shower time

She stayed up late wrapping little packages of Australian chocolate candy.

 

I stayed up late baking meringues, but she stayed up later. My little girl is very exact in the ways she approaches her responsibilities. Ed retreats to the sheepshed. Too much wedding stuff... he mumbles.

But, in the middle of the night, he is back, asking before the sun breaks the horizon – what do you need me to do today?

Pick up extra chairs from Paul’s. Move the dead branches. Harvest the tomatoes... Thank you.

We sleep a few minutes more, but by 6 I’m up, still baking meringues.

What’s with the meringues, anyway? The short of it: ‘pavlovas’ (meringue with cream and macerated fruits) are the national dessert of Australia.  We’re picking up the theme of Australia for my older girl’s wedding shower because (eventually, after the fall semester) she and her (gulp) husband (that felt strange to say... but good, too... very good) will be taking a honeymoon break there.

Before things move quickly forward, I take a pause with my guys on the porch: Ed, Isis and I, eat breakfast as we always do: slowly, deliberately.

My little girl and I pick up sandwiches at a bakery downtown. That’s the easy break: I’ll make dessert, I’ll create a salad, I’ll chop fruits into a white sangria, but we’ll let someone else put in a creative touch into sandwiches.

And because it’s a bakery, we may as well pick up some back-up cookies. You can’t go wrong with extra cookies.

At home, things are at stages of near readiness. Flowers. Everywhere you look, you'll see flowers. Large and small bunches of them.

The fruits are cut, the white sangria is steeping...

I'd painted a sign. I put it out on the dirt driveway.

Okay. After weeks of tweeking and watering, the plants by the entrance path look good. Green. Welcoming, I think.

The first car load arrives, the fiancée leaves....

My girls exchange a big hug...

Ed brings over the sandwiches from the sheep shed fridge. Here's an idea: put them out in the crates we lugged back from the Languedoc. Okay!

The sangria is poured...

...and lightened by a small amount of soda water...

 

Guests arrive, settle in...

The fun begins. My little girl has planned well. There are quizzes, treats, and of course, wonderful gifts to open...

Thunder rumbles loudly outside. (They say it's the shout of a departing heatwave.) For a short while, it rains steadily, creating an excuse to linger... to enjoy a few minutes more, to eat the apricot-raspberry almond Pavlovas...

Evening comes. Shower’s done – both inside and out. 

 Big sister tackles her little sister in a grateful hug.

Me, I tackle the house: it needs to be brought back to its more quiet state. My little girl helps and then gets ready to join a dozen or so of their friends for an evening out...

Boundless energy. Theirs, wonderfully theirs. But it rubs off. I get to share in it, every now and then. 

They tell me that there is a custom of using shower ribbons to fashion a bouquet for the wedding rehearsal. My little girl has quickly created one today. It's ready for the late September ceremonies.

hurried

Is it okay if I don’t make dinner? My 'to do' list remains long, very long.

Of course! You want to go out?

It’s like Ed to invite me out on a night that I have no time to wipe my nose, let alone seek a supper out on the town (if you could call Fitchburg a town).

I cannot. I have to sit and watch meringues bake.

Ed microwaves cheese curds, I bring out a box of crackers. I have to say that this is probably the lowest I’ve stooped in dinner preparation. Ever.

Of course, if I can’t cook supper, I can’t write here either. In a few minutes I’ll be picking up my little girl – she’s coming up from Chicago to coordinate and orchestrate the shower for her sister tomorrow. Me, I just follow instructions.

And I clean.

And I make sure that the garden doesn’t wilt and keel over in these hot hot weeks of summer.

And I zap mosquitoes with Ed’s brilliant paddle zapper. Zap! Hisss! It’s very satisfying.

Yes, it's hot outside.  If you look out at the fields of corn, you'd think -- well, at least they're green.

...and the apples in our old orchard -- they're pink. Seemingly indifferent to the heat outside.

But don't let this fool you. All growing things are stressed by the heat and the persistant drought.

If there was a weekend when I would want the farmhouse to shine this year, it would be this weekend. And I have to say, in spite of it all, it does me proud. Thanks, old girl!

to cook

I once cooked like there was no tomorrow. And I thought -- as kids become adults and move on, with more time, I'll only cook more. Following my divorce (seven years ago), I moved to an apartment where I thought I would cook my way through an endless stream of dinner parties. It was an open space loft plan and I imagined my friends would come and I would cook. And cook. And cook.

Thinking back, I have to admit that I wasn't altogether sane. People came, I cooked. Some cooked back. Most did not. And anyone who has cooked for crowds will vouch for this: it's time consuming and expensive. Perhaps that's not reflected in my posts of those years, but money was seeping out a whole lot faster than it was seeping in. 

