Wednesday

A quick morning walk along the dirt paths of the farmette. In the summer, I kept pointing the camera at the farmhouse. But now,wouldn't you agree that the shed, the barn are especially good at showing off the autumnal brilliance?





It's still very dry out here (the only rain expected at all is scheduled for the hours President Obama is on campus) and I should water, but there aren't the hours. Too, I spend time each morning plugging holes dug by chipmunks. They're all over and at the very least, they're messy. A potmarked canvas of root damage. Do chipmunks ever go to sleep already? Maybe October 4th?

Let me look up, not down. Oh, now there's a pretty scene!







How can you not revel in the warmth of this morning! The last of the easy going mornings, the beautiful sunny mornings of early October!


And I ride Rosie to campus, even though I ought to bike -- how many good biking days will there be? 'I ought to' does not easily translate into 'I will.'






Between the wedding and Ed's September fever, I think I let this past month slide at its own speed. It just sort of happened. Now I have to invent a speed. For a while -- a couple of weeks maybe -- I pick slow.





Not that on campus the pace is anything close to slow right now. Frantic construction in anticipation of a presidential visit. The precautions seem more extreme than the previous times President Obama was here. Not only are we under orders to keep the blinds shut in the windows facing the Mall (this would include my very very large window), but I see that they're draping a curtain over the windows of the college dorm, which is a good block away.





I cannot emphasize enough how disturbing it is to live at a time when such measures are considered necessary. Where a missed window covering could change the course of history.


So after too many hours on campus, I am very happy to be on Rosie again, very happy to greet Ed at Paul's cafe, very happy to be playing tennis (that's his Honda, next to my Yamaha -- both easily spotted around town because of the with milk crates on the rear racks )...








…to be cooking soup (broccoli), to be glancing out as Ed finishes the painting of the farmhouse...


 


... to be combating the fruit flies (we had a hefty population with all those tomatoes, but we have now the secret weapon -- the Isis hair-on-couch hand vacuum -- positioned to catch every last fruit fly!), to be mixing a lovely cassis kir (a splash of black currant liquor with with white wine), to be wondering how the debate goes, to be thinking happily about the yoga class I can attend, for a change, on a Thursday morning.

Tuesday

A few weeks back I wrote how this was the "last warm day" of the season and indeed, one of those posts proved to be right because I cannot remember any hot summer moments thereafter. Now, I am facing the fact that tomorrow we'll have the "last even medium warm" day of the year and after that -- well, riding Rosie will no longer be a given.

Already this morning, I felt under-protected from the wind and this despite the beautiful sunshine that warmed our pale yellow fields and dapples of gold beyond.

I pull my gloves on and forge ahead, but it is not toasty out there.

When the weather finally turns (Thursday), I'm imagining I'll not be suffering the consequences  of it because I do not have to go to work! Indeed, I cannot go to work. This particular Thursday President Obama relieved me of my duties by announcing a campus visit that places him right outside my office window over on Bascom Mall. I thought I'd have front row seats, but it appears that our building has to be emptied for the day and so suddenly I have a blank schedule. Sort of like Thanksgiving only without the turkey. In gratitude, I plan on watching the debate the day before, even though I am not among the undecided.


But until then, work continues and intensifies. I leave early (after breakfast, of course)…





 … just as the sun is cracking the horizon at the old orchard to the east.






Though the truck farmers beat me to it. These are the weeks of the final harvest and the farmers are racing to beat the big frost clock.






It's not early fall anymore.






Evening. I meet Ed at Paul's cafe and we both promptly fall asleep. Our planned tennis game goes to the wayside.

We steer our motorbikes home, past the fields of market flowers and spent vegetables…






And I pause just for a second, to pass on greetings to farmer Lee and this may be the last time that I see her this year, because she tells me (if I understand her correctly) that she's closing shop for the season. She hands me a large bouquet of flowers, but I'm not sure she is the one who should be thanking me. Who benefited most from her work at the farmette? I would guess we did.

I turn Rosie home...





…where Farmer Lee's flowers look so splendid in the late evening sun.





 There is nothing special for dinner. Ed is tired and snacked up for the day. I haven't the inclination to cook up the next soup. How about a sweet potato with a scrambled egg and a leftover piece of smoked salmon?





