rain?

Maybe because we still occasionally mist a little cedar oil around the entrance to the farmhouse. Or maybe it's that I keep the area well trimmed. Or maybe it's that once they found better digs, our mosquitoes decided to set up shop elsewhere. For whatever reason -- we have far fewer bugs around the farmette structures than, say, out in the open fields.

So that when I stood at dawn, admiring the sunrise (yes, yet again Ed slept through the cheepers' wake up and release hour), I was sufficiently bothered by mosquitoes there, that I did not linger.






I did some spot pruning early in the day, but not a lot. I worried that I would have to water the remaining flower beds later on and so I held back on gardening. To conserve enthusiasm for it.

Everything is so dry and the forecasters tell us that we only have a slight chance for rain -- today, if at all. Though in general, I rather love working in the garden, it does suck up the hours of a day rather quickly and I do want to move on to other projects. I've been stuck on the same routines since I've come back from Europe and everything else is growing cobwebs and collecting dust balls.

What morning photos do I have? Let me start with this little group: it's as if the wild and free has a close encounter with the elegant and sublime!






In general, it's been too cool this year for a boisterous lavender crop, but the plants are still trying to keep their spirits and stalks up. Take a look at the bushes that line the driveway:






This is a small bed that I completely neglect on Ocean (it's not as photogenic as the ones facing the courtyard) but it is one that everyone sees when they come to the farmhouse. In addition to the lavender, there are these guys:






One more note on the morning activities at the farmette: the white hen has recovered! She is laying again and her appetite and energy level have returned!






Phew! Enough wondering around outside. Breakfast time!






And later, there's a lucky break: the thin band of thundershowers passing over the state today? It comes straight at us and we have a nice, prolonged dousing of the farmette lands from above, without human intervention!

The cheepers don't like it and the mosquitoes probably view it as an opportunity to massively reproduce, but I am happy that we have added some nourishment to all things bright and beautiful. Even if it all looks a bit damp and gray for the afternoon. (As seen from the porch just now.)

Sunday

Sleepless night for both of us, though for different reasons. I'm thinking forward thoughts, he's preoccupied with a machining project. And so he sleeps through the chicken wake up time. I go out and open the coop.

Sunrise!






Retreat to sleep. And now we try for another start to the day. More coordinated. We clean the farmhouse. A real scrub down. It always makes me happy to see it refreshed!

A mini breakfast on the porch. Not a big meal. We have brunch plans! Just a small nibble now.






And now the celebration of my girl's birthday begins for me: we meet her and her husband downtown and we have a terrific meal together. Nothing feels more urban and out of the ordinary for me than a brunch out. It's a good way to fall into a festive frame of mind.






But after, Ed and I return to our old Sunday habits. I work in the yard (it's so dry! two hours spent on watering the new flower bed!). Ed naps. Presumably making him more alert for more machining work tonight.
















Ah, but then we regroup and come together again. Because my birthday girl and her husband are at the farmhouse for supper too. The pleasure of two meals in one day with them!

I set it it out on the porch...






A simple meal. Nothing extraordinary. Pasta with a homemade sauce. But it has "birthday" written all over it.





Which means gifts. Clothes for a bigger belly. And cookbooks!





And the rhubarb strawberry cake for dessert. Which a commenter asked about and let me tell you -- it has been immensely popular here, at the farmhouse, so I am happy to pass on the recipe. (You'll notice that the positioning of the fruit is entirely different here than in my past two cakes.)  Such a grand Sunday! For you as well, I hope.

Rhubarb Strawberry Pudding Cake (Gourmet, 2007)

1/4 c water
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
1/3 c plus 1/2 c sugar
2 c chopped fresh rhubarb stalks (I used a little more)
1 c. chopped fresh strawberries (again, a tiny bit more)
1 c flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 c whole milk
1 stick unslated butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 400.
Butter an 8 inch square glass or ceramic baking dish (I used regular cake pan)
Stir water, cornstarch and 1/3 c sugar in saucepan, then stir in rhubarb. Bring to simmer stirring constantly, then simmer, stirring occasionally, 3 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in strawberries.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and remaining 1/2 c sugar in a bowl.

