the high road

We almost didn't go. Sure, the sun eventually broke through the clouds -- not forcefully, but daintily, enough to add that layer of gold that you love so much toward the end of fall.






But it was cold. And when you sit all morning long at a table piled high with texts, you get even colder. Your internal heat generating mechanisms doze off. Or something.

So in the afternoon, when I remind Ed that we had talked of biking over to Eplegaarden -- our local orchard with a Norwegian twist -- so as to stock up on honeycrisp apples, he hesitates.
Not for long. Okay, let's go, he says.
But then I hesitate. Maybe we should work on the raspberry plot? No cold bike ride involved in that...
No, let's go. 
Sure? No not sure.

Finally we put on warm jackets and gloves and pretend that it is really much warmer than the 38 degrees we see registered on the thermometer.

One goal is to pedal hard. None of this sissy stuff. Give the lungs a workout. Of course, that means that on the inclines, Ed soars ahead of me. And so it happens that he pushes forward and crosses a road and waits, and in the meanwhile, I turn up a road, thinking surely that this is correct and that he will soon backtrack and follow me.

But he doesn't backtrack. Not noticing my turn, he looks back and not seeing me, concludes that something must have happened. And so he pedals toward home. 

If ever there is an example of why we should all carry cell phones -- this is it! He's biking home, I realize what happened and chase him, shouting, shouting, but the wind is against me.

Many miles later he pauses and borrows someone's phone to call me and we reconnect. But what was to be a 15 mile roundtrip ride turns out to be almost twice that.

And still, I have no regrets. Once we turn away from the main roads, every inch of landscape is beautiful.





As we pause to watch a herd of cows...





...they spot us and come over hoping for ... what, food? love?

One could speculate. But we don't. We bike onwards and upwards and we find Eplegaarden and our beloved honeycrisp apples and we walk the orchard and pat a horse and admire a pair of goats and taste a grape or two left over from the autumn harvest...










The ride home is even colder, but we stop halfway, at the local community center where they are hosting the Thursday farmers market. Indoors. We buy a lot of vegetables.





And quirky other things. Who knew, for example, that we had amongst us at the Fitchburg winter market a Greek guy selling olive oil from his family's grove near Sparta.






It is very much evening when we turn our bikes into our driveway. Dinnertime. Ed suggests I make fish stew. We bought the veggies for it -- onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, broccoli. And I have a chunk of frozen salmon.

Oh, how good it is to be at the farmhouse, eating fish stew on this cold November evening! Let me not ever say an unkind word about this month again.

rerun

It's hard not to see a day sometimes as a rerun of another. A repetition of acts taken, meals eaten -- yes, the beloved breakfast...





...of anxious times with a clock ticking away as you rush to get that lecture polished before class. Of glances outdoors, leading to exclamations of delight because there will be the robins in the tree...






...and robins on the ground, too: these guys are still hoping for the worm:






Repetitions all. Peanut butter and apple jam for lunch, cold winds scattering new leaves on roofs, including glass roofs.


Later: looking out my office window, I see that usual quiet between class hours. One student passing by. Nothing more.





Were I to look out during the minutes between classes, the walkway would be packed. It's been this way forever and ever.


At home, reheating soup, chopping greens for a salad -- I've done it a thousand times before. We eat, Ed goes off for his volley ball game. I pick up the laptop. Nothing new there!

So why write about it? Because repetitions can be so good! Great, in fact! You wake up and everything is as it should be. Words exchanged, steps taken. Shower on, that wonderful soap lathered. Later, downstairs, honey drizzled over the bowl of oatmeal, stories told (or sometimes retold), plans made for the evening, for tomorrow, for the farmhouse front door, for the raspberry field, for anything and everything.

And that's just a fraction of all that thrives on repetition.

A day of total reruns and repetitions -- how good is that!

raining

It's raining work hours on me today. We wanted to do an early run for apples this morning (to the nearby orchard). Didn't do it. I couldn't spare the time.

Early, very early the phone woke us. A raspy male voice comes on: can we deliver wood chips now? We're on the list of one tree trimming company, and one utilities company for deliveries of their  chipped trees and branches. Both called today promising truckloads of chips. Two huge truckloads???

If I said we were done with rebuilding the raspberry field (it's no longer just a patch) I was wrong. With all those chips, we have weeks of work ahead of us.

Oh! Here's the first truckload. (By the way, if you can accommodate a truckload, this is the best way to get free chips -- put yourself on the lists of companies that are in the business of pruning trees.)