Isis sniffs appreciatively but I chase him down. Mine, little cat. This dinner is mine.

in the season

Why are you writing "late garden" on the freezer bags? -- this from Ed, who is watching me prepare the last of the tomatoes for winter storage.
Because these guys are different. Some are tougher -- as if they were trying to hold on to their might and some succeeded and others -- not so much. Kind of fleshy and limp. So I'm labeling them. So that I know.

I'm trying to do right by our harvest, but what do I know? All I've memorized is that late harvest grapes are sweeter and that late harvest pears are suboptimal. You should be picking pears when they're not quite ready for the table. They develop issues if left on the tree too long. But tomatoes -- they're all over the place. There are no hard and fast rules. We still have containers of green ones and some are ripening and some are not. I was told I could do a nice chili with green tomatoes. Can I? I haven't dared try.

I think about things like harvests and growing things and the coming of winter because when you live in the country, the change of seasons, the progression of time -- they're so obvious. Not only because the palate of colors changes, but because the balance shifts. With each month, everything moves toward a new center.






And if I forget to pay attention to the heaving and shifting that's taking place around me, there is yoga class to remind me of it. Truthfully, my love of yoga right now can be linked to my love of living in the country. One makes the other more vivid, more obvious.






As we inch closer to the cooler months and I shake out and move to the front of the closet my beloved sweater collection (nothing feels better than a comfy sweater on a cool day), I think how nothing outside reminds me of summer anymore. Yes, some of the flowers are still throwing out blooms…






Yes, I can still slip out scantly dressed for one thing or another outdoors (I have summer warmth stored in my bones… it usually lasts until right around Thanksgiving). But everything is on a different plane. We all know it.



 


If this sounds a tad morose or sentimental, don't place too much store in it. The day was certainly normal enough.

Breakfast.





Work. Yoga. More work. Leftover chili for supper. You got it: it was, in fact, a glorious day.

Sunday

Sunday morning. When I think that last week at this time I was breathing deep sighs of relief, knowing that my daughter had just survived (with great joy and merriment) her wedding ceremonies, I want to say -- my, how time changes things. Today, by comparison, was so placid. Like a day with only a muted breeze and no fires raging. A fall day, where you had to look hard to find blooms that are still going strong.







Sunday afternoon. I know that you sign up for yoga to practice the exercise of yoga (and I did sign up -- after a trial month, for a whole year of it), but I have to say, I do like this about my new yoga studio: the woman who owns and runs it strives for community. In the same way that her neighbor down the block -- Paul at the Oasis Cafe -- strives for the same. And I like that. Oh, go ahead and tell me that I'm a sap for community because I do not belong to a church and that I'm merely looking for ways to fill a void.  Yes, tell me that we all function in a spiritless world and it's our own fault.

Eh, I won't agree. for the most part, I like my world of quiet at the farmette. I like interrupting it occasionally with people, but if that doesn't happen for a period of time (daughters excepted), I'll be okay with it. But, whatever my own needs are in this regard, I do like it when people try to create a space for the local souls to crawl to, a space where someone will at the very least remember their name. 

So, after the usual house cleaning and garden admiration and adoration spell…






…I go to my Sunday yoga class and I sink deeply into the idea that I am not just stretching this way and that, but I am also reaching out to some form of humanity that is there for all of us to share.


After class, a fellow classmate says -- I wish I had had yoga when my kids were younger… I would have been a calmer parent… I nod in what I hope is a supportive gesture, but I don't really think she  is correct. We are who we are. Impatience does not erase itself in yoga classes.

Nonetheless, it surely feels good to stretch, strain and balance and think about something other than the tasks that await you in the week ahead.


In other news, Ed is truly almost healed. Not only did he join me for a modicum of breakfast…





…but, too, we went out to play tennis together: nothing grand, just twenty minutes of back and forth at the local park, but we hadn't done it since before he was stricken with the Mystery Fever and it was grand to hear him making fun of my game again.


Sunday evening. When I return from yoga, I find him up on the ladder, working bravely to replace the rotted wood over the dormer window. This project has been excruciatingly difficult -- he hasn't the equipment nor the neck muscles to do it quickly and to his satisfaction. But, he is back at it. If he doesn't topple and crack his spine then I will truly believe that he is with us again, well and moving forward -- though in a somewhat thinner frame.