And then, too, along came Ed. Ed is not a dinner party kind of guy. I don’t think he understands why anyone would willingly want to sit around a table and talk into the night, unless they had something they needed to get off their chest or were looking for help figuring out how to change some pipe on a car or install a heating system into a writer’s shed.

I would say – you get together with friends -- isn't that the same?

He would retort – only when we do things together. Play tennis. Sail. Fix motorcycles.

That’s not true. Friends come over and you like that.

That’s different. 

You can't argue with "that's different."

Over the years, I have backed away from big meal preparation. When I moved to the farmhouse, a new but not too large refrigerator was purchased to meet our daily needs, with a little room to spare. But not much room to spare.

And so it was really interesting to come home today after a marathon shopping trip and look for room to stash 9 bags of greens, a dozen ears of corn, 7 tins of blueberries, 5 lbs of apricots, 8 baskets of raspberries, 8 containers of strawberries...several dozen eggs, milks of various fat content, yogurts – and that’s only to meet the needs of side dishes and desserts. It doesn’t even take into account these, from the garden:

Oh, you think that’s paltry in terms of peaches from our peach tree? Well, there are also peach parts (and there are many bowls of those) – for things that don’t quite call for a nice peach presentation (chopped off are parts pillaged by beetles before we could shake them off).

Whereas most weekends require only a brief piecing together of a Sunday family meal, this weekend is going to be different. And because it is so unusually different, I am greatly looking forward to it. As I see it, I have before me, in the space of three days a lunch for 26 (I’m getting help from my little girl on that one), a possible brunch for some unknown number, a dinner for six, a dinner for five, with some filler meals to think about in between (meaning – I can’t use all blueberries for dinner and lunch because I need some for breakfast as well). What spurs this sudden return to more serious cooking? I'll tell you as the days unfold.

In the meantime, I ask Ed to mow the lawn before the great stampede of guests  and the poor guy tries, but the John Deere balks and so he spends many days under that engine attempting to, well, according to me, rebuild it. It’s a 1969 tractor. It looks ancient. It sounds ancient. Maybe he’ll get it working by Saturday. He makes no promises.

Let's focus on the more positive aspects of farmette life. These are some of my favorite drought and freakish hot weather survival stories:

 (And once again, the rose, because she is such a trooper...)

The blooming period is over for much of what I planted. These are exceptions (cajoled by hours of watering and sweet talking). Note the grasshopper who shares my enthusiasm for the last of the lilies.

In the evening Ed and I go to the Fitchburg farmers market. You’d think I couldn’t possibly handle more produce purchases, but I need to think of dinners for the two of us for the next couple of nights. Even simple meals need – ingredients. Potatoes, green beans, tomatoes from the garden, cooked eggs, mustard dressing. Oh, and corn on the cob. Because it was there, at the market and it looked splendidly recovered from the drought.







 

31

As I ride Rosie to town to visit with my daughter on her 31^st birthday, I see two fawn (doe?) prancing alongside the road. It would have made for a beautiful shot, but I know that the minute I slow down, they’ll scoot right into the forest. So I just watch, out of the corner of my eye.

And I think – how appropriate to be reminded of this kind of spirited romp: the bravery, the trickery, the fun that is locked into the young. And how grand that we get to watch from the side before they really scamper off, leaving you slightly breathless, dazzled, in love.

But my day really began earlier, much earlier. I woke to a mist outside and I was tempted, so tempted to mumble an appreciative comment to Ed and roll over toward a world of deeper sleep. But what I did mumble was – it’s been a while since I photographed the sun break through a misty morning. And he mumbles back – that’s right... go for it.

Ever so reluctantly I stumble downstairs and put on a light jacket, because it is beautifully cool outside at this time of day. And I rev up Rosie and we are off...

I make a loop along the rural roads. 

It’s an easy way to get a few good shots. I know how the fields extend...


 


... I know where the cranes hang out and where I’m likely to spot deer.

Yes, they’re there. And crane, mixing with geese. And I think to myself – how is it that we sport bumper stickers with the word 'coexist' and we think we’re so cool about coexisting with our worst enemies and actually we’re not cool at all. We look for opportunties to make a mess of it all.

These cranes, geese, deer, they don’t sport bumper stickers and yet, they ... coexist.

Maybe I’m too much in the world of the farmette right now, where plants grow if you nurture them and animals come, chomp here and there and go and maybe it’s not to your liking sometimes but jeez, they mean well and isn’t it great that you can hand over plants to some animal and still continue with life as you know it?

Anyway, it was a lovely morning and a lovely day and my sweet, sweet girl is 31 now...

