why does this Friday seem like something other than a regular old Friday?

Some days are so calm and ordinary that you feel like you're merely floating through each hour, exerting no effort, enjoying the gentle breeze that pushes you along.

This is not one of those days. We are moving along alright, just a bit tumultuously! Oh, not where one side is shouting some obscenity and the other is toppling into murky waters and still others are wiping sweat (rightly so) off their collective brow.  Ours is a controlled and not unpleasant chaos. Most assuredly though, this is not a conventional Friday.

Perhaps I ought to put out the two overarching themes of my forthcoming weekend -- each crucial in its own way: first of all, we have record breaking weather here, in south central Wisconsin: with a high of 58F today (14.5C), it feels more like May than the middle of February. So sunny! So fantastic! So weird!

Secondly, for a number of reasons, Snowdrop is spending the weekend with us at the farmhouse. And so quite obviously, everything is going to be a bit topsy turvy, as she will be setting my agenda for the next few days.

Oh, but these are just the basic parameters. There is so much more before us!

But breakfast is deceptively calm. A bit rushed, as Ed has his tech meetings and I have my weekly grocery shopping to attend to, but nevertheless calm.





And then he is off and I am off, but here come the twists and turns. First, after many hesitations, negotiations, considerations, we have decided to rent that skid steer loader (basically a machine that you use for digging and hauling), crossing our fingers that Ed can haul that thing home from the bobcat rental place behind his truck. If he never arrives, I'll know that he got stuck somewhere and can't get home.

And here's another twist: when I pick up Snowdrop at school, I see that she is diaper-free and sitting on the potty. Well now, isn't it lucky that we have before us a warm weekend!

It's as if we were to throw everything into a caldron for the next few days, without any clue as to what might emerge at the end of it all.


I cannot resist taking Snowdrop on a short walk after school. So sunny! So very pleasant! (And yes, there is another unusual element -- the kids had pajama day at school and so she is, in fact in her piggy and elephant pj's.)

She begs for a snack and so we pause briefly (believe me, very briefly) at the coffee shop and since it is really so pleasant outside, we take our snack out to the patio. But Snowdrop is really eager to get up and get going. The playground is right there, within eyesight...






That's fine. We can check it out.

It's not entirely operational. Puddles, melting ice -- the tell tale signs of February are still there. Still, she loves climbing the life guard tower...






... a place that offers a fine view onto the melting lesser lake.






A few minutes on the swing...






And then we stroll our way back to the car and come home to the farmette.


A contemplative pose...






A few pieces of fruit...






A playful Snowdrop...






And she naps and Ed comes home tugging that machine with him and it looks like the day will move along smoothly, no?

Not entirely.

The machine makes deep tracks in the muddy soil (much to Ed's dismay).






The trips back and forth, from pile to flower bed are tediously long...






Ed wonders if he should give up and wait until we get a solid frost again that would harden up the soil. Surely we'll have another deep freeze this winter?

("What is ahah doing out there??")






Evening. All is calm again. Snowdrop has us drawing together for long stretches of time...






Therapeutic, no?

Yes, the girl is here and happy and the sun shone brightly on us all!






Perhaps the pace here at the farmette was a bit robust on this day. That's okay. Tomorrow will surely be staid.

Maybe.

Perhaps not.

Fine: most likely it will offer its own great surprises.

We're looking forward to it.

Thursday

Oh, the irony of it all! Three days ago, Ed and I admired the growing mountain of wood chips north of our property line, thinking how wonderful it would be to make use of them. We inquired. We got the go ahead.

Two days ago, after having many truckloads dumped and spread directly on a farmette field (how neat is that!), we realized that we had no grand plan for that field. So now what?

One day ago we investigated renting a skid steer loader to dig into that still growing mountain of city chips, so that we could haul load after load to our own ever-expanding flower beds.

And today, we first patted ourselves on the back for having the truck driver dump the next four truck loads of chips right on our property, then groaned again as we realized that we could not easily bring a skid steer loader over here and therefore, in addition to having a field of chips, we now also have a mountain of chips, with nothing more than a wobbly cart to help us distribute them for future projects. All this to be figured out... tomorrow.

Our week has been chock full of chip issues.

But breakfast is lovely anyway. Just a touch of sunshine. Enough to put us in the sun room.