Supper? Well now, if you had the last tomatoes ripening still on your mudroom floor, what would you do? Of course! Cook up more chili, add it to the old chili and serve it again and again and again. Including, in a fortified version, tonight.

remembering

Yoga in the morning. (To my commenter -- I wouldn't do it nearly as well if I were to do it alone. Being with a good teacher is really motivating. I hope that this will remain true for the year.)

The ride on Rosie is brilliant. A stunning warm breeze, a prairie to the west, to the north…






Then, after yoga, I glance at my computer. Email, then the NY Times. Ohhhhh...

A pause for reflection.

I came to live in the States as an adult (if you can call 18 adult) because of the goodness of a person who died today. I was an au pair to his little girl. I learned through him and his wife how to transition from Warsaw to New York again. I came with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews -- all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances. That I was treated kindly is such an understatement that I can't even quite say it. The father of my charge will always in my mind be the person who liked nothing better than to drive away from the city, to the country home, fire up the grill and throw some meats for an evening supper with just his little girl, his wife and the aupair from Poland. After dinner, he and I would clean up in the kitchen and if I learned how to wipe down every last inch of counterspace it was because he taught me well. He was too kind for words and his little girl was just like him, making my au pair duties about the easiest that could be.

So, my thoughts are very much with the kids he leaves behind. Kids… How oddly stated! Kids. We were that once.




In the afternoon, Ed and I had an appointment with our village version of the Antiques Roadshow. Ed inherited a bit of folk art from his parents. Wooden garden statues that he finds quirky fun and I find kind of scary. Ed once suggested we put them in the mudroom, but the marble eyes just don't inspire trust and friendliness, so they lie buried in the basement collecting dust.

At the Roadshow, the wooden statues were a hit. Of course they were! Compare them to the standard piece of jewelry your aunt gave you for your graduation or the crystal bowl you found in your grandma's attic. There's color in the busty pose and the spiked heels of the girl and the crooked teeth and broken toes of the guy doll. I told the audience I wasn't a fan of either, Ed said he was and the appraiser sided with him and though we weren't holding a fortune in our arms, we certainly were told that we should be good and proud of the old yard dolls. Okay. We're proud. Back to the basement they go after their moment of glory.






Still later, my girl, the one who is married now (!), took her old mom and, too, the traveling companion of mom to one of our favorite places  -- Indian Lake.


 



If you know this county park...






... you'll understand how beautiful it is right now.





Utterly beautiful.






Wistfully, sometimes very wistfully so.






Sigh...

Friday

Friday. Breakfast alone. (Ed has his tech design meeting too early for us to linger in the nook together.)




Work at home. With Isis showing off his sweet side.






...and with occasional moments outdoors. Because it really is beautiful out there.







Evening watering. It's easy to neglect plants when you think they're almost at the end of their blooming period. And yet, you can't. Feeding and watering them now will make for a happier spring. Spring! Oh my, only six months away!






Just before dusk, I go to a yoga class. I don't like to do this at the end of the day, but I so want to resume the routine of it, before my "unlimited yoga" month runs out. So that I can decide this weekend if I want to commit to a whole year of opening my heart to the heavens above (think: fish pose).

The sun has set by the time I ride home. The sky still holds on to the pink hues -- as if it can't quite move on.






We're two days short of a full moon, but hey! it surely looks radiantly full!






At home, I make soup. Yes, tomato. With beans. So I suppose you could call it a chili.






And there you have it. That was the day. It was quiet and familiar -- as if we never took a break from the calmness of our life here, at the farmette. (There are plenty of smiles when we click into that gentle sail through the day) As if I can almost believe that Ed is well again, albeit a good many pounds leaner. A day when we again can talk about maybe doing this, maybe that in future months. A good day.

might there come a day...

...when I wont have even a photo from the day to offer you here?

No, impossible. There is always breakfast.





(Yes, one reason for taking breakfast photos is because some day the buck may stop there. Like today?)

And still, this day was awfully full. On campus from 9 until 8 and this after a night of Isis movements. The darn cat was supposed to stay out of my hair (or more accurately, his hair was to stay out of my bedroom) on nights before heavy teaching days, but somehow that rule mutated into something that doesn't resemble much of a rule anymore. Last night, frustrated with finding a cat exactly in the place where I was about to plunk down and exhale, I went to the guest Lemon Room and closed the door behind me. Until Ed came over and threatened to stay there with me all night. That didn't seem right: Isis gets the queen bed and we get the little double? And then I'll have to launder the sheets in the Lemon Room? So, more work, while the cat gently sleeps?