Yes, there'll be a lot hauling in the days ahead. 

But not today. We follow the more ordinary pattern of a Tuesday:

Breakfast...

 
Then work. There is a brief shudder of sunlight and I am so thrilled to see it take hold of the thorn-apple tree that I run out, only to watch it disappear. Last bits of it here:












And now it's back to a dense cloud cover.

And so long as we're reflecting on the last bits of anything, let me one more time (a last time, for sure) give a nod to the last of the show offs. Blooming away, in November.






But let's get back to the reality of a rainy (in the end) day. No rosie ride to work. Car time. WIth a walk through the city streets just to campus and then, after long lecture hours, back to the garage. Oh! It's raining and dark now? Uff...


 


A run to pick up take-out, then home. What a gift to be home now! To forget about the wet night outside. It's raining sweet drops of pleasure! Home. Farmhouse home. Mmmmmm....

swirling leaves, twinkling lights

How windy is it, you ask?

...So windy that the bedside window, opened just a half inch, lets in gusts strong enough to make me yank the quilt from under Isis and push it firmly against my chin. (Ed rightly points out that keeping a window open, even a tiny crack at times when you're either running the heat or the air conditioning makes no sense at all. He is correct. Except that I love fresh air that much, especially when it gusts inside and makes you feel like you are out in a forest. Of course, in the heat of July or the dead of winter, my infatuation with fresh air bows to sanity and the window is shut until March or April, when the temptation to crack it just a little hits again.)

...So windy that we spend the breakfast minutes staring at leaves, branches, spent flowers, swaying, moving, flying about outside.






...So windy that I abandon any idea of biking anywhere today. Good weather to stay rooted at the table with my work.





So windy and yet...

...this is the day that I decide to go out on the porch roof to sweep off the leaves. Why? Well now, that's a hard question to answer. Ed suggests that I wait until all the leaves have fallen (or not bother with any of it), but I want to develop a feel for the project: I am only allowed to step on the strips of wood (which are clamped over beams). How does that feel?  Will it be easy to sweep off snow? And so I step out. Through the bathroom window.

My, it's windy up here!






...But good! And there's a reason to clear and clean those glass panes -- Ed finishes putting up our chain of lights.





You want them year round, don't you?
Uh huh!

Our farmhouse is ready for the long winter.

In other news, well, you know the scoop on a Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday) -- there is no other news. Plenty of work instead.

...and a supper of cabbage/potato/kohlrabi soup.






And after dinner, I head for a talk at our local library -- interesting, sure, that, but what I want to show off here is the utter deliciousness of the finished porch project. Built, painted and now twinkling away forever and ever...

differently

Within the usual, a dose of the unusual.

Misty morning. Cold. Faintly sunny for once.






Later in the morning: so bright! You still think November is a drag?






I have a rather different midday Sunday: a lunch with colleagues. By the lake.






It's unusual for me to eat lunch and with colleagues and on Sunday. But, today has the unusual up and down its face and so here I am. What, can't see me or us? Well, I have long assumed that colleagues don't like random photos and so I keep my camera tucked away. But I can always photograph myself. And when there's a mirror, I get tempted!






After, I work, despite the gloriousness of the day.  Here, look how golden the farmhouse looks -- from out front (a view I rarely photograph).






In the late afternoon, which surely these days feels like early evening, I suggest we do something hugely energetic. Like bike full speed to the tennis courts, play a hefty game there and then bike like crazy back home.

We do it, but I offer several comments on this: first, my "bike like crazy" is like Ed's "pedal and yawn." So the only one who panted was me.

Then, at the hidden tennis courts, we came across a group of young people at one of the courts. They have a rubber ball, the size of a basketball and they use both hands or feet to help it across the net. Incredible fun. Where were these people when I was that age?

Ed and I play a good tennis game, considering my abilities (or lack thereof). Solid. I'm proud of solid.

And we bike home. I work some more and we eat a quiet supper alone. My daughter has a Sunday working dinner. No, nothing about this day follows a pattern.

Darkness comes early. That at least is very November-like. The shadowy month, promising nothing at all, except a colder season ahead of us.

the last flowers

Well, if Ed thought that I ought huff and puff more to feel on top of the world -- he surely had his way with me today.

We can't do much more with the raspberries until someone (we have a number of contenders) dumps a truckload of chips at the farmette. I suggested we survey our strawberries. We had thrown mesh on top of them to keep the animals away. It worked. But the mesh is now forever entangled with new sprouts and old plants and the whole thing is... a mess.

