farmette vacation (with a pause)

I was ready for our farmhouse guest. Well-rested even, as Ed offered to do the cheeper run in the early morning. I was to pick up Snowdrop at 10 and bring her over, suitcase and all. For a longish stay. While her parents attended to important work related events.

I played the role of a grandma who wants to please her granddaughter: I snitched Snowdrop's favorite dinner recipe -- a one pot black bean enchilada bake -- and started chopping ingredients even before breakfast, so that I would only need to pop it in the oven come dinner time.

I check on the garden and tell it to hold tight for a while. My attentions are going to be elsewhere this week.

(In the road-side bed, I planted seeds of a unique burgundy toned nasturtium. To say I had trouble coaxing it to growth is an understatement. Today it produced its first bloom.)






(Oh, the rich colors of the season...)











(The emerging garden...)






A quick breakfast on the porch...






And I'm off to pick up a barely waking girl, bringing her to the farmhouse still in her pj's, with night-time penguin tucked under her arm.





You're embarking on a farmette vacation, Snowdrop!


Our day is full. It's warm, sunny, breezy, delicious!

A pool, a wagon and chickens.






(Scotch: I've never seen an octopus before.
Me: Scotch, put away your envy. Chickens can't swim.)






Wet faced, with a globe flower in hand. (She never picks any of my flowers. I snipped this one for her.)






And then she helps me push the wagon and like a little pied piper, she has her entourage...






I take her to the young orchard and lo, there are just a few cherries and they are ripe and they are delicious!











(A yellow one too...)






(We save one or two for Ed, who comes out to join in on the cherry raid.)






It is hard to believe that this little girl once distrusted the red wagon. She loves it. LOVES it. Yes yes yes! (Her catchall word that means "I want more of this please do not stop please please keep going, don't you dare stop!")






Three acres give me space to take her this way and that. My, oh my, I never noticed the inclines before... puff puff...

Alright, enough. Let's stop and smell the roses. Or at least admire the flower pots.






Come inside, Snowdrop! 
Okay okay (her newest word.)






In the farmhouse now. She "reads," we play...


 



...and then comes the phone call telling us that postponements and delays have crept into the young parents' schedules and so in fact, they've a wee bit of time on their hands tonight and maybe Snowdrop can spend the night at home and vacation with grandma can officially start tomorrow?

Snowdrop and I are ever flexible and so after a lunch, which we eat outside (which delights her no end)...






... where the girl devours half the blueberries in the farmhouse...






You want more? Okay, let's get you some more...






... she and I get in the car  and we pick up her mommy so that we can all seek out music together! Make Music Madison is in full swing today. (Were you in any number of other countries on Solstice -- France comes to mind -- you'd see this event in every town and village -- musicians taking to the streets, attracting listeners, dancers, onlookers. I am so happy that Madison has adopted this musical tribute to the longest day of the year!)

Our first stop  is at a Madison institution. What? You've never had frozen custard?? 






Snowdrop has her first taste of this rich and wonderful dessert. (Thumbs up!)






We then go next door to Wingra Park. There's another musician there, but he isn't the draw. Snowdrop has her run in the park...






... a play with mommy...






... and a long gaze out at the boats that come in, go out...






And finally, we walk over to Glenwood Children's Park. Families have spread blankets and suddenly we are among friends. The music is good, but it's the mood that draws us in. An invitation to sit on a blanket, to share in some snacks, a beer perhaps... Children listening, just a few moving to the sounds that drift up up and away...






This feeling of communal well being is what you want for your little ones. Of inclusiveness. Of music.





In the evening, I wave goodbye to the little girl and her mom and return to spend a quiet evening at the farmhouse with Ed.

Monday preparations

Nothing about this week is ordinary. Nothing. As I noted earlier, I am to have my second week of house guests, or rather just one house guest, starting tomorrow and I want to prepare well for her. And so I am up at 5 and right after opening the coop (and chasing Henny out -- Henny, who has perched on Java's egg as if it were her own), I admire the way the garden is starting to unfold...