And here is a most pleasant surprise: Butter, our white hen has been finally, in the last month, resumed laying. One out of four hens giving us eggs -- a pretty miserable haul.  But today, Henny, who had been eggless for two seasons now, popped one out for us  for us! (Hers can easily be identified -- they're always green).





So, two of our four girls are now giving eggs! (Ed, the realist, reminds me that it could all stop tomorrow, so I shouldn't feel too chipper about any of it.)


I put aside thoughts of chips and cheepers and pick up Snowdrop at school as usual. (Where did you get those lovely sneakers, Snowdrop? I got them at a shoe store! I can almost detect an eye roll. I mean, where else, gaga?)






Mommy's at home during some of the time we are there...






Yes, Snowdrop's energy level is picking up again...






Though quiet play is still her choice for this afternoon.






Later, much later...  Wondering. Why it is that this is that and that is something else...






I have a secret, she tells us, pointing to her ear.

Who told her one? Will she share it?






No, she settles into reading instead. A dog party! How well I remember reading this same book to her mommy, who once thought the idea of a dog party was beyond the beyond.






I leave them then and drive out to Thai Noodles, where I pick up our favorite dishes. From there, I drive home, bedazzled yet again by one beautiful sunset.

Wednesday

If yesterday was effervescent, today was tame.

Partly sunny, a bit cooler (just at freezing) and, too, with a morning phone message that lets us know that Snowdrop is still not well and so there will be no school for her today.

Ed and I have a lovely breakfast...






And then I go over to Snowdrop's home. She is not completely without oomph, but she definitely is moving at a slower pace. We do a lot of quiet things. Blocks, games, books...






With a lot of restful listening to children's music.

She does feel compelled to feed her babies (and as is her habit here, dresses up to do it)...






... but rather than prancing and dancing with them, she is more keen on resting.






There must be, in life, a balance: days that go this way, days that go another way. But if you can look back on a day and recall handfuls of details that make you smile, then I'm okay with the vicissitudes.

(Goldie: "but what, if like me, you're neither all black or all white?")






And if, moreover, we truly are advancing on spring, that's reason to be downright joyful. And I am. Truly I am. Just in a more quiet way today.

(Sunset from the farmhouse bedroom window.)

pink and red and blue all over

Last year, it snowed on Valentine's Day. I have pictures of a blanketed farmette. Winter seemed stubbornly entrenched.

Today could not be more different. Sunshine and a relative warmth. You wake up thinking spring thoughts.

Happy Valentine's Day indeed!

Breakfast bathed in sunlight!






And a morning spent outside. We survey our newly chipped field out back, still a bit clueless as to what should become of it.





How about planting blueberries? Snowdrop said she'd like to grow more blueberries.
What, a whole field of blueberries? So that we're swamped with them for a few weeks? That is if we even succeed in keeping the soil right and the deer at bay...
How about a few blueberries, a few flowers and then some white pines?

It goes on like this. It will go on like this. We cannot come up with a perfect plan.

And so we concentrate on the front yard today. We dump some chips to expand the road-facing flower bed. And then I do some pruning, grumbling the whole while that our trees need serious pruning -- something that I bring up each year, even as Ed dismisses it as totally unnecessary.


At around noon, I pick up a happy Snowdrop.






I know what she would love most right now and I'm quite willing to indulge her -- it's Valentine's Day, no? Stroller time!

We go for a longer walk -- all the way to the more distant coffee shop -- a place she and I hadn't been to since the warmer days of fall.

She needs no reminder about where to find the high chair.






("Can I have a banana?")






Today (well, every day...) I would give you the world, little one!

When I tell her there's a small gift waiting for her at the farmhouse, she is excited. ("I am excited" is definitely in her vocabulary!)

It's not much, really. A few books and a few stuffies that depict the characters from those books (we're on a Piggie and Gerald the Elephant roll and, too, "digesting" the pigeon books by the same author). But Snowdrop has always appreciated each gift handed to her, big or small, and she spends a lovely afternoon introducing her new pals to her world of toys.






("I want to dance with piggie!")






("One more dance!")






There is a tiny bit of a downside to the day: nearly half of Snowdrop's class is out with a virus and toward evening, the little one succumbs to it. Oh, she is sweet as can be, but most of the remaining time at the farmhouse is spent in lap formation.