Still, this is not the time to transplant strawberries. One website suggests August or early September. Well now, I can't even pretend we're near that. Besides, I remind Ed that we have nowhere to plant new sprouts.

This is how we took it upon ourselves to clear a patch, right close to the sheep shed.

Clearing anything at the farmette is brutal. It requires pulling out trees, shrubs, weeds. And digging up fabric thrown down eons back in the hope of eradicating weeds. (It didn't and we decided it keeps worms away which is bad thing; fabric, therefore, must be dug up and removcd.)

So we heaved and pulled and dug and threw and panted...






Farmhouse to the south...






...sheep shed to the north






... the two of us in the middle, creating space for future strawberries.

And after three hours of this, Ed goes back to the farmhouse and  promptly falls asleep for the rest of the day.

Me, I sit down to do my school work and here's the remarkable thing: I meet my goal for the day. (This may be the only day in the entire semester where I meet my school work goal for the day.)

 So it was a good day, no?

No. It was a great day.

I'll leave you with the pics of the very last blooms of the year. These guys make me beam with pride.










See you in spring, you pinks and yellows, you... Rest up for then. I've got great plans for the next growing season!

continued

The threat of rain continues. Isis stays put. But I don't want to go outside! -- is written all over his face. When he thinks (incorrectly) that I want to kick him outdoors, he hides under the television.

It's a busman's breakfast. Ed is out helping a friend with one project or anther and so I take my oatmeal to my work table. I can't tell if it's still dark because it's early, or because it's that cloudy.






The sensor bell (a.k.a. Isis's doorbell) rings incessantly and since I know the cat is sprawled on the duvet upstairs (his hands-down favorite place to be -- even better if my feet are there for him to lean against), I imagine it's one of the many chipmunks that make their home at the base of the farmhouse. But as I walk over, just to see, I can tell that it's not chipmunks -- it's birds, swooping down and causing the air to shake. There are many of them and they all want a bite at the thornapple fruits.






We associate a flurry of robins with spring: the worms, hibernating as they do below the freeze-line, crawl to the surface, the robins show up to swallow them whole, the cats chase the birds (not Isis -- he never was a birder),  -- that's the harsher side of spring. But at the farmette the robins are equally present now, at the cusp of winter, raiding the red fruits, squawking at each other, working those wings as if in some ritualistic dance. They're filling their bellies. Some will fly south, some will stay by the fruited trees all winter long, picking, picking, waiting for the ground to thaw.






In other news -- I imagined dinners for the week ahead and picked up groceries for them.

In the evening, Ed took out the lights we purchased at Menards. They're holiday lights, but we're kind of charmed by them even without the holidays. (They're on right now.) Your remote controls their flickering and that's nice too. You wont get a photo tonight after all (it's raining, I'm tired -- the usual excuses). But picture this: outside, where it is dark and owls are hooting, you can see a chain of twinkling lights line the porch. On, off, twinkle twinkle twinkle, on, off.

It's a beautiful world out there, on this dark November night.  On off, twinkle twinkle, on off.

working in the rain

When you live in the country, your attitude toward rain is different. In the city, you take out the umbrella and forge ahead. Here, at the farmette -- I can't imagine taking out an umbrella.

I listen for a while. If I hear wind and a pounding of drops against the roof or window, I know it's a big one. I adjust: compost later. And Isis -- he'll be staying inside.

Breakfast. (Pancakes for Ed!)





I hear a pause in the rain. Nice. I push my books to the side. Out, let's go out and move a few losds of chips to the raspberry bed.

Well fine, but within minutes the rain comes back. But does it matter? It's warm enough. No one will see the wet strands of hair falling down my face (Ed will, but he's not one to complain). The smell of a wet autumn day is, to me, more powerful than that of a dry one, in the same way that a wet forest is more evocative than a sand dune.

Ed and I work in the rain. Pitchfork after pitchfork of chips. Shoveling dirt. Replanting, repairing. All in the rain.






We stop when I think I need to return to my books.

But the scent of wet earth stays with me. How could it not? I think of all the fragile plants that will benefit from it -- the transplanted raspberries, the bulbs that are just now establishing roots. Yes, all our plantings this year will be better off. And the fragrance! Ohhhhh, the fragrance of wet earth!






In the evening we go to the local farmers market -- last one this year. Ed wants cheese curds, I want to pay homage. Not that there are many farmers here today. Maybe four. For the others, the season ended with the first heavy frost.






