Sunday photo album

What a day! Stunningly warm and beautiful in the most unexpected places. I'll offer you few words, but very many photos. To make things easier, I've split things into three chapters:

I  Morning with Snowdrop

You'll remember that the little girl was with us for the night. She wakes up at her normal  time -- around 7. Except that our clocks are pushed back, so it's really 6.

That's okay, I'm ready for it. And she is my willing partner in the routines of the early day.Want to go out with me and open the chicken coop? Yes!

In the last weeks, as she asks me to read one of her favorite books about weather (I know -- kids have such singular tastes!), I have had a hard time explaining to her what fog is. Today, I have my chance, as the morning horizons are touched by wisps of heavy mist. Put on your jacket, Snowdrop, we're going to look at fog!




She's surprised. Probably she doesn't fully appreciate the concept. Things feel wet and unwelcoming to her. She is happy to get back to the farmhouse.

After a long warm bath, she is raring to go. Breakfast with gaga and ahah? Yeah! Pancakes!






Love that maple syrup!






(But she also tastes and loves my oatmeal with fruit and honey.)

After breakfast -- morning play. With trains. With trucks. With characters.






Do you want to go outside now?
Yes!






We go to the front yard, where we have the prettiest golden maple leaves. I'm thinking she'll enjoy playing in them.

She does!






The cheepers come down to see what we're up to.






The air is getting warmer by the minute. It's an exhilarating time to be outside!






Snowdrop loves walking through my front flower bed. There are a few blooms left -- I let her pick whatever she wants. In mid November, you quit worrying about preserving flowers.

Lavender!






Nasturtium!






Gaura (aka whirling butterflies)!






Hydrangea!






And now it's time for me to take her home.


II Paddling


Ed has been proposing a kayak run for us for quite a while. Recently, he discovered a paddling trail that is about as close to home as you can get: the idea is to load the truck with kayaks and bikes, drop off the bikes at lake Waubesa and then take the kayaks to the put in point at one of the streams that feeds the lake. The total paddling time is estimated at about 4 hours, but we run into some snafus!

At first -- narrow, but navigable.





But then, the stream goes underground! We have to get out and walk our kayaks through muddy marshy land. Okay, we manage! We persevere!

And here comes my least favorite part: paddling underneath the superhighway. It's long. It's dark. It's shallow. We cannot paddle. We have to use our hands to push away against the highway underbelly. You have to do it -- it's not as if you can turn back...






Phew! Done!

The stream then becomes quite pleasant.


 



Very pleasant indeed...






Until we come across a total blockade of fallen logs.

We struggle here. At one point, I get out to move some timbers (I'm more nimble at getting in and out of a kayak in tricky situations). Ed heaves. We push our boats.






Success! We continue.






Finally, Lake Waubesa. Are we almost there Ed? (My arm muscles are feeling the workout!)





A couple more hours and we're at the place where we left our bikes.



III Sunday Dinner


We are home just in time for me to begin dinner preparations. It's Sunday and so the young family is here for our evening meal. Snowdrop is terrifically excited! And I am too!






The dinner ends. Ed settles in to watch an evening talk show. Snowdrop loves to keep him company.






Day is done. Yes, fuller than full. In the best of ways.

the last market day

Just as Madison's first outdoor market heralds the arrival of spring in April, so, too, the last market -- always at the beginning of November (today!) -- tells us that Fall is rapidly changing gears and moving toward a frosty wintry period. It doesn't help that we switch clocks on this same weekend, so that tomorrow I'll be fixing dinner long after sunset.

And yet, if you were to go outside today (and who wouldn't?), you'd think that we are stuck in the warmth of late summer.

Ed and I eat breakfast in the sunniest room of the farmhouse...






... and when I go outside, I notice that the iris plant just wont give up!





True, there is at least initially, a nip in the air and when I go to Snowdrop's home for our final walk (with her mom) to the downtown market, I suggest a cap.






But it turns out to be a ridiculous idea! In fact, within minutes, even the jacket is too much. It's a sunny, warm, and brilliant day to be outside!





