, the tomatoes are our own.

 

stealth

Secrets, in general

I don’t live in a world of secrets. That’s obvious. I blog and even though not everything makes it onto Ocean, most big ticket items do appear here. If a daughter’s getting married, you’re going to hear about it. Had Ed fallen off the ladder, I probably would have recorded it, broken bones and all.  

[Of course, very small items pop up on Ocean as well – I’m not shy about describing the unimportant, the small change, the kind of stuff you’d once find in a 5 and 10 – colorful, maybe, but ultimately fleeting. Tossable. The stuff we all have too much of.

Sometimes, it's not even colorful.]

Secrets, the specifics

This afternoon, Ed looks at me and I can’t tell whether there is a deeply felt disappointment or merely surprise when he says – I did not know about this addiction of yours. As if all other ones were duly noted and he’d come to terms with them but this, this was unexpected!

Well yes, it’s true. I find it hard (impossible) to pass by an opportunity to expand flower beds. He should have known. Indeed, he’s been stoking the fire, what with his spring habit of dumping wood chips all over the farmette, ostensibly to kill grasses and weeds, but in my opinion – enticing me to deposit flowers in the newly created beds. He’s an enabler.

Today I went to get an extra clay pot and I came home with a plant or two and really, that would have been just fine except this is not good weather for planting things. And in truth, there were more than “a plant or two” in the car.

It’s hitting 100 degrees F again.

Stealthy habits

It’s not good weather for biking. In fact, let’s be honest – it’s not good weather for anything or anyone, except maybe the beetles that have taken to copulating in threesome configurations, especially during the hottest part of the afternoon. On our roses.

Still, we bike to Paul’s café even as I admit to Ed that I think I am drinking too much coffee and too much milk with it and...  gosh, why is this blog post suddenly all about my addictions?

Which brings me to the topic of spritzers. There is, I think, no better aperitif on a hot, hot summer evening than an Aperol spritzer (recipe discussed earlier, in March, from Italy), but there are few things as pathetic as sitting alone on the porch and watching plants wilt, with an Aperol spritzer on the side. Ed would normally join me in the theatrical production of “While the Plants Wilt” but he bikes Wednesday nights and so here I am, tossing the idea of throwing together the bubbly and the ice and the orange and the Aperol, wondering if there is anything that I can do to help the flowers make it through yet another blistering summer hot spell.

No, no spritzer. Can I settle for cauliflower, eggs and tomato?

 

In the meantime, Isis moves quietly outside, so quietly that he can’t even make the movement sensor sound the chimes on his approach to our door. A dragon fly buzzes past and the darn thing chimes, but Isis is a cat of stealth when he moves about the property. Of utter secretive silence.

peaches and tomtoes

Can I interest you in photos of growing things?

Our most wonderful and exciting hour was actually an early one: right after breakfast (Ed asks – can we eat inside? The fruit bowl is so pretty here...)

(The fruits and tomatoes are a 50 - 50 mix of store bought and from the garden.)

A storm had passed through and the world is damp – a rare feeling these days. (If you stuck your finger in the soil, you’d find that there wasn’t the needed sustained rainfall, but still, we’ll take the sprinkles. And the cooling clouds.)

Want to walk the property?

Of course I do. The three of us set out. It’s always the three of us – when we walk the land, Isis tags along. Even today, when the grasses are wet. True, he gets a hoist up if he asks for it.

We examine the crop of our farmer, Lee, out back. Some of the plantings are damaged, others look good and strong. (They’re cucumbers, right? I’m used to seeing cucumbers crawl along the ground.)

And we look over our new orchard. We’re losing one of the cherries to some unrecognizable disease and another tree is just a stick, having given up all leaves to a hungry deer, but the rest (dozen or so) appear fine.

And the tomatoes! Oh my, unless some untoward calamity takes our crop away, we’ll have a load to freeze for sure. For me, it is the most useful vegetable to preserve for the winter. (Nearly) every soup can incorporate tomatoes and the ones in stores have been really poor, even now, during the high season.