Whisk together egg, milk, butter and vanilla in large bowl, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined.

Reserve about 1/2 c fruit mixture, then add remainder to baking dish and pour batter over it (in my case -- I needed to distribute it evenly, as batter certainly wasn't a "pourable" consistency), spreading evenly. Drizzle reserved 1/2 c of fruit over batter. Bake until wooden pick comes out clean, 25 - 30 minutes (I baked it for 32 mins). Cool in pan on rack for 5 minutes before serving. 

weekend review

One of the toughest things to keep straight when you're retired is whether you're on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The other days are obvious, but these three? Confusing. If you have set routines, it helps. I do the weekly grocery shopping on Friday (I once believed that produce is freshest then and so I got into the habit). Oftentimes I go to the farmers market with my daughter on Saturday. Sunday is family dinner night. Blessed routines!

Unless something reshuffles.

This weekend, there was a ton of reshuffling.

Sure, I shopped, but we ate leftovers that night (because there was a yummy salmon soup that needed to be finished) and that threw me off: you don't eat leftovers on a day you buy fresh produce.


Then, my daughter was out of town today (or was it yesterday?) In any case, no farmers market. And no other marker of what's what. So yesterday, I thought we were on Sunday, and the day before -- well, Saturday, because it precedes Sunday! And it didn't help that today (is it Saturday?), Ed had to go in for a special open house that his partner organized at their machining business. So it felt like Friday, because Ed only goes to meetings there on Fridays. Today really threw me for a loop!



(Isis on the porch with me)


And the chicken duty: that's totally confused right now. I know, I know, that has nothing to do with the days of the week, but it only adds to the mess in my head! I let the cheepers out today because it was one of those nights for Ed...



(before sunrise)


It doesn't help that he doesn't fully distinguish between night and day so that after the open house at his business, he fell asleep to make up for that sleepless night and so now I'm left wondering whether we're in the midst of a weekend day and if so, which day and if not, is it because it should be night?

At least there is the predictability of breakfast.





There is an easy way to restore balance in your soul: clip some coreopsis! I don't know if you know this flower -- it throws hundreds of blooms in early and mid summer and here's the thing -- it will keep on blooming if you dead head spent blooms. I have at least a dozen coreopsis plants. If each offers hundreds of blooms to dead head, well, you do the math.

Hours. I spent hours on the coreopsis project.

Then I baked a cake.

Our rhubarb is having its second wind (I blame the severe pruning job I did before the wedding). We already have more rhubarb compote stashed for the winter than I could possibly use. How about a rhubarb strawberry cake? (I know: a conventional pairing. But one that works!)






Time to retreat. Get some rest. Tomorrow it's my daughter's birthday. Well not really: just the celebration of it. The actual birthday was yesterday. I'm sure of that one. Ocean does not lie.




(today's flowers, including the yellow coreopsis))

cats and sails and flowers too

Cammie, the wandering cat came back today and I hurried to distract the cheepers with sunflower seeds so that I could put out cat food for her. When she saw me moving about, she did her usual disappearing act, but then she came back, found her food, licked herself clean then left again.

It's a warm and muggy day. So fitting for August. Breakfast was pokey...


 


...and then rushed as we glance at the time. How did it get to be so late?!

Both of us have things to do today. None of this lingering for hours nonsense. Ed's off to his techie group meeting, I'm off as well, to visit the cats at my daughter's house (she and her husband are gone for the day and I promised I'd peek in to make sure they haven't destroyed the house, each other, the world).

Well now, the hiding duo - the two cats recently added to the household - are a bit less shy today! After weeks of patient care (and some hissing and pouting on the part of the older cat already here), the shyer one, Virgil, comes out from under the chair...






...only to go under another chair -- one with much better viewing possibilities...






...and then, prompted by a tidbit of a treat, comes out altogether and meows his sweet meow, begging for another.






I think about Cammie and her wilder habitat and, too, about Isis who was himself once wild and now has turned into the cat with the sweetest personality on the planet. The erasure of fear brings out some stellar animal traits! I wonder why we, humans, so often are hell bent on promoting fear. And then are surprised when people hiss and spit on the perceived menace out there.