(Only in nature does deep orange work well next to deep pink.)






(A summer iris arguably even more beautiful than a spring iris.)






(The extraordinary day lily.)







And then I fix, I clip, I transplant, plant, and finally I water the beds that I hadn't had time for yesterday.

All this takes me up until 10. I am very tempted to go back to bed and get up maybe tomorrow, but I push aside such indulgent thoughts and get our breakfast out on the porch rather quickly...





... because I am due at Snowdrop's home in a few minutes.

And this, of course, is not ordinary, since on Mondays, the little girl typically comes to the farmette, but here's the deal: she is going to go on a vacation starting early tomorrow, thereby justifying a different routine for today.

But within that, we do the usual. The walk. The coffee shop. The pushing of the stroller. Still, I know that this is the last time we'll be stomping through her neighborhood for a while and so I hand you a few photos that will seem awfully familiar, even as for me, each one is so very unique...

(Playing hide and seek in the coffee shop...)






(Pushing the stroller...)






(Back home, studying the trucks and cars book...)






Is this it then? No more Snowdrop on Ocean for a week? Oh, quite the contrary! Her parents are sending her on a vacation to the farmette! Just because I live close by, doesn't mean she can't sleep over at grandma's house for a fistful of days!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have to continue my preparations: menus to plan, activities to schedule...

I'll leave you with a solstice full moon tonight. I see that it is the first solstice full moon in more than 50 years. Strawberry moon. Beautiful over the fields to the east of us.

Goodnight, moon... goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere (from the beloved book by Margaret Wise Brown).

Sunday

On a day like this, a brilliant gardener retires to the hammock and reads a book, sipping lemonade. It's not wise to plant in the strong sun on a hot hot day. It's not wise to water then either: you lose so much to evaporation.

But I am not a brilliant gardener and since Ed again retired from his work just as the sun was rising (thereby offering to let the cheepers out), I do not get up to take advantage of the early morning to do yard work and so I decide to throw caution to the gentle breeze of a summer-like day and get going with my outdoor work. I plant, weed and trim and, too, I water. Some of the mature beds haven't needed watering this year at all. The rains did the work for me. But we're in for a dry spell and I have this one day when I can do my meditative hose spraying (I do aim at the roots) and so this is in fact how I spend my day.

(Planting in the big front road garden...)






(Watering the day lilies. Photo by Ed.)





When I come inside to get a cold drink (lemon sparkling water never tasted so good!), I confer again and again with Ed in the matter of Henny, our green egg laying young hen.

In the last two or three days, she has holed up in the roost, sitting sometimes on the eggs of the other hens, sometimes on nothing at all. All day long.

Ed claims she has turned broody. (This is when a chicken wants to hatch the eggs.) You cannot tell her that no amount of sitting on unfertilized eggs will produce a young one. You have to chase her down and make her rejoin the pack.

But I have a different view on this: I think she is terrorized by Scotch, the self proclaimed top hen (once herself terrorized by the white Butter, who in her older years has turned mellow, as if to say -- listen, I've seen it all... chasing power is not worth it...). Scotch chases Henny relentlessly whenever the little one wants to share in the goodies I spread for them. It seems to me Henny is hiding.

We talk about our chickens all day long: during our late morning breakfast...






... during dinner too.

And in between, I tend to the garden. Oh, the bright lights and promises of nearly summer!






(Phlox Carolina Miss Lingard, often called the "wedding phlox"  is the star in a solstice garden.)






Of course, because it's Sunday, the young family comes over for supper.

(Snowdrop casts an eye to see if grandpa Ed is paying attention...)






(I could just stand here and drink from my cup and watch the sun go down...)






(Ed hurries in from watering the tomatoes. Snowdrop is already halfway through her corn. She will have eaten her ear and most of mine before the dinner's end.)






(Playing games with her daddy...)






Ah, but that all children could have the joy of looking up to their dads in the way that Snowdrop looks up to hers! Happy Father's Day indeed!





Big week ahead. In good ways!