Ed asks – why did we plant so many tiny ones? Useless for freezing!
But great for salads! From now until frost, no dish of greens will be without these!

We take another peek at the peaches too. They are almost ripe and we’re tempted to pull the whole crop off because the beetles, those very same beetles that are attacking our roses, are burrowing into the fruit. And they’re harder to shake off into soapy water here. If we pick all the peaches now, that'll mean peach ice cream, peach cakes and peach on oatmeal every day. (This is the one fruit that I don’t like to freeze. Defrosted peaches are... yukky.)

Later in the morning, I replant various herbs and Ed, rather optimistically, empties out the remaining peas from a seed pack, counting on a harvest 60 days from now. That would put us at the end of September. Remember September in Wisconsin? There may be night frost by then!

Night frost... If there is anything that’ll put fire under my typing fingers it’s the idea that we are almost at the heels of fall.

And yet I linger outside, chasing down beetles, potting dahlias for a daughter who needs dahlias, snipping off spent heads of coreopsis and the fleeting lilies.

A commenter wrote a few days back -- Time in the garden is time well spent. One of my favorite things about it, besides promoting beauty, is that it's a chance to let my mind wander and be productive at the same time. That’s really so exactly correct! We have the heat, but we haven’t the bugs this year.  And so we can live outside. [I'm referring to the absence of mosquitoes... Ed chased wasps off the truck yesterday and with great ire, they relocated to my red Escort: first around the door handle then, after Ed put an old quilt over that, onto the wheel base... we offer them numerous places for repose and they continue to favor our wrecks of cars.]

It is a summer when I'm not pushing for us to go up north (they had the rains and, therefore, the bugs) or west. Not to hike, not to kayak, not to camp. It is quite wonderful just to walk the land and comment on how the tomatoes are getting along.

fixing things

On some days I think -- this is it, a perfect rendition of how a summer day should unfold. Other days? Well, they're like a checkerboard cookie: they have their chocolate and then too, their indifferently pale squares.  

 Much of the day was straightforward. My daughter is moving. I'm known to do miracles with shelf paper (meaning, I put it on shelves methodically, without throwing it on anything or anyone within eyesight, despite deep frustrations that always arise when attending to this dreary task ) and so I am charged with the job of putting it on the shelves of her new residence. That's the good set of chocolate squares. Providing help to a daughter is up there with doing good in this world.

Ed’s at her place too, with his highest possible ladder replacing lightbulbs. (I have to ask: who thinks of putting lamps in places that are out of reach of the ordinary mortal?)

All good, all wonderful.

And here are  few more good squares: friends are at the farmhouse for dinner -- the kind of friends that you love to cook for because they are so very forgiving as to timing and presentation -- and this is the perfect opportunity to make a summer meal: salmon with blueberries and shallot, salad with cucumbers and tomato, roastedcorn. And plum honey ice cream.

Who can not love plum honey ice cream?!

And so dinner is on the good side of the square pattern as well.

On the other side? Well, for one thing, I'm late with posting. And Ed and I continue to have the conversation about what role we play in the game of life. On chocolate days, you could think of this as a wonderful engagement in life's challenges. In the less delectable times, you might consider it a tiring discourse that has no good answers, showcasing our most glaring differences in ways that benefit no one. 

And, don't forget that it hit 99 degrees this afternoon and I wasn't ready for it so most of newly planted green stuff wilted.

Thank God for daughters, friends and plum honey ice cream.





And Ed and me. Thank God for that funky crazy world that he and I inhabit. Together.  With all our dissonances and chocolate squares as well.

farm

I suppose some could say that my constant reference to the farm (or 'farmette,' because it’s a small amount of land) is misleading. Ed and I, after all, do not farm. I remember when I lived with my grandparents in a village in Poland: it was surrounded by farmland, but there, too, I didn’t live on a working farm. My grandma could whack off the head of a chicken and pluck the bird clean for dinner. She’d grow vegetables and my grandpa would tend to fruit trees – but still, they did not make a living off their land.