Sunset. I can't really see it from the farmhouse -- too many trees stand in the way. But if I look out on the fields to the east, the red glow is there.






A fitting color combination. Happy Valentine's Day. With love.

Monday

If you're told that February 13th is going to sunny and quite warm (mid 40F or 6-ish C), you set your hopes for that day. Walk outside! Work outside! Play outside!

I suppose, looking back now, the day had all three elements. But they didn't come in the way I had expected them to.

Breakfast -- the ever predictable and today, very sunny morning meal.






I push for a walk then. I think we haven't spent much time outdoors this winter. No snow, lots of ice and now squishy mud -- it's all rather uninviting. Since we were told we could dig into the wood chips that are being dumped in the back of our property line, we head out on foot to find a path to get to them with Ed's truck.

Walking through the farmed fields, we realize that the mud, along with layers of ice make this a poor place to drive through with a truck. But as we get to the now mountains of chips, the workman (whom we met yesterday) pauses and asks if we would like them dumped directly within the farmette lands.






I respond with a resounding and enthusiastic yes!

And this is how we wind up with the first big mountain of chips on our land.






(While the venerable farmhouse looks on, amused.)





Now what?

We try to drive the truck through our property so that we can load it up with chips -- to be distributed at the ever expanding flower bed at the front of the farmette.

The truck gets stuck.

Again and again.

The wood chip piles (there is more than one) are high. We should at least throw down the chips more evenly on the ground, no? Out come the pitchforks. We set to work. It's such slow going!

The driver comes back with another load and looks at us with disbelief.
You're going to do that by hand?
He shakes his head. Let my drive up with the track skid steer and spread them out for you.

And of course, that is just lovely. He'll do the work in a few minutes for which we would have needed at least a week.

Still, what are we going to do with a field full of chips out back? Sure, they'll drown out the weeds. The first year. Maybe. But can we sow buckwheat or rye grass on top of chips? Can we sow anything on top of chips? Or should we haul some (all? no....!)  back to the front?

What the heck did I get us into?

But, it's nearly noon now and so we can't fret. I need to pick up Snowdrop and Ed has an afternoon meeting. We'll come back to this problem later.


Snowdrop is delighted that I have the stroller out for her after school.






She is happy to roll along and explain her surroundings to me. She is also happy to pause at the coffee shop.






And she is happy to be returning to the farmette, and to be invited to ride the red wagon as soon as I take her out of the car.
Snowdrop, we're going out back! You can play in wood chips! A machine is spreading them out for us as we speak!

She is not happy to be going out back for a face to face encounter with big, mean, loud track skid steer that has fangs large enough to snap up more than just wood chips.






Still, I have to persevere. Ed's not back yet -- I need to touch base with the construction guy. I pick her up and we approach the monster machine at the same time that the farmer who farms the fields immediately to our north comes up to join us. He's puzzled about the game plan for this land for this season. Can he farm it? What part? For how long? Of course, we're curious as to the details too, but we already know that the construction crew just do the work. The plans are not for them to lay forth. And so we spend a pleasant if unproductive ten minutes with Snowdrop clinging to me, staring with trepidation and an occasional whimper at mean truck, while the super helpful construction person engages me in a pleasant conversation about accents, explaining that mine doesn't like I'm Wisconsin-born, and, too, with the truck farmer proudly telling us that his Hmong daughter speaks like a true Wisconsinite even as he himself clearly does not.

It is a fascinating set of minutes, even as I'm sure Snowdrop would beg to differ.


Inside, I tell the little one that I have some new books for her. She runs over to her shelf and pulls out one that is in fact not new, but nor have I read it to her before. I note this because it is a fascinating choice, considering the weather outside.






Snowdrop is in command of her space once more and she very quickly asks for the yoga mat again.











I understand her need for meditation. She has been through a lot.


Of course, when the weather is so very pleasant, everyone wants to profit from it. I know that Snowdrop had already spent a good number of hours outdoors with her classmates. It's not surprising that she wants inside time. And so I forgo luring her out again. We spend a quiet set of hours playing in the farmhouse. You can enjoy the sun from here, too, after all!






Inside play... Drawing, for example. Oh how Snowdrop loves to draw!






And when we join in this with her -- heaven.






We're not returning to winter weather tomorrow. But I will not guess as to what the day might bring. Life is very unpredictable. Most often (though not always), that's a good thing.