After that, the night was fairly calm. Isis went out once or twice, Ed was downstairs and upstairs once or twice and the chipmunks played crazy games just outside the front door (they're digging up holes close to the house, presumably because it's warmer there) until Ed put a big pillow over the doorbell chimes to mute their annoying call.

And then it was morning.

Ed tells me that I don't smile nearly enough and I try hard to consider the truthfulness of  this from his perspective. And here's my conclusion: our periods of overlap aren't smiling times. In the morning, when I am in a hurry. In the evening where I am either cooking or working or watching something on the screen while he is sleeping by me. In the middle of the night when Isis fusses. I tell you -- they're not guffaw moments. I promise him I'll do better on the weekend.

In the meantime, I rev up Rosie for the return ride home -- so much calmer than the mad dash this morning when I was running late. I thoroughly enjoy the breeze in the still of the darkening evening. Just enough wind to clear the mind and relax that muscle, so that the grin has an easier time making its way to the surface. 

midweek

Since Ed hasn't been up for tennis following his bout of whatever it is that he was bouting with and since I haven't the proper hours to scoot to yoga, that recent feeling of strength and flexibility from past weeks has receded. Lethargy is like an invasive plant that you can't control: it spreads quickly, to every muscle, every pore, so that before you know it, you are the quintessential baked Idaho on the sofa, the sloth that dangles but never goes anywhere, the bear that's just discovered it's favorite lair.

Fearing a rapid decline into nothingness, I forced myself this morning to get out of the house much earlier so that I could bike to work. Only the second time this school year. (I do offer this excuse: biking is an hour each way. Rosie is less than half that.)

It was a gorgeous day for it. From the very first sunny minute (at the breakfast table of course).






It's not porch eating weather anymore, but had we been out on the porch, we would have been assailed by the brilliance of the day.








On the ride in, I had to pause. I mean, the spent golden world looks mighty good against that richly blue sky.








The lakes are ripply, the wind picks up here and there -- all in all, I feel strong and able out on the bike again.







After work, I pedal home. Leisurely. You can't rush at the end of a day. For one thing, you haven't the oomph to rush anything.






Ed had been working on the rotted wood in the overhang in the west dormer. After, he hides under a quilt that I keep on the couch for the likes of him. And under Isis.






He has enough strength for one last Wednesday night bike ride for the year, but not a penny more. At home, he leans back in tired half sleep. We'll see how bouncy he is in the days ahead. I'll settle for a wimpy bounce. So that I quit worrying about that lovely but tired face of his.

then there's Tuesday

How does a day become so terribly unremarkable so quickly? And maybe 'unremarkable' isn't such a good word here anyway, because it is also true that I am absolutely swamped. Smothered in tasks. So that, for example, the goal I had set for myself this summer -- of editing my book project at least one day each week -- seems kind of funny. I'll be lucky if I get to throw in laundry into the washer one day each week.

Of course, some of the unremarkable routines are priceless. Like the breakfast one, now in the new breakfast nook.






And here's a good bit of luck: the weather is on the upswing again. Today it was sunny and, by afternoon, 80 degrees outside. (I know, I know -- a tiny bit off schedule.) I ride Rosie to work and back twice today and each ride is spectacular.

But hey, when did the cornfields turn yellow? Was it when I was preoccupied with thoughts of the wedding?






I come back to the farmhouse for lunch. I have a window of time and I want the quiet of our farmette for that.





I promptly fall asleep. I never nap in the afternoon. Never. Today I napped.


Later, I am back on campus and in the evening I continue in my string of meals away from home -- this time it's pizza with my students.






By the time I ride Rosie back to the farmette, it's dark. Which simply reminds me that it sure gets dark early now. Unlike, say in June…





There are swarms of box elder bugs flying around now, somewhat madly it seems. There is always a certain madness to life in the last warm days of the year. I know that. And I'm fine with it. Just as soon as I get used to this different set of routines -- at once busier and yet less intense.



As a post scriptum, I just wanted to say thank you so very much for all the beautiful comments and notes I received from you on the occasion of my daughter's wedding. It's hard to express gratitude well. I always feel like I'm using words that have been spoken a million times and non too cleverly at that, but just know that it was so sweetly uplifting to hear from you all. So thank you.