Thursday

At dawn, the skies had just that touch of mist to them -- enough to create a delicate pattern in the sky, but not enough to hide the fields, the distant hills, the gently blue sky.






And sure enough, by the time I let the cheepers out and clean the coop, all wisps of mist are but a memory. Here's the farmhouse in the bold colors of full blown spring.






If you look toward the barn, you'll still see some apple blossom petals on the path, but most likely, your attention will be drawn to the lushness of the largest of my flower fields.






It's warm enough to eat breakfast on the porch.






The cheepers get a treat now as well -- bread bits mixed with tasty blossoms. Happy girls indeed!






The rest of the daylight hours I devote to Snowdrop.

Here she is just after her bath, watching a toy roll away and articulating what has become her favorite phrase of late -- oh-oh! As in -- now look what I've done! Always with a twinkle in her eye.






I suggest a hair clip and this triggers another favorite -- the pulling off of the hair clip.






(The way to get it to stay on is to slip it in when she is distracted. I'll try again later.)

The sun is out now. Want to go for a walk, Snowdrop?
Really? Now? Let's go let's go let's go let's go!






It's so warm that when we pause at the coffee shop, we find a delightful spot outside. No sweater needed! She, of course, studies the activity on the street...






... and at the other tables...






Looking this way and that, missing nothing.






Oh, isn't this grand, grandma?






Time to head home. We take in the used dishes and the high chair and I tell her to find the stroller...





Such a glorious day to be outdoors!

And so I am thrilled that our out of town visitors suggest that we meet them for a walk in the afternoon in the Arboretum. The vast expanse of grass, beautifully framed by lilacs and blooming trees takes the breath away and gives a Snowdrop the freedom to explore. Forgive the photo run. It's as much of the Arboretum as it is of grandmotherly pride.
















This way, grandma!






Magic!






One of the best play moments for her? Dandelion puffs!






For you, grandpa Ed! Dandelion shreds!











From here it's but a short drive to the farmette. And because it's Snowdrop's last visit here for a couple of weeks (more on that later), I let her have her romp with her friends...






And leave for myself an image of her under the willow branches.





Such a beautiful day!  Of lilacs and little hands clutching dandelions. Of running, indoors and outdoors. Of filling your lungs with the scent of May. Oh, how I love having nature right there, at my doorstep! I know Snowdrop loves it too. She tells me this again and again, in a thousand ways.

Wednesday

I am awake and up before the light takes over the night sky. What time is it? Four thirty? Close to five? I work on a few emails and I watch as the darkness yields to a dense fog outside. Eventually I go outside to let the cheepers out. The fog has crept into the farmette too and the world feels wet and clammy, but not unpleasant.






The farmers' fields to the east and north of us are lost in the thick air and there is a calmness to the landscape that I quite like.






I look at the flower beds -- they're doing well! They loved their day of gentle rain!

What's blooming? Well, I can appreciate the peonies that are close to popping their buds.






But honestly, the lilac continues to take center stage. Here it is again, still sagging, still beautiful.






...equally beautiful when brought into the house. (Breakfast is in the kitchen. The book is a new one that I just acquired for Snowdrop.)






My morning today is, in fact, with Snowdrop and I arrive just when she has finished breakfast. I love to surprise her with fruit toward the end of a meal and I happen to have some strawberries in my bag... Here you go, little one.






After her bath, she is still drying out...






But very very quickly she pushes for an outing. She brings her shoes. She brings my shoes. I work on teaching her the word "later."

She settles in for a period of play in the kitchen, with child-sized kitchen utensils.






They fascinate her no end and she spends a productive half hour putting them into the wire basket and taking them out again.






And throwing them on the floor.
Now, what have I done here?


 



And arranging them on her chair.






I love her creative approach to play! It is like that of an older child, except more secretive, because I cannot really tell what's on her mind -- I can only guess.


And eventually I say -- you're dry! Let's go! 
Really, grandma? Really?? Here are your shoes again...
Actually, those are your daddy's shoes, but thank you anyway!






My daughter, who has been working upstairs, takes a pause and joins us for the walk and this of course delights Snowdrop! So much so that she wants to stand in the stroller, facing us, enjoying the camaraderie. Let's strap you in, little girl.







We go 'round the lesser lake and we stop at the cafe, where Snowdrop shows off to her mom that she knows darn well where the high chair is.