I spend a while on the porch reading this afternoon. It feels lazy, I know. It is lazy. I'm avoiding looking at my step counter. I take a few flower photos -- not too many. The riot of color is getting that August look of passing abundance.






Yes, still a mega-dose of color...












...but I can tell that it is slowly beginning to recede. In the weeks ahead, individual blooms will become much more important.












There is thunder outside. Maybe it will rain. My plants need rain.


Inside, Ed is making pickles from the multitude of cucumbers growing in our veggie plot.





Why the odd lettering on the pickle containers? They date back to years when Ed would take food stuffs on his sail boat and brave the ocean waters for weeks on end. Ed never throws away things that may become useful someday.

Evening. I make myself a drink I haven't had since last summer: an aperol spritz.





A toast to summer? Yes, okay, that. But also to my older girl who turns 33 today. Happy birthday dear one! And of course -- happy, happy year ahead! Smooth sailing, yes, I wish that for you: calm waters and a joyous ride!

Thursday

Sunrise

He comes up after letting the cheepers out and tells me - it's a pretty sun out there.
So I should get up?
Not necessarily.

But I do get up. And I walk over to the fields farmed by truck farmers to the east of us. Their crops don't have the visual beauty of farmer Lee's fields when you drive by, but I see that if you follow the path into the depths of where they farm, you come across fields of flowers. So pretty against a misty sun, pushing up in the early morning!







What About Us?

It struck me that certain flowers in my beds are feeling insulted. I talk about the lilies. I talk about the peak season being July. I show off the flashy trumpets, the composites of color -- all good, all glorious, but I neglect the little guys who are just coming into their own now. So, let me give a nod to the late phlox, the nasturtiums, the cosmos.. they will stay with my 'til frost and I love them to death, I really do.











Steps


When I glance at my step counter, it displays a number so low that I don't think I could even call myself a couch-potato. Yes, I'd enjoyed a prolonged breakfast on the porch with Ed...






...But after, I just stayed there. As if no life existed beyond that little corner behind the screens.

That cannot be. My steps tallied to 1000 by afternoon. They should have been ten times that amount.

So I go for a walk/run -- to the beautiful park by Lake Waubesa. The place where we cross country ski nearly every day of winter.

What a difference a season makes!






A ground hog runs across my path. Scared, he scurries up a tree.






I think about Martha (our groundhog) back at the farmette: I haven't seen her lately. Animals come and go. Cammie, the feral cat hasn't been around. Martha has kept quiet. You never know why some show up, others do not.


The walk is splendid. The prairies  surely are at their best. Monet would have been out with his easel.






One of the many park paths runs close to Lake Waubesa. I catch a guy sitting at a picnic table, just looking out at the water. In the wintertime, we'd sometimes come across someone just sitting in their car at the lot, motor running, heat on, staring at nothing in particular. Perhaps relishing the quiet. During the summer, they can do this outdoors.






But unlike in the cold seasons, it's never really quiet in the forest or the prairie now. Birdsong. There is always birdsong.






Late

We play tennis, we go to the market, I cook dinner. All good moments. Except... except, one of the hens is not well. I can tell. Her red crown droops. She isn't interested in treats. Her bottom sags. Ed doesn't buy it. She's fine... Denial.

I think about when my own girls are not well. When they were little, their issues were small. They didn't seem small, but they were that. I understand it now. Would a cold spoil the fun of Christmas or a birthday celebration? So small!

Looking at my (according to me) sick hen I wonder what goes through her head during these times. Probably a feverish desire not to feel sick. Hen, you share that with half of humanity out there! A feverish desire for it to be alright. If not forever, then for a long, long time.


I leave you with a day lily. Because for a few more minutes, it's still July --  it truly is their best month, when all is well, all is beautiful.

animalia

It's a good thing that sleep for the farmette residents can be spread over all portions of a day. Were we limited to the night hours, we would be in trouble.

Why? First, there are the habits of the farmette master himself: he works on his various machining projects at odd hours. If inspiration strikes at 9 p.m., that is when work for him begins.

