Wednesday

A humid day -- first cool and drizzly then hazy and warm.

We aren't deterred. The bindweed has to be forked out of the ground, the tomatoes have to go in. The young orchard (apples, pears, cherries), surviving (for the first time!) a winter and spring of deer (Ed built sturdy cages), needs to be mulched, the melon, pea and bean seeds must be planted.

And so again we work in the rain.






We pause for breakfast...






... and then we return to it. (The cheepers are munching on their breakfast treat of a stale doughnut.)





I have to stop to meet my baby sitting commitments and this is a good thing, because it gives me a chance to take a few deep breaths and refocus. Yard-work can propel you from one task to the next and before you know it, you are dead to the world. Snowdrop requires a different set of skills, most of them Sherlock Holmesian: let me try to deduce what the baby wants now!

Snowdrop runs through her "exercises."  She sits. (Yep, she's blowing a bubble!)






She tries to crawl.






And when she has had enough of it all, I bounce her around and show her the thrill of being agile and strong. (A series of selfies follows.)






And she is that.






With occasional breaks of a restorative kind.






Because Snowdrop and her parents have an appointment this afternoon and because the three of them are heading out together tomorrow for a day away from home and work, I say goodbye to the little girl earlier than usual and for a longer period than usual (I'll see her again Friday).






But the fact is, my pause in Snowdrop care comes at an okay time. I have my yard work list to guide me through an intense period of farmette chores. I'm psyched for it.

Today, I weed, I mow, I transplant. There is that heady scent of lilac in the air. The crab apple is in its most glorious point right now. It's an intensely beautiful moment here!

















(one more view of the daffodils)


By evening I am ready to sit down. Ed is out biking tonight. I reheat chili and take out my laptop to write.

scooting forward

We work in the rain. I had started a list of farmette outdoor must-dos and the list grew and grew and so we could not turn our back on the yard merely because of the showers that came down off and on, all day long. If yesterday was sunny and very warm, today is just the opposite. (Though you could argue no less beautiful.)






Immediately after breakfast...





...we head for the new orchard.

I think to myself -- it's the kind of day where a dram of scotch whisky would fit in nicely. (I had watched a report yesterday on 60 Minutes about the Isle of Islay.  I had to smile when I recalled that I bought back several bottles of the finest of Islay scotches last June, thinking they'd fit in nicely into a cold winter evening. In fact, I had a sip only on two occasions this entire year and they felt strangely out of context -- as if I need just the right Islay atmosphere to appreciate this powerfully warming drink.)

Finally, by noon, the rain has soaked through my jacket and I feel cold enough to call it quits. We had pulled up weeds around six of the seventeen new fruit trees and we are spent. In the evening we'll have cleared three more. It will not warrant a cross out of a full line on my must-do list, but nonetheless, I'm happy with our progress.


In other news, my acrobatic granddaughter spends the afternoon at the farmhouse. Here she is, practicing her siting skills.






But do you think she'd roll for me today? No! She's onto bigger and better things! When I place her on her tummy, I can almost sense her grinning at me with impish pleasure!  No rolling around today, grandma, I'm interested in moving forward!








And scoot she does. After her toy, off the quilt, hunching, squirming, heaving forward!






Let it not be said that this four month old (she is that today!) chooses to be still and wait for the magic to happen!






I look at the time: it's her lunch hour. On goes the bandana bib.








Soon, grandma? I'm hungry!




Maybe I should eat rabbit...




Bad idea...




Where's the good stuff, grandma?!


In the evening, when Snowdrop leaves, we are at it again outside, until I throw in the spade and retire home to cook supper. I've cut a few sprigs of white lilac to bring inside.






As I place it in a jar on the kitchen table, I glance out the window. Ed is spending a few minutes with Oreo. The other hens, shy as anything, move in closer nonetheless. The chicken whisperer, I think to myself. Give him a cheeper and he'll quietly make friends.






A few minutes later, he walks down to get the coop ready for the brood. It's still wet outside, still gray, but just a touch warmer now.

roll over, roll over

I'm probably not the first to observe that we live our lives running in circles. Perhaps this isn't a bad thing. There is a certain predictability to it all. Take, for example, weeds (and yes, please do take our weeds!): we're battling bindweed here at the farmette, both in the vegetable garden and in the newly established flower field. If you first saw it you might think - pretty! Sort of like a white morning glory. Maybe we can live with it! Well no, we cannot. It grows underground, develops long vines that wrap themselves around anything in sight and eventually you'll see more of the weed than of the crop or flower you planted. And it's nearly impossible to eradicate.

