later than expected

The dainty achillea millefolium is having a late go of it. I planted three, from different nurseries and they are just now starting to unfurl their pretty little faces.





As if saying -- now, you will notice me! Back then, I was just one of many.

Is it like walking away from a deal? Now, you'll notice me. Back then, I was just one of many...


I leave work later than expected. Classes end for me late and I am forcing myself to stay in my office after to write drafts of exam questions. It's better to do this when the material is fresh in your head.

I turn Rosie on to Park Street (one of several competing ways to go home) and as usual, the traffic kills the joy of being on her curvy saddle, so I turn away, to the east and track the quiet road by the secondary lake.






It's really nice to have options in life.

The country roads though are perfect. They said storms might be passing through, but they were wrong. It is the kind of evening you dream of, come November or March. The soy fields are at their best. The sun is warm enough to ride with only a thin sweater. The air smells of a brilliant autumn.






I make chili at home. Those tomatoes are spilling out on the counter -- I've frozen so many, but they keep coming, at various stages of ripeness and oftentimes I don't catch their perfect freezing moment -- this is the time to make chili.

Ed comes home from his bike ride. If you hurry, you'll see the sunset, he tells me.

I go out, but it's too late. Wisps of red cloud remain. Nothing more.





Late, too late -- relative terms. Too late for one thing means a chance at something else. Would a view of a setting disc be any prettier than the above?

I turn toward the farmhouse, which to me, always looks beautiful, even in the growing darkness of a summer evening.






The night is made restless by Isis. Up, down, meow, clear the stomach, (Isis!) meow, out, in, out again.

I try not to glare at him as he ambles over during breakfast. He is only partly to blame for sticking so forcefully to his preferences. Why shouldn't he make demands? We (Ed!) pander to his requests. He's merely competent at stating them in a convincing fashion.






We eat breakfast on another one of those glorious Fall days that you love for its strength of tone and color.






Skies of blue, lands of a dusty green. After walking the gardens, I come back to the porch. A good place to work, a good place to imagine what next year will be like.

negotiation

It got tense toward the noon hour. I was finishing up lecture notes on the farmhouse porch. It may well have been 95 degrees out there, but I still love being outdoors and so I persevered. Ed joined me with his own readings and for a moment, I thought the world to be a very kind place indeed.

But in a short space of time, things started cracking. My old Apple tends to balk at odd times and she balked for me today. Twice I sent myself notes to my lecture, in case she balked her way into a crash, never to wake up again.

If only you'll carry me through this day, I promise I wont put you in a tight squeeze of time again! -- I whisper to my computer.

I must have said something right, because she bravely held steady and I finished my work with ten minutes to spare.

Late in the evening, I turned rosie against the record breaking heat toward home.






How I love those final few steps toward the farmhouse after a long and hard day of work!






At home, I talk to Ed about why it is that, despite having the benefit of asking for something that most everyone (if polled) would regard as reasonable and fair, my negotiations, in a wide variety of settings, historically always fail. (My success with my Apple this morning notwithstanding.)

He tells me -- you care too much. You don't exude power. You exude weakness. You argue reason, as if there lies some golden truth. People want what they want and then they invent the reasons for their position. Don't argue reason. State what you want, listen to the response, counter it, listen again and then take it or leave it. If you want it and can't walk away, your negotiating position isn't very strong.

The fact is, Ed is a superb negotiator. I've seen him do it, countless times. It's not that he always gets what he wants -- it's that most often, he doesn't care enough to stay with a deal if he doesn't think it's fair or right.

I think about how when you live with someone in a peaceful coexistence, no matter how independent you are, you nonetheless so often take on at least some of the traits of the other. I think about how more and more, walking away from bad (for me) deals seems like a good idea.

I make a garden salad...





...Ed brings home a pizza. We watch the PBS show on Billie Jean King and Ed comments -- she exudes strength. Moves assertively. Knows what she wants.

Yes, that's right. Gotta know your own mind.

I'm gettin' there.


Early in the morning, the air cools down. Clouds throw a few sprinkles on the dry soil. Not much, but it's a refreshing event -- as if the dry hot air is history.

We eat breakfast on the porch of course...











...me with my oatmeal, Ed with his Cheerios. Except that sometimes this sweet guy now eats oatmeal. And sometimes I'll know not to take bad deals when negotiations fail.

hot air

Taking rosie to campus was incredible: a burst of summer air pushed the temps into the mid nineties. The world is one warm, damp sponge. A moped ride at top speed (rosie can never go above 40 mph) is the ticket to a cooler world.

Campus seems hazy; the air is sticky, people would just as soon eat inside.






A city is never well partnered with scorching heat. I'm so much happier, later in the afternoon, to be turning rosie back home. To the bands of gold in the now drying soy fields.






I take my work for the rest of the day to the porch, despite the heat. A fan will move the air. I'm happy to be outdoors still. Winter seems far off.


Early evening. We are to meet up with Farmer Lee and her English speaking daughter-in-law in their fields of flowers. We'll lead them to the place that Ed found -- a place where the landowner is willing (perhaps even happy?) to clear land for her. How much does she want? Three, four, maybe five acres.