And she knows that we put it back after our turn with it.






Meanwhile, back at the farmette, Ed is spending quality time with the cheepers (who have grown to be quite affectionate with him).






This is our day. Nothing unusual. So very sublime.

Tuesday

We woke up to rain. I was happy to hear it splashing not too gently on the roof. All the new plantings need a rather steady drenching of water in their initial stages of adaptation. I don't mind standing over them with a hose, but this natural shower of rain is much nicer.

When I went out to open the coop for the cheepers, the rain had died down to a gentle drizzle. I noticed the crab apple had lost most of its petals. How quickly everything changes! One month ago, the farmette landscape was entirely brown! Now, we're past the bloom of the fruit trees and nearly done with the daffodils.






I spend about an hour cleaning up the main raspberry field. We had gone to great trouble tidying it several years ago and if I don't prune it back, it will become a jungle again. The drizzle turns into steady rain again, but I continue. Somehow, it feels good to be out here, working in Ed's now very wet jacket.

The rain makes the lilac branches sag. Beauty isn't diminished by a heavy load. One should remember that.






When I see the yard in this bounty of sagging limbs and half hidden structures, I am nearly always reminded of the initially very beautiful but ultimately tremendously sad movie that I saw many decades ago -- the Garden of the Finzi Continis. I was young, I had just moved to the States and I was a bit overwhelmed by what I had left behind, both in terms of history and, too, the visual magnificence of the gardens, fields and forests of my childhood. I went to see the film in New York, where I now was living and though it is set mainly in the gardens of a Jewish family in Italy and the theme ties a sort of coming of age story to the encroaching fascism of the prewar era, I saw in it every powerful emotion, festering in a bucolic idle, even as very little happened from one scene to the next. Eventually, outside forces (Mussolini) ripped raw the peace and tranquility of the setting. Without that horrible intervention, there would have been great continuity in the gardens, the occasional romantic yearning, a game of tennis among friends.





Maybe it's that the soundtrack of the movie so parallels the one in the farmette's gardens: it is here as it was there one of constant birdsong. We have so many trees and with trees come the birds.

Most of what I plant grows, as you know, in a hidden from view courtyard. It's secretive and calm, moving forward with serenity, without fanfare.

(Did you ever see our crumbling main entrance? We haven't fixed it yet. Maybe we never will.)





If there will be no intervention that would undo the peace here, it will be like this year after year -- the most important event being the planting of something new, the trimming of branches, a glance at a grandchild, a lilac bending its branches after a rainfall.



We don't eat breakfast outside. It's in the 50sF (low teens C) and the front room seems right for a wet and cool day.






We watch the cheepers venture out toward the front of the house. They rarely come here and never go near the road. If you drive by, you might wonder what crazy people let their chickens roam free in this fashion, but the cheepers know that their center is in the court yard. Not here. And certainly not by the road.






I work inside again and in the afternoon, I run through my list of errands, appointments and even a quiet drink with law school friends.

Dinner is at the farmhouse -- we have guests (another set of Ed friends), but I have no time to cook dinner for them and so I merely bring home Thai take out.

If every week had a few days like this one, I would be delighted. Snowdrop may want to be outdoors every waking hour, but sometimes, I just like to have time inside, looking out.

Monday

You could not have a day as different as today was, when compared to yesterday. Oh, I don't mean to imply that today was worse, though one could argue that gray skies are by definition less colorful than a sparkling blue, especially as a backdrop to May blossoms and delicate greens. So yes, we have the gray skies and you needed a sweater if you were to sit outdoors, but I didn't spend much time outdoors -- and in this lies the great difference. (Nor did I see Snowdrop who is for a couple of days still under the care of the young parents and their visiting guest.) My planting done (except for our veggie garden, but it remains too cold to plant tomatoes), I now move into the maintenance stage of yard work -- a much more "day to day, let's decide as we go along" type of thing.

No maintenance today. I catch up, instead, with life on the inside.

Sure, I let the cheepers out.






Yes, I admire the lilacs.






And the cascading phlox.






And we even eat breakfast on the porch, because it's just so pretty out there.






(Ed claims the garden is beautiful when the crab apple petals fall to create a snowlike cover over the path...)






But then I hide inside. (An appropriate yard analogue: Ed's mom's bronze figurine, hiding in our woodland garden.)