As we do our shopping (and I buy, among other things, twenty pounds of tomatoes because we think we haven't enough of our own to last us all winter), my daughter and I reflect on how much Snowdrop has changed in these last months. She looks forward to our market outings now  and knows what to expect. At times she helps push the stroller...




At other times, she nibbles on market samples (favorites today: little tomatoes and cheese curds!) and toward the end, she loves to romp on the green grass of the Capitol Square.

(She watches another child climb a tree. Yesterday, I showed her one climbable fir at the farmette. I can see her one day sitting on a branch...)






But she is still the little girl who every now and then loves just to be held...

(Toy store? Yes, Snowdrop -- we can visit the toy shop.)







At home, I take stock of the tomatoes...





...and decide they need a day or two of further ripening. The rest of the daylight hours I spend outside, working the yard from one end to the next -- pruning, snipping, cutting, trimming.

It's a beautiful time! Backbreaking work never felt so good.






Evening. It's a weekend where Snowdrop is an overnight guest at the farmhouse. She arrives bubbly and happy: there'll be pizza. There'll be a new toy from the toy shop.


 


But mostly, there'll be two attentive people -- gaga and ahah -- enjoying her antics, her conversation, her sweet and cheerful disposition.

Pizza night with her is special in that we do not sit around the kitchen table. We take our slices to the living room and turn on the TV! Unpardonable? No, actually great fun. True, she doesn't quite follow the PBS News hour, but maybe that's a good thing!






Perhaps the most beautiful moment comes when I ask her is she wants to go out with us to put away the cheepers. Of course she does!

It's dark now, but there is a sliver of a moon. Snowdrop looks up, acknowledges the moon ("there's moon!"), then tells me, excitedly, "two stars!"

Yes, there are two stars. Possibly more than that, but at the very least -- two stars.

beautiful November!

I'm used to gorgeous autumnal weather in September. Wisconsin nearly always delivers a string of bright, brisk days then that just make you sing! But this year, that string was knotted and punctuated too often by long spells of wet, humid weather. The bugs were happy. Me -- well, it wasn't what it should have been.

But November thus far has been glorious. Oh sure, there'll be the rain now and then, but there appear to be many many days of pure sunshine. Crisp, yes, but in the most pleasant of ways.

We're on a more normal schedule and we eat breakfast by the light of the day. This is as we like it. It in itself is reason to smile.






I have appointments that mess a little with my Friday grocery store routines, but on the upside, I drive past Madison's Owen Woods and I catch that last bit of brilliant autumnal color.






And when I show up to pick up Snowdrop, her teachers have her bundled up for the outdoors, which I can understand...






It was cool this morning. But the sunshine now does away with the late autumn (yes, it is late autumn!) chill...

("That's gaga car!")





And I quickly put away her coat for the rest of the day.


At the farmhouse, she spies the baguette, freshly purchased this morning.

The girl loves baguette bread. I mean, really loves it. I'll give her a piece, she'll beg for "one more baguette!" I'll smile and agree to "just one more," knowing quite well that I'll get a grin and a plea for "one more!" with one finger lifted up in earnest.






It's always interesting to watch Snowdrop (or any child for that matter) rediscover an old toy and give it another, a more sophisticated go around. Snowdrop loses herself in this for a while...






And then I play music, to get her in a quiet, restful mood, but she still has a spring to her step and she dances...






... and dances...





Until I say -- okay, Snowdrop. Time to rest.


In the late afternoon, Ed returns from work and she is tickled pink to see him again (and he her). It's been a while!






Snowdrop's mom is here too and the little girl shows off her balance beam skills.















The light fades. This weekend we'll go through what Poland went through a week ago -- a shift in time. For now, it still feels like we're in the grip of a very golden Fall. Warm sun on our backs, the occasional flower still throwing out a blossom.





Such a beautiful day! Just ask Snowdrop.

wild things

Another predawn (and I mean really predawn) start to the day. And a predawn breakfast. It's been many a week since I had a leisurely wake up! I'm thinking -- we both look and feel tired.







Still, there are benefits to being up this early.

(Sunrise on a misty morning.)






(First beams of sunlight hit the crab apple and its steady stream of visitors...)






(The little red apples sparkle from the wet air, the leaves look as gold as bricks of the real stuff from Fort Knox.)