We are like that. Okay – I wont behead a chicken for Sunday supper, but we try our best at growing fruits and veggies, there is land and, well, everyone around us farms.

So I’ll stay with my statement – we live on a (once working) farm.

It took me many years to decide that this shift toward farmette living would be a good idea. I know that more acres means more land to tend to. I didn’t want it to consume my free time.

When I agreed to move out here, I promised myself I'd concentrate on caring for the land right by the farmhouse. The rest? Forget it. I'll turn my head and look the other way. There’s too much to do in life...

So here I am at the farmette and I am so sucked into every acre and it takes so many of my waking hours – the beetle chasing, the watering, the planting, digging, worrying – where has all my free time gone???

But there is something to add  here (and perhaps I knew all along that this would be the case): I love it. I love being preoccupied with it, I love not being able to walk from point A to point B without a three hour pause to deadhead, straighten, improve, or maybe not improve – maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing, hell, I may have country blood, but it's Polish country, not of the Midwest at all and certainly Ed's roots aren't from here either, but we love it, I love it, yes, it's so true -- I love it all.

Ed joins me most every time I work outdoors. He’ll heave away prickly canes and chop and dig and sometimes he’ll just work on the car, the old Escort and oftentimes Isis will be there as well, walkin' around as if he owned the place. Which he sort of does...

So, living on the farmette digs into my writing time. Is that okay? Is it???

Yes, quite okay. I've done ten things at once before, I can do ten things at once henceforth.

In the morning, we clip, shake, contemplate what should be next for the veggie bed (that turned out to be a troubled veggie bed).

As I snip away at dried rose bushes, I notice hovering wasps.

Ed, take a look at your pick-up. Don’t even try to fill it with gas.

Let it be. They always find a spot on the truck for a nest. They’ll just make a new one elsewhere if we knock this one down.

Later, at Farm and Fleet, we pick up a small shovel because the ancient one finally snapped at the handle. And red duct tape: the one that acted as the “fender” on the Ford Escort has succumbed to the elements. It needs to be replaced. And a few plants.

Farm and Fleet is a scant few miles from us. We take the usual route to get there. Past fields, past fields, past more fields. But this time, the fields are hardly empty.

A flock of sandhill cranes (with wild turkeys keeping tabs on things in the rear). When they see us...



 



... one starts the call and soon they walk briskly, away, eventually breaking into flight, across fields of ripening corn.

A quarter of a mile further, we pass the pig farm that puts bacon on the table at select places in the Midwest.

The pigs here look huge and not too entertained by their surroundings. You stop craving bacon when you pass their pen.

And less than a mile later, we curve down a road and come across this...

I think at first it's one deer, but it's not.

They see me. A pause and a quiet walk away, into the fields of tall prairie grasses.

When we finish our errands at Farm and Fleet, we take the off-highway road back. And I'm surprised to see a farmer's market along the way (the Monona Market, for those who live in these parts). I'm all stocked up with fruits and vegetables, but I do pick up herbs -- a stop gap filler for our veggie plot. We stroll past one vendor and another and we come across this kid selling things made out of duct tape.





Funny, we were just reading about people who make a hobby of duck tape designs. I grin at the display. I want to encourage the kid, but I just don't need a duct tape wallet right now. Maybe next time.

A blue grass player sings to the side...


 


... further down, a vendor talks up her project of soaps, crafted from goats' milk...

I think surely my own project will somehow move ahead, despite all the distractions which, truthfully, aren't bothersome distractions at all. They are the eloquent parts of the everyday.


And because it's Sunday, my girl and her guy come over for dinner, up the brick walkway to the farmhouse...


 


... and we sit around the table and talk about stories we've read, foods we've eaten...