We buy some radishes. Then apples. They're not great apples. The farmers are selling the fruit of old trees and though I'd like to believe that old apples can be as great as new apples, these are just okay.

Still, we buy them and we eat a handful as we drive to Menards (the home improvement store). There we buy twinkly lights for the farmhouse. But that's tomorrow's story.

change

I watched with great fascination this video clip (in the New York Times today). Titled "The Warsaw Way," it depicts the freewheeling approach to fashion young people have adopted for themselves, particular those who hang out around "Savior Square" -- identified as the place of a hipster movement. Paris is elegant, Warsaw is relaxed -- says one young woman as she shows off her layered look.

Now, I have two thought to offer here: first of all, I smile at this new way Poles view Savior Square -- epicenter of hipster culture indeed! I lived a quarter of a block from this square in my youngest years in Warsaw. It was (and it remains) a busy place where tramcars crisscross a circular open area and cars and buses push their way along the awkward and type space reserved for street traffic. Loud, chaotic and not too safe to navigate if you're a mere six year old passing through on her way to school.

But the square is proximate to the School of Engineering and, too, it's home to a number of language schools and the single metro line has a stop nearby -- all this means that there is now an influx of young people who are quite comfortable in the old and somewhat crumbling arcades that span many of the buildings here. (I write about a cafe on this square -- Charlotte; I visited it on my last trip to Warsaw... I called it a "hip" place then.)

My second comment is that Warsaw young people have always dressed with care. This isn't a new post-communist enlightened youth. Oh, sure, so many have access to better *stuff* now. But you cannot say that this generation is the first to glorify cool clothing or a careful presentation of self -- I surely saw it during my university years in the late sixties: appearance mattered.

Thinking now of my last trip to Poland (almost a year ago) made me glad I wasn't going there again this December. It's an icy cold and dark time to be in Warsaw. But I do recognize a faint feeling of a need to go back. In warmer times maybe. In spring, or summer. Yeah, when I'm retired and time flows according to a newly improvised schedule.


In other news -- you guessed it. It is a tough work day and so there is no other news.

Ah, but there is always breakfast. Eaten on a foggy morning. Gazing out, gazing in... Always, always, no matter how harried the day ahead, always there is breakfast.






Still on Rosie today. To work, in the fog...




...then, in the evening, back home in light drizzle. To chili. And the guys.

advice

My commenters, here and via email, took Ed's position: want to breathe calmly? Go out for a brisk walk in a forest. Go back to yoga. Forget about the credentialed guy dispensing advice on how to relax.

It's true of course. I can manage this! -- has been my phrase of choice, ever since I landed in this country to care for a child, having never baby sat in my life prior to this, let alone cared for a girl who routinely went horseback riding in jodhpurs and knew how to dive for quarters in the family pool. Nothing at all like the kids I knew back in Poland, who on a summer evening were more likely to gather in the cow pasture to toss around a volley ball, or pick mushrooms after a rainfall.

But, I have another catchy little phrase to live by -- learn from others. I tend to listen to advice. And then I take it or leave it, but I usually give it a good hearing. So if someone tells me to go listen to a relaxation guru, I'm likely to oblige.

But today was not a day to oblige anything or anyone. You know the ten minute run I was to do at home? Forget it. I got up, ate breakfast (flanked this morning by the beautifully bright light coming through the kitchen windows)...





...and worked.

In school, I really wanted to show my  class this 8 minute video which somewhat humorously depicts a discussion of some core concepts we're analyzing right now. And though I took the time to practice running the appropriate technology for it, in the final showing I could not figure out how to increase the volume (so that students could actually hear what was being said).

Who knew that tapping on volume arrows was incorrect and that pressing firmly and steadily on one such arrow would do the trick?

Which brings me around to the preoccupation with technology Ed and I have had in this past week, as we struggled (well, Ed struggled and I fretted by association) to understand why my mom's brand new lap top was not connecting to the Internet at her senior residential center in Berkeley. My mom and her senior co-conspirators were even brave enough to follow Ed's urgings to locate and reboot the router and still, nothing helped -- she could not get online.

We were about to give up and start all over with a new machine when she called to say that the Internet provider came over and admitted that some while back they locked Internet access for any *new* machines. In other words, it was their fault. But when everyone on her floor is happily clicking away, how would you ever conclude that it was something other than the new machine you sent over? 

I was thinking about how finding proper remedies for problems that arise is sometimes so elusive, through no fault of our own. How you may try to get all the pieces in order and how you do everything within your power to get it right and yet you can't. There is a missing piece and you cannot possibly find it alone, no matter how adept you are.