Done!

The land will be turned over. Scrub, weeds pulled out. (It was once a farm but it had succumbed to the invasives.) We walk the jungle of brush...






...and I can see that she is happy. She sees the possibilities.






In fact, I've never seen her so excited.

As Ed and I drive off on his motorbike, I pat him on the back. You did good, buddy.
We turn toward the tennis court. I didn't take good shoes, so like Ed, I go barefoot. Ed tells me that my game has never been better.






At home, I place the glads -- a gift from Farmer Lee -- in my biggest vase, so that they can do their show off act -- their explosion of cheer.






A good evening. A quiet time.  An early to sleep time.


And early to rise. I walk the garden, telling my flowers - hang in there, just one more day of this heat!











We eat breakfast on the porch, but I keep my books open, at the side. It's going to be a hot and packed to the brim day.  To a gentler rest of the week. Cooler, gentler, I'll accept both.

let's flip things for a while

What if an Ocean post did not always begin with breakfast? What if it ended that way instead?

When I travel, most often I post in the morning, or at lunchtime. When I'm home, I'll wait until the day ends. After dinner is cleared, dishes are washed, I sit down with my laptop and pick some threads that will make up a story of a day.

Well now, what could be wrong with that? I'm carrying in my mind fresh images, my work is behind me -- I have a stretch of unencumbered time.

The problem is an obvious one -- daily blogging, started oftentimes after 9 in the evening, drags into hours of fighting sleep. You'd think I will have produced a chapter of a book rather than just three or four sentences. The mind is fuzzy. The word flow stagnates. Oftentimes, I just cannot stay awake enough to give my few sentences a final edit. My inner voice screams at me -- it's fine, let it go! It's nearly midnight, get some sleep! And of course, it's not fine and I wake up in the middle of the night picking up my laptop to correct the overlooked mistakes.

It's protracted and worse - I have no edge left in me then. If my day is simple, my sentences are even simpler.

Time to try a new approach! Save the late evening for such brainy work as paying bills and mending rips where there shouldn't be rips. Or work then on putting together my Polish citizenship papers -- that should fill up most late hours of the year! (Oh yes, that process is still in full swing.) But if I have something to write, let me do it early. Do it before the wind dies down and the dreamy drowsy world takes hold.

So, let's see how it works:

I wake up early, to a steamy day. The one that tells us that if anyone is to do work outside, better do it now, because by noon we'll all turn into limp rags. Hot and humid -- that's the forecast.

Ed drags out the cart and loads wood chips. The cleared soil on the raspberry patch needs to be covered now. That's his hefty task. Me, I just need to do a little composting.






I note the flowers that are bold today...






...and the dainty patterns of color that still define the bed in front of the porch.






But I also throw an appreciative nod to the flower bed we created just this year -- the one that leads from the farmhouse to the sheep shed. Its blooming period is mostly finished and yet it still looks strong -- no longer naked and scant.






And then it's breakfast and the weary guy comes in -- feet blackened by dirt, hair falling wildly to the back of the head, ready for a morning meal. Breakfast on the porch.

Sunday

How can a morning just disappear?

Easy: clean the farmhouse. Two hours for that, even with Ed helping.

Then: computer work. Including republishing yesterday's post which, if you read it right after publication you may have wondered. Truth is, I published it in midsentence and fell asleep at the same time. And so it was not entirely flawless. A correction needed to be made.

After? I don't know. I just do not know how it became noon before we sat down to breakfast.





And only then do I sit open up my work books and that's just not good! This semester, I need to work all day every day!

The skies are cloudy, but not with rain. We need rain.

I work quickly, efficiently. To make up for lost hours. This is my fall semester. This is the way it will be from now until early December.

On the upside, at the end of it all, maybe I'll go far away and the world will seem sane again.


Late in the afternoon, I pause. Anything that'll bring  physical movement to the day would be so very welcome.

We go right back to the raspberry patch and resume digging. There's no good photo to be had from the digging and pulling and clearing. Unless you look up from your labors and glance toward the sheep shed and notice the flowers there. In the most unexpected places at the farmette, there will be flowers.






Other unusual elements to the day: finding that the walnut tree is finally producing.





Insignificant quantities thus far, but still -- tasting a walnut straight off the tree is ... sublime.

And too, hopping on the motorbike to participate in our informal food exchange -- that's cool as well. Perhaps more importantly, this particular hobby farmer is likely to help Farmer Lee relocate her own fields of veggies and flowers later in the fall to soon to be cleared lands on his rather large farmette (thanks to a huge effort on Ed's part to find her substitute growing spaces, now that she's been kicked off the fields across the road from us).

We bring cucumbers to the exchange and take away tomatoes. As if we need more tomatoes!






Dinner,   My older girl is at the farmhouse for the evening meal. People and animals are really pleased to see her here.






The meal, as always, is simple and now, too, full of things from our own gardens. Corn, tomatoes of course, cucumbers -- the usual palate. (The trout is 'imported' from up north.)