Saturday in photos

Early morning walk: yellow day lilies and sedum, mauve veronicas and delphinium. I smile appreciatively. The colors of early summer. 

















It's going to be a hot day. The spring tail end planting (because it still is spring, technically anyway) will have to wait. Tomorrow morning maybe? I take stock and hurry ahead with other tasks relegated to this morning.






Breakfast: the last meal with my visiting friends.






They're off, returning to their southern home. Will it be even hotter there?


I do the usual weekend stuff: clean, wash, prune, tidy, organize. And then I hurry to Snowdrop's home. She and her mom are waiting. We're to walk to the big downtown farmers market. Where the colors again are of early summer.






After we're done strolling/buying/sampling, Snowdrop is rewarded with time on the grass: to run, romp, play. To push the stroller, of course.





Today is the day of the annual naked bikers' ride. Perhaps a hundred or so clothesless bicyclists spin around the Capitol Square. A young girl looks on and asks her mom-- what are they doing? The mom answers -- they're riding their bikes without clothes. Don't you ever do that!  I grin.





Snowdrop is completely indifferent to the whole thing. She runs on the grass, looking for cooler shady spots.






Her mom lifts her high in the sky and I notice how the little one has completely turned into a golden haired girl. A summer child.






They walk this way, she runs that way...





We finish our market excursion. I grocery shop. Late in the afternoon, Ed and I tidy the buckwheat patch  and then I water some of this year's new planting. Did I mention it is a hot hot day?

Tomorrow? Hot again. I don't mind. I want to take in that emergent summer air. Because these colors, scents, warm air -- they're a fleeting thing. A beautiful few moments before we plunge into the thick riot of the summer season.

Friday in photos

The sun rises, then disappears. Every day. I get up with it. And in the summer, I start itching to retire soon after it's completely dark outside. They say there's a name for that kind of a person -- one who is tied to the sun's rhythms, but I don't know what it is. A "sun person?" (My grandma was that kind of a person so perhaps I'm simply mimicking her patterns?)






(I do love that early golden light...)






(What's blooming? Take a look at what's about to take off! Each bud is a day's blossom of course...)






The cheepers, like me, are up early. (Or is it that I'm up early because of them?) Today, Ed joins us in these young minutes of the day. Truthfully, he was so engrossed in his work that he did not go to sleep until after sunrise and then only for a couple of hours. He would be the opposite of a "sun person." He sleeps when he has the inclination for it and not when the sun tells him it's time.

The girls walk together in the morning. I don't know why.






I always think they look so cool -- like a pack of best friends out to see the world (or the front yard as the case may be).






We're back to warm weather and a bit of a tighter schedule for Ed and myself (because it's Friday). Still, my friends join us for breakfast. It's not a farmhouse rule, but it is a tradition. You go along if you like it. Most people passing through here like it.






And then I am with Snowdrop. It's a hot day again and I do not wait long to go out with her.

She spots my motorcycle and shows some interest in it. Okay Snowdrop -- meet rosie.






We walk to the distant coffee shop... (Find the high chair, Snowdrop! Kids so love repetition...)






And then, as always, she chooses to stay out of the stroller. Here's a classic Snowdrop wave:






An easy way to keep that smile on her face: let her push the stroller.






I suggest the small local park by the lesser lake (a boat plows the weeds so that recreational lake people can make use of the waters...)


 



... and Snowdrop's happy enough -- runs right down into the water...






Enjoys being barefoot...






Enjoys the swing...





But I think the heat is just a little too intense, because she does not insist that we stay. A few minutes later, we're on our way home again.


In the afternoon, my friend Diane and I head out for a walk. Just the two of us -- to the shady Arboretum.






I've been to this place maybe fifty times and out of all these visits, only about half a dozen have been without incident. Today was not one of those without incident. Oh, we started strong! But within an hour, we were lost and it was my fault. Here's my forgiving friend, on the porch, many hours later...






Dinner? Oh, Thai take out. On the porch.





Late into the night. And this, of course, is super late for someone who thinks herself to be a sun person.