Still, if you have your wits about you, surely you would understand that many, many issues you can resolve for yourself, without additional input from an expert. Stick a kid on a horse and tell her to ride. Take a walk in the woods. Click on tabs until you find one that does the trick. All that. Go ahead, give it a go. But don't be shy about seeking advice. Sometimes it's not you -- someone locked you out and you just cannot readily get back in on your own.


The evening Rosie ride home  by the lesser lake: slate colored waters, darkening skies. This may be the last week when I take the old girl out for a spin. We are inching awfully close to winter.

obedient

In wanting to be a good, advice taking patient, I listened to what my doctor said last week about relaxation. Ed would probably say that I listen to what doctors tell me only half the time -- that I go to appointments not for advice on what to do about the ache du jour, but to have them tell me it's not a herd of zebras. You know the saying -- if you live in Wisconsin and you hear pounding hoofs, think horses, not zebra. Well now, if I hear hoofs, I often wonder if it's zebra after all. A doctor will point me in the direction of horses.

This is a long winded way of saying that today I followed the doc's advice and had a meeting with someone who is trained to relax people.

The appointment lasted an hour. And in that hour, he took my entire life history, possibly trying to understand why I am inclined toward zebras, but most likely, because that is what these people do.

Then he actually went to his computer and looked up the label for my particular type of stress. I should have just told him to call it vague Zebra stress, but you know professional people -- they like labels. So he searched and scrolled and asked for my opinion on several of the offered choices, then decided (with my approval) that I fit no category at all. Because, stressed as I am about a few things, I really am quite relaxed about a great many others. And, well, I'm not depressed, I'm actually quite happy. And looking forward to a huge number of things. And I love a bunch of people and some of them even claim to love me back.

So, without a category, we nonetheless proceeded to the part I was most anxious about -- finding appropriate relaxation strategies for times when I need them. And then he told me in a nutshell that I should resume yoga (make me feel guilty, why don't you) and that I should do some muscle tensing and relaxing stuff, which is exactly what two commenters told me for free, here, on Ocean.

Toward the end he suggested that  maybe I can come back and we can work some more on cognitive redirection, for those times when I face acute stress.

That sounded so interesting and peculiar both at the same time that I had to say yes. (I have a hard time saying no when asked point blank like that.)

Now, the time wasn't totally wasted. All those appointments caused me to drive by Owen Woods and though once again I was in a hurry and therefore I could not stop to take in fully the beauty of the season, I did snap a couple of photos for you, from an open window of the car.













Of course, I'm thinking now that I should have not made the relaxation appointment but used the hour instead to actually walk in Owen Woods. It's amazing what a walk in a beautiful forest can accomplish for you! Oh well.


In other news -- well, there is no other news.

We ate breakfast...





I worked hard to make up for yesterday's laxness and we ate leftovers for supper.

I couldn't fit in yoga today, nor a walk, but I ran in one spot for a good five minutes. Tomorrow I'll make that ten minutes, even though the thumping disturbs Isis who, like me, probably thinks it's zebras.

progress

A brisk but beautifully bright Sunday. An opportunity to move forward on farmette outdoor projects.

And so indoor work suffers. It's like that -- progress in one domain means that I lose ground in another. Never mind, 75 and counting!

What may I check off as real accomplishments today?

Farmhouse cleaning. Check.

As a result -- a very late breakfast. Check.





Then, as Ed struggles to find solutions for my mom's computer issues, I sneak outside with the  heavy pruners. There are some branches that can only come down if Ed's not staring at me with sad eyes.

So, a good touch-up to the tree pruning: check.

Then, we both work on tidying the raspberry patch. It's only about 20% repaired, but we're likely to let it go now until spring. We pull out the last of the monster weeds, clear some more invasives and rake everything to a good clean finish. Check. Or at least -- to be continued in Spring.

Finally, I work again on painting the porch boards -- the highest ones by the rafters. The ladder is extended, and I spend a good bit of time going up, coming down, moving it over, going up, coming down, moving it over... But by late afternoon the job is done. We'll leave the beams in their natural finish. The rest is painted. Check.





Dinner. I got it in my head that I should make Moroccan chicken. Lots of spices, some squash, onion -- very autumnal, very satisfying. (It's an improvisation on this blogger's recipe. Thank you Ken!)


 


Daughter and husband are here to share it.





Too few hours were spent today on lecture writing. That's a shame. But, the night can be shortened, the work day extended...