And that's it. Any variation to a schedule such as today's in future weeks will  surely be accidental...                                                                                                                                                                                                              

polkadot sky

We wake up to a warm day. A very warm day. Actually, it's going to be hot.

Breakfast? I ask. I'm always excited about breakfast.
No, not yet. Work first.

He's right. We want to put in at least an hour clearing the raspberry patch. Not just weeds -- weed trees have taken over any bare spaces. It really is one huge mess. If we do a little at a time, we won't be overwhelmed. This morning, we want to put in a little of that time.

Never try to pull roots out of a soil that hasn't seen rain for a long time. An hour later and we're beat.
Here's our cleared space -- not much, right?  A little at a time.





Finally, breakfast.






And, for me, work. On the warm porch, watching the world turn from a bright green of mid summer to a duller green. A green portending autumn.

Lunch, too, is on the porch. Ed's apple jam over peanut butter.





So... why polkadot sky in the title line? What prompted that?

I can't help you there. Maybe something in the next set of images They're random -- as they tend to be on these work filled days. Here's one from mid-afternoon --  Ed, picking up Isis, who is pestering as always to be elsewhere...






And then, one from the evening motorbike ride to play a game of tennis. On the return, we pass the slowly disappearing Farmer Lee's fields of flowers...







And finally,  later still, I head out to celebrate a friend's (50th) birthday.






Maybe the title  comes from that last image -- soy fields under a colorful setting sun... A sky that fills with stars on the trip back.

a forty dollar mistake

It was such a full day. And I knew it would be: meetings, appointments, more meetings. Reading. Tons of reading. Weekly grocery shopping.

But after breakfast...





...when I step out to take the car to work (yes, car; I cannot do weekly grocery shopping on rosie), I see that I've let things slide in the flower beds. There has been no rain for a long time. The earth is parched, the plants are drooping.

No. I cannot lose them now. Some are putting up a good front -- here are the stars of today:





















...but they all need water. So I throw down my papers, glance nervously at my watch and take to the hose.

I don't water everything, but I water the essentials.

And so my work day starts an hour behind schedule. And from there, I'll spare you the details, but I take a parking chance and end up being zapped with a $40 ticket.

How I hate to have made a bad call! Like the person who takes a chance to save a buck and then loses a fortune, I feel defeated.

On the upside (and there is always an upside), sitting down now to write a brief post, I note that it is a beautifully warm evening, the fridge is full of foods for the week and our simple supper (call it a salad plus) is exactly what we need.





That's one helluva good upside.

a break

Take a break. Go ahead and take one, be it from work, from cooking, from sitting home every evening -- oh, ooops! those exactly describe me! -- a break, so that you can view life differently for a split second, so that you can see how the other side lives, plays, laughs.

After an enormously long period of time out on the porch (from breakfast...





...to hours of reading, to lunch, to more hours of reading), I slammed the books shut and went out to help Ed tear up the raspberry beds. One hour of ripping weeds, buried plastic, spent canes. Of course, one hour accomplished less than 1% of our goal for the season (to replant the entire bed), but I cannot think those kinds of thoughts. Too dispirited for my liking.






And then...  then! What an extravagance! I climb aboard Ed's incredibly worked over 1980 Honda motorbike, right behind him, like I used to do so often when I lived in the city and we'd go out together, God knows where, probably to the country -- I climbed on and off we go to our not too distant multiplex for a 5p.m. showing of Blue Jasmine. 

And no, that's not all! Returning home, we stop at the Great Dane Brewery and Pub for a supper at the counter. In the way we love  -- with scraps of reading material in hand and the occasional comment on the quality of the salad or the paragraph we may be reading, or life itself.

when, if not today?

Just shy of six in the morning, there is some movement in the farmhouse. Isis wants out, I want to be left alone, Ed tracks the both of us and comes up with some partly satisfying, but not really, solution. He's up and following Isis, telling me he'll be back momentarily.

Some twenty minutes later I hear the clank of dishes in the kitchen.
Ed?
Are you awake? I made a new batch of applesauce. Try this one!






I do. Without asking the obvious -- why are you making applesauce at 6 in the morning?
Because I suppose I know the answer -- if not now, then when?

We eat breakfast on the porch -- it is a really beautiful day, the kind that has the dry warmth of fall, the smell of spent leaves and false sunflower, growing wildly in the fields.

I tell Ed it's time to throw him the camera for the breakfast photo.






A good chance to record the skirt I struggled to exchange on the left bank, in August.






And now it's time to decide: will it be a rosie ride to work? That would be the easy choice. But why am I not biking? True, it takes twice the time, but it brings with it three times the health benefit. If I do not bike on this most beautiful day, then when will I bike to work?

Am I growing soft??

I bike.

We often sigh at the prevalence of soy and corn in the midwestern fields, but when I look out at an expanse of soy here in early September, I'm left breathless. As if clouds were casting a shadow and then letting the sun do its thing again.






The bike ride back, in the early evening, is leisurely. Equally bucolic.






Wednesday is Ed's night out on his own biking adventure. So I throw foods together for myself  instead of cooking a conventional meal.






Eat and exhale. That's the rhythm of an evening during teaching weeks. Eat, exhale.