This isn't the first garden foe. Three acres is a lot of land and invasives have a fine old time in it, spreading, multiplying and creating a nuisance for someone like me -- who likes to control growth, at least to some extent.   Creeping charlie nearly smothered our raspberries until we established a perimeter and vowed to religiously pluck it if it crossed the imagined borders. Last year, a lily of the valley (so pretty! until it's not...) nearly destroyed my path-to-front-door garden. Violets are always entering every piece of open space (so pretty! until they're not...) and don't get me started on burdock,  thistle, bramble... oh, the list is not short!

And so I focus on an area and work on whatever pesky nuisance is trying to dominate it and I try not to think about the new orchard (it needs our weed control NOW!) and the rest of the tomato plants (they need to go into the ground NOW!) and the peas, beans, and melon seeds and and and...

I do this every year and I can't imagine anymore living in a place where I cannot do this every year.

And now you know what I attended to immediately after breakfast (which is on the porch)...





...Our gorgeous, imagined, planned and executed porch with the glass roof and huge panels of fine screen -- a screen created for Florida homes (it can withstand hurricanes)! The porch is my summer place of respite and it is a vital part of life at the farmette (where summer mosquitoes abound; we live close to wetlands).

From the get go, I've wanted a door from the kitchen straight to it and from the get go Ed has balked. When I re-raise the issue of that door, he'll immediately jump to my assistance with passing dishes through the window, proving how unnecessary a door would be and we do this for a while, until he forgets, or I'm in a hurry and then we go back to me carrying everything clumsily through three sets of doors and I begin to raise the issue of a direct porch entrance all over again.

Ed, come on! Roll over already!



The cheepers continue their beautiful parade through the farmette, pausing only to eat the bread I throw them...






And then it's time for me to take out Rosie and head for Snowdrop's home.

Ah, Snowdrop! How you blossom each week, each moment of your life!






(Who, me?)






I take her for a walk...


 



... around the small lake and we take in together the magnificent views of the big lake...











The sun is warm. It truly feels like summer. Could it be that just two months ago, the landscape was cold and brown?

We're back at Snowdrop's home. Tummy time? Yes, we have a few ounces of play left inside.






Ah, but the little one surprises us! Quite suddenly, she pushes herself up, up up up...





...and rolls right over onto her back.





And because no one can believe what just happened, she does it all over again (giving me a chance to take the above photos).

I was going to give this post a different title, something like "everything in life is circular." But when I sat down to write, the image of Snowdrop hoisting herself up and then pushing herself over to her back made me reconsider. Because even if it all seems like a repetition of past events, a little one's set of days is not just a redraw of steps taken by other babes, past or present. Snowdrop, just a day short of four months today does something unexpected and I shake my head -- say what? You did that?You are uniquely wonderful!


 Back at the farmhouse, the cheepers come running when they see me coming toward them. I have a few stale doughnut pieces to give them. Oreo hangs back. He wants the food, he worries about the squirt gun. I go up to him and give him a chunk of a blueberry cake doughnut. He grunts, then throws himself at the unexpected bit of treat on the ground.





Repetitions? Maybe. But the combinations and permutations are never the same. In growing things -- be they plants, chickens or babies, you learn that nothing is ever predictable, nothing feels boring. All the more so if it's your garden or your grandchild. I say -- hey, she rolled over today! You say -- big deal... I say -- oh, indeed it is!

Sunday

Well, I hardly slept last night. I was so convinced that the baby monitor wasn't set right that I kept myself awake thinking about it. When I dozed off, Isie boy woke me up demanding food. Often times I ignore those predawn requests, or I tell him to get lost, but today I worried that he would wake up Snowdrop and so I caved. After that, I may as well have watched the sun rise. There was to be no more sleep for me.

Snowdrop, on the other hand, had no trouble sleeping eleven hours straight.

My daughter tells me that when she wakes up, she is all smiles and gentle coos and stretches and this proves to be the case at the farmhouse as well. (I obviously failed at swaddling her tightly enough to last the night.)






I follow the patterns that she has at home. That means a prebreakfast bath (she needs it!) and then a nice long feed. And then we have about an hour of play!