Normally, I like to check our variously positioned mousetraps before Ed leaves for the day. If there's a catch, he gets to ride with the critter to some far away fields. (November is the month where we have a steady parade of these guys, looking for a place to settle in for the cold months.) But I neglected to inspect the trap in the basement and by the time I do check it, Ed's gone. And yes, there are two mice in it. I'm stuck with taking them away.

On the upside, it really is a pretty morning to be driving along country roads!






(By the time I turn around and come back, the sun has done away with the fog.)






Most mornings, I set up shop in the kitchen. My computer faces the garden and I have a pretty view of the changing landscape. Today I glance up and notice another visitor, this one substantially larger than a mouse.






Oh, the signs of the coming of winter! Still no frost though. My annuals are going strong even though it is November.

And it's another beautiful November day! There's no question: I pick up Snowdrop and we head for the little park where she runs with abandon toward the playground.






In some ways, Snowdrop reminds me of Ed: she, like him, likes a challenge! At the playground, she gives short shrift to the swing and shrugs with indifference at all three slides -- she's mastered them all! What's the point?

Ah, but the life guard's chair, perched on a steep ladder? Yeah!





The future life guard of Bernie's Beach!





And how are you going to get down, little one? I expect the often repeated words -- I need help, but instead get her now even more frequently stated -- I can do it!

At home, she should be resting already, but I have to admit, it's hard to interfere and put a stop to the games she invents for herself. (Here -- brushing penguin's hair while riding on a hippo. Why not?)






Later, much later, as we play in her room, I poke into her closet, looking for a jacket for her to wear later this week. She sees me. "Yellow jacket!"  she wants to put it on. "Bunny rabbit on it!" Yes, that's right -- there's a bunny rabbit. She is insistent. "Put it on!"

Why not... Does it make her feel snug? Does a bunny rabbit bring her reassurance in life? Who knows... She is happy. The jacket stays on. For a short while anyway.






Her parents come home... the sun fades... all is calm... All is as it should be.

like Warsaw only different

Today I was reminded that you can wake up to cold, wet November days in many places -- not only in Warsaw.  It is dark and gloomy when we sit down to breakfast, which again is an early affair, as Ed has another day of attending to stuff at work.

He glances over at little red riding hood, Snowdrop's doll from Poland.
So they have that character there too?
Obsessively so. Only she seems to be good friends with wolf in this modern incarnation.






Even on a dark November day, our big old crab apple looks magnificent. There isn't a season when this tree isn't absolutely stunning!







When I pick up Snowdrop, it's raining again. She's equipped with a slicker and some pretty slick boots and she isn't too concerned about getting wet. Indeed, as we come to the farmhouse, she spots the broom and gets right down to work.






... even if the broom is a tad too tall for her.






She is undismayed.





I remind her that I want to get a batch of cookies into the oven. I suppose that seems like a bribe to get her inside, but honestly, the cookies have been on my to do list for a while.

I'm impressed how well she remembers the baking routine. It's been several weeks, after all, since we've done it together. But she knows what to do: which chair to bring to which counter, how to position it, what to mix, what to lick, what to eat (raisins!).

As the cookies bake, she loses herself in play.

Her love for her stuffies knows no bounds. You can always get a grin out of her by reminding her of, say, cow. Or penguin. Or in this case -- black cat.






(I know, I know -- she's sort of all over the place with her attire today. If it were up to her, she'd play in short sleeves, but it really is a chilly day...)






When I put on an over-shirt, she's hoping this means she can go outside.
No, little one. Nap first.






But after her rest, I cannot (or at least I do not want to) hold her back. We do many things outdoors: take a walk, have her work the balance log, collect seed pods. And she does her dance with the cheepers. They spin circles around each other -- they, in the hope of a treat, Snowdrop -- because she wants to believe that they're her friends, which, at some level, they are.






At the farmhouse again. Warming up. Reading the weather book once more.





They say the rains are moving on and out of here. They say there will be sunshine soon. I'm happy about that. And yet, I can't say that Snowdrop and I were worse off today, frolicking in the half drizzle.

Kids force you to take another look at weather: what's poor in your view may be quite fine in theirs and before you know it, it's fine, indeed grand, in yours as well.