And when he finally crawls into bed say at 2 at night, that sleep may not last long if our ever the nocturnal cat decides to cry at 3 second intervals beginning, say, at 4:30 a.m. We interpret that to mean he wants to go out for a romp across the yard. The farmette master and primary caretaker of said cat will stumble down to let him out and then will wait until the cat decides he's had enough -- usually ten minutes later. Cat inside, master upstairs, once again trying to sleep.

At around 5, the rooster will begin to crow. We don't mind. He's not very loud. Since sunrise now is at 5:47 in these parts, we don't immediately respond to the crow (besides, he doesn't stop crowing just because you let him out). Indeed, we're afraid of releasing the cheepers too early. Don't racoons cavort sometimes just before sunrise? So we wait until closer to 6.

Hold on - why do I write "we?" The responsibility for cheeper care has shifted to the farmette master -- that same guy who has a soft spot for the unpredictable rooster. And the routines have changed somewhat from the time when I did the job back in the spring months. Nowadays, the white hens perch on the fence at bedtime, and Scotch, the brown hen, goes in the coop, and the rooster rests somewhere on the pile of logs behind the coop, so that the night chore consists of shooing the hens off the fence and picking up the rooster and giving him a final sweet rub on the cheek and then making sure they are all inside the locked coop for the night. Only when Ed had the summer sniffles did I take over once again. Now that we're both well, he does the chicken care.

Well, that's how it mostly works. This morning, I felt sorry for him, what with the late night and the incessantly meowing cat and so as 6 a.m. approached, I said to him -- sleep on, dear man. I will do chicken duty this morning!







I go outside and.... what's this? The chickens are running toward me in a morning greeting that is sort of unreal. How is it that they're outside??

Ah! Someone forgot to do the evening chore of locking them up for the night! Only because members of our local animal kingdom (racoons and possums come to mind... I haven't heard the coyotes lately) chose to rest this night and not prowl around for food do we have chickens scampering about the farmette at all!

The cheepers do appear to be a tad disconcerted. As if that freedom wasn't so comfortable after all. As if the break with routine made them feel at loose ends, not knowing what's next, or what the day's agenda may be for them. Shortly after the morning greeting, they retreat under a bush and feign sleep. Or maybe they do sleep. A late night party requires some compensatory shut eye.

As if all this wasn't enough to set everyone in a tizzy, it is the day that two families of wild turkeys decided to march across the farmette land, right by the cheeper noses. When each party noticed the other, it appeared for a minute we would have a scene straight out of a Capulet-Montague confrontation. With dire consequences for some involved. But, I heard the squawking and threatening noises, and my presence caused the turkeys to retreat and the cheepers to settle back into their comfortable positions under the birch tree. Crisis averted.


The good part about having had a morning stroll is, of course, the loveliness of that garden walk then. Just a few photos -- I'm sure you think you've seen all blooms from all angles already. Not so! They're ever changing!






And now that August is almost upon us, they are going to recede. Our gardens peak in July.






On a calmer note, I must note that breakfast was back to the old paradigm again...






...and, too, today marks the last evening Concert on the Square (and if that isn't a mark of a summer in retreat, I don't know what is!) and my daughter and I attend (along with 35,000 others). We eat supper on a spread out blanket...






...and look up at a Capitol awash with lights...






...and after, I return to the farmette and the cheepers are put away already and (I hope) all's right with the world.

a quiet Monday

You'll say -- how is that different from the other days? They all seem quiet!

Well now, I suppose that's right. How often do I step out of this farmette and rub shoulders with the wider world?

Ah, but I travel -- I'll answer. And when I return, home again, "quiet" is a very desirable entity. It's as if I need it to digest everything.


Today I did not step out much. I dutifully rode the bike to the library...



(past harvested wheat)



...to return old stuff and take out new stuff, and my stepper applauded me for my efforts, but aside from this, I stayed put.

I could end the post right now, because if I stayed put, is there more to add?

Yes. No day is the same. So for example, for the first time in a long while, Ed and I did not eat breakfast together. It was one of those moments where he almost forgot a meeting at work and when he did remember, it was impossible to imagine that we could fit in a morning meal. This was his breakfast:






And this was mine (much later):






Otherwise, let me fill your space with flowers, okay? So, this batch is for you.



(toward the sheep shed)





(north of the farmhouse)





(west of the farmhouse)