 

31, with her fiancé

... so in her honor I spent 3.1 hours watering plants tonight! Despite the emerging mosquitoes.

cheering for bees

Well now, this was a day to test all day in terms of how many errands I can do quickly, efficiently and with unexpected twists and turns along the way. Of the type when you go to your office and get sidetracked, so that you do little of what you were supposed to do but accomplish other things instead.

I was away from the farmette all day, but in the hours before I took off for downtown, I had my hands full with beetles that are congregating on the emergent rose blooms. No matter how many I shake off into a soapy solution, there are others. And more still. So I do this in the morning and I notice an uncomfortable truth: the mosquitoes that were absent last year? That have been thus far absent this year? They’re here. Not massively yet, but we know it’s only a question of days.

I hope so very much that they wont proliferate before the weekend – I have one, two, three days of mega events at the farmhouse this week-end – it would be nice if bugs were not included in the revelry.

So I chase beetles, I curse mosquitoes and I applaud and encourage the beneficials. The bees, for example. I always cheer for the bees.

At night, I have nothing good to offer for supper. Olympics, salad, eggs. 

 

Ed falls asleep immediately after the eggs and salad.

hot, continued

Well, you can’t have it both ways. A good writing day over there means a lousy one over here. It’s the kind of day where you have room for only one (if that) explosion of stardust.

Blame it on the weather. The summer heat. As a gardener, I’m not prepared. I haven’t planted for this. I planted for northern Midwest spring and summer. My nasturtium, revived last week, now look like it wants to bail out on me again. The potted plants are wilting even as I refuse to water them until the sun sinks below the tree line.

 

And we’re fighting the beetles. And moving around wasp nests. The usual stuff, but all done in temps that even have me liking air conditioning and that’s saying a lot.

Across the road, the farmers' fields stand silent. There's little activity in these very doggy days of summer.

Today I actually speak wistfully about winter. The easy season for us. No garden to hover over. No bugs to chase away. No hours with the hose. A mouse every now and then – caught, sent to another field. Nothing more than that.

Ah, greener pastures.

We do bike to Paul’s café but only after a period of couch sitting and deliberating – should we, should we not... And we play tennis on the way back, but I don’t run after missed balls. 

In the evening I water flowers.  For a long time. Ed picks tomatoes.

various

uncertainty

To a commenter on yesterday’s post, I offer this added line or two  –  uncertainty?  It shifts, that’s all. I’m 18, I travel to the States and I don’t know where I will live. Here? In Poland? Elsewhere? And with whom? And what work will be mine?

Kids are born, they approach their teen years and I have the same questions, only it’s about them now: will they find good partners in life? What will they do?

And then, it shifts again: will I be healthy tomorrow? And will he be healthy too?

music

James Taylor is in my head still. Especially as sung by Carole King. I had left the States (in 66) singing the Beatles and I came back (in 71) to Carole King. You could say that she reintroduced me to America. Five years had passed since I's been here and boom! I'm in a new world! The whole country seems like it is swaying on its heels, riddled with uncertainty. This is the New York I had left behind? My days of taking the skateboard to Central Park are over. The air seems dense, not with summer smog but with campus smoke. Of the kind I hadn’t smelled before.

So there is Carole King and “you’ve got a friend” and “beautiful” (remember? You've got to get up every morning, With a smile on your face, And show the world, All the love in your heart...) and these became my lyrics.

morning

We wake up and Ed pulls up youtubes – of Carole King, of the Shirelles, of Celine Dion. Carole King hits, all of them, and I read her biography on line and I think – when did she become 70? Oh, I know: the year I turned 59.

Outside, there’s just a touch of rain. The kind that tingles when it comes down in warm drops. A pleasant effortless rain that does no good but no harm either. The roses love it, so do the chipmunks.

A garden is a panorama of nature's foibles. One set of issues replaced by another. I notice that the pansies and the lupine, mollycoddled and finally revived, were chomped off this morning by some animal who found my efforts delightfully tasteful. So let me show you one revived rose, because tomorrow, she's likely to be gone.

later

In the afternoon I do some writing, yes, good, there's that. I note that I'm on page 130 so that's seven added this year. Consdier it pathetic or good or somewhere between the two. And then, because I need a break, I make this:

You think ice cream? Yes, true. Creamy and frozen. But what is it? Just one ingredient: banana. A daughter told me of it -- a recipe that calls for ice cream made with just bananas and my verdict is that it tastes just like bananas.

In the evening, my older girl comes over with her fiancee and it's so tempting, so tempting to just keep her here because she and I enjoy Olympic watching even as the men would yawn and turn away from the competitive events, but I resist.

 

 It's not as if the Olympics will end tonight and we can go back to normal. They'll be a tug for the next two weeks and I expect that every night I'll go upstairs to a sleeping Ed and I will say -- I wish you had watched and he'll say -- yes gorgeous and we'll fall asleep and wake up to a new day.

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.