But not much longer than that: we have a schedule: Snowdrop, Ed and I are to join my younger girl and her husband as well as my older girl and her friend (Snowdrop's dad has been out of town this weekend) for a celebratory birthday brunch downtown. You'll be wondering -- is it a Polish thing, this prolonged celebration of a birthday? I mean, I've been 62 for nearly two weeks now. But I have never known a daughter to pass my birthday without a meal together to commemorate it and so the Minnesota couple made this their time to wish me a happy birthday.

I dress up Snowdrop for the occasion.






Well, she looks adorable from within, but still, a summer blueberry dress is so joyous on a day when it's supposed to be quite summer-like! (Here, she is being introduced to Sophie, the rubber giraffe which I read on Amazon has been a beloved teething toy in France for decades.)






We eat heartily at brunch, and it is the sad reality that after the meal, the Twin Cities duo has to pack up and head home. The best thing to remember at a time like this is that their next visit will take place later this month. I can wait a few days! Sigh...






Ed and I head home. We now have a long list of gardening tasks before us, not the least of which is planting the tomatoes into the ground.






I promised Ed that my predictions of no more frost would hold (in previous years my predictions were so off that we were left throwing blankets and sleeping bags at night over the prematurely planted tomatoes)!






We set to work.





Unlike planting flowers, the tomato job is back breaking and tedious because the veggie field always has weeds that need to come out before the seedlings go in and of course, there are just so many tomatoes! We make good progress, but we're not even half done when we stop to rest.

The winds are gusting and there may be a few storms passing through later tonight. For now, it's a gorgeous day. And I'll remember it as such.

oh May, oh my!

Glorious, blue skies, a warm breeze and radiant sunshine -- you could not wish for a more beautiful May day!

Breakfast on the porch. As I struggle for the hundredth time to take all the foods and plates out and then bring them back in, I tell Ed that it's time for another farmhouse project -- to fashion a door that would lead straight from the kitchen to the porch. He grunts, he protests, but he does not say no. I have hope!






The cheepers stay close to the farmhouse. As we look out at them, strutting this way and that, and at the flower fields that are just now throwing vibrant shoots, it all seems so perfectly balanced and in harmony, so magnificently right!






It's a good feeling -- one of utter tranquility.


Afterwards -- well, perhaps you'll recall that on good weather Saturdays, my daughter and I like to go to the downtown farmers market together. It's about a half hour walk from her place and Snowdrop is a great stroller baby and so the four of us (my daughter's visiting friend joins us) set out to repeat this wonderful tradition. In fact, I'd been going to this market since my girls were wee babes themselves and so it is especially poignant to watch my daughter ready Snowdrop for this most noble excursion!






Three generations, at the market.






The sun is really warm now. Snowdrop's sweater comes off. She is now almost a summer baby. She looks with great curiosity at her foot!






...and at us, as if to say, accusingly, with a pout -- you never told me I had toes!






Let me highlight a favorite product from each market I go to this season. My daughter and her friend may vote for the cheese curds (balanced on the buggy, bottom center)...






I'll vote for the fresh arugula from Snug Haven Farm.





Completely, utterly delicious.


And still later, my younger girl and her husband arrive from the Twin Cities! Snowdrop is thrilled! Others to adore her!






And so the house runneth over with young energy!






The day stays warm and that's grand, because there is some celebrating taking place -- downtown, outdoors, in honor of my older girl's work accomplishments. (Can you tell that I'm dealing with a different age demographic here?!)






Friends. They are so important to us!






And sisters! How could we ever get through tribulations and celebrations without them at our side?











I stick around for a while -- until Snowdrop herself is all partied out and then she and I go home to the farmhouse. She'll sleep here tonight.

[Earlier conversation:
Ed, help me set up the baby monitor! Snowdrop is sleeping here tonight and I need to be able to hear her from upstairs!
But you can hear everything from upstairs!
I want to be sure. I wont be able to sleep if I strain to listen for her cry.
You can hear a mouse walk across the floor. You can hear me right now!
You have a booming voice.
Okay, it's set up. Can you hear me better now?
Well, I can hear you, period. Whisper, so I can test it!
I'm whispering.
Okay, we're set.]

Snowdrop and I play, but only for a little bit.


 


I'm sleepy and contrary to what the photo may suggest, she's exhausted! Goodnight Snowdrop! Sleep tight! And through the night!