By late afternoon I feel absolutely sick with inactivity. The last days were so intense and difficult (and thus beautiful), and suddenly, I am sitting in at the kitchen table all day catching up on paperwork, casting an eye at Ed who is in the courtyard, fixing, in turn, my car's shock tower, rosie the moped's starting mechanism, and my bike's tires. Ever since Snowdrop came into this world, I've biked so little, Normandy to the contrary notwithstanding, that I can't even remember my bicycle's pet name!

Time to get going!

Late, and under the threat of rain, I let go of my computer, mount my bike and pedal over to the library to return due videos (we are that rare breed that chooses library videos over a subscription to Netflix).

It's not a long ride. But it's hilly. I feel good about that. I can still wrestle the difficult. And that's a good thing.

a mother's Sunday

While lingering over a very prolonged and very late breakfast on the porch, Ed says -- this could well be the most beautiful day of the year. The crab apple is at its peak, the lilac is blossoming, the sun is out, the air is pleasantly warm...

So true.

It is, of course Mother's Day and I hope that if you are a mom, you're feeling good about all that you have done in that role, because I'm sure it's a lot. I hope, too, that you have a chance to smile today at the joys that went along with all that hard work. And if you're not a mom, well, you surely had one in your own life in some small or large fashion. You can muse a bit about that connection. I hope, in the end, the day brought you many smiles and pleasant thoughts.



Because of all this good weather, I am, once more, in the yard shortly after 6. I want to finish planting today! I start with the front bed and work my way inward.

After putting in the last plant (for now; flower fields are always a work in progress), I am tempted to take a photo of the entire bed, but the field is too long and it runs parallel to the road and so it doesn't lend itself to a good panorama. So for now, I'll just include a photo of what's blooming there and of course, it's sort of a cheat, because these two (the gaura and the lavender) were planted with buds ready to pop. Still, they are awfully pretty at this early hour of the morning.






I'm not the only one working at this hour. In the fields to our east, the truck farmers are tilling and planting as well...






This is our day! The one where the outside world is so very inviting!

(Perhaps the best perspective right now is one that acknowledges the lilac by the farmhouse. I didn't plant it -- it's old and though I keep trimming it each year, I have to work with what I have there. I have no complaints. It's a great bloomer with a heady perfume and the cheepers love hiding underneath its bushy twigs.)






(That is, when they are not messing with my plants.)






(I mind it less when they go after the little buds in the pots: those always grow back. Here's Butter enjoying a salad of alyssum.)






Our own breakfast is exquisite.






Since it's Mother's Day, I hand the camera over to Ed -- somehow I feel it's right to be part of the breakfast post today.





If there is one flaw to this beautiful set of minutes, it's that the gang of five chooses this time to come look for grub. Hawks. Typically, I do not worry once the trees have dense foliage. The girls know to hide. But this group is particularly aggressive. A few of them settle on the silo and I hear a racket there. Do they go after the pair of doves that live inside? I hear a cooing sound for the rest of the afternoon. Is it a sad mother who has lost her chicks? Or is it a content mother, glad that everyone is safe?

Too, Henny has just finished laying and there is a skittish innocence about that girl! The hawks are in the yard and two land on the barn right when she leaves the coop. I'm out shouting and waving my arms and the big birds eventually leave. Our girls are safe.

The day picks up its gentle rhythm again.






In the evening, the young family and my daughter's visiting friend are here for dinner. It's time to use farmette bounty: eggs for baking, rhubarb that is exploding right now.






Everything's ready just as our guests arrive...






We take the meal outside to the porch.






And it's glorious -- it really is (though I do miss my younger daughter -- but hey, I'll be seeing her and her husband soon!).  Snowdrop loves shrimp and they are part of dinner. But honestly, since she arrived, she has wanted so very badly to walk the land. She reminds us, plaintively, passionately.

Finally, she walks. First with her mom and friend...





Later, with her dad too. How she adores that stroll through the flower fields, under the willow, around the barn and up by the raspberries! Perhaps almost as much as I do.

She is at first reluctant to get back in her high chair, but when rhubarb and strawberry "pudding cake" with whipped cream are put before her, Snowdrop digs in with joyful enthusiasm.





I'll end with that  phrase -- joyful enthusiasm. Those are good words that quite accurately describe my own mothering adventures. Grandmothering as well!