the middle of May

I'm not firm about it. I allow myself room to adjust for weather permutations, family commitments, other preoccupations. But it is true that since I moved to the farmette and began the project of planting and pruning and growing things here, most especially flowers, I aim to be done with the spring sowing and dividing and introducing new arrivals by the middle of May.

And so it is at once remarkable and rather predictable that this afternoon, just as the first ripple of thunder warned me to head back indoors, I put in the last day lily and sowed the last packet of seeds into the ground. May 15th.

Of course, one is never really done. New ideas, new spaces, plant sales -- these all keep me going until the mosquitoes make life outside too unpleasant. But there are no more imperatives. If I merely attend to what is there (watering and weeding), all will be well in our gardens.

It is also a turning point: early spring blooms are nearly all finished. I'll be laying down the narcissus leaves and stems this week.

So I have a special fondness for the last of the brilliant first bloomers, including these tulips which line the driveway...






And of course, the heavenly, heavily scented lilac.






Breakfast in the sunny fold of the bulging purple branches...






And after breakfast, I return to the final sprint of planting.

The cheepers, as always, come to check on my movements. Digging in the front? Show us what you unearthed!






By now, Java will tag along after Scotch, who comes right to my hand if I discover a worm. Henny is still reluctant to get too close. Three birds with such differing personalities!


And speaking of fascinating personalities, let me jump to just past the noon hour: Snowdrop pick up time.

I'd deliver a bale of hay to the school. The staff assumed, correctly, that we store some hay in the barn. Or maybe Snowdrop told them this. In any case they pleaded for a bale and they got it. Well, minus a few wisps of hay, which the little girl wants to preserve for herself. (She does not need a sweater. It is hot outside. But Snowdrop has an especially keen attachment to sweaters.)






As we walk the neighborhood, she asks, as always, for permission to pick a flower -- typically a dandelion puff or a violet. These she stores lovingly in the stroller, snapping them in with the seat belt. To keep them safe? Does she wonder what happens to her collections at the end of the day? I used to save them for her, just in case she asked, but I found that for her, the act of preserving is more important than the act of recalling.

Isn't that a little bit like me?


We go the park. When she looks a little to the left, you can hardly spot the wounds of Saturday (which, face on, look even more vicious today).






The way to get her off the swing: should we go back to the farm and play in the sandbox? Condition: sweater must come off!

It gets better: we set up the hose to issue a little fountain of sprinkles for her. She is thrilled! (and yes, it is that warm!)






Ahah, you want to wash your feet with me?






Scotch, would you like to wash your feet with me? Scotch isn't as willing.






As any kid who loves water play, she eventually gets her hands, arms, face wet.






Oh happy girl! Your joy is our joy.






But I do need to change her clothing at the farmhouse. She doesn't mind. She is content. And she goes to her doll to share her warm fuzzies with "baby."






Evening. It's nearly time for Snowdrop to be picked up.
I want to go outside, she says.

She looks with a targeted gaze at the tulips. Can I pick one?







In the past I always said no. Tulips are to be enjoyed in their regal garden settings. But we are at the end of the season.

Sure.

I want to give it to mommy. 
It matches your sweater, Snowdrop.
It's for mommy. It matches my sweater.






She adds a mostly wilted daffodil to her fold. For mommy, she assures me.






She leaves.

I have no gardening imperatives. I fix leftovers for dinner and exhale, with a smile.

Mother's Day

To all moms out there -- and there are many -- happy mother's day!

I am standing with a hose at midday, by any accounts a terrible time to water flowers, but I have just put in ten bare root daylilies and you have to water them thoroughly when you plant them, so there I am, being a bit fanciful with the hose, throwing a shower this way and that, and out of nowhere, a humming bird flutters by, liking that shower very much, dancing nimbly in the gentle stream of water, enjoying himself I'm sure. Like a child -- I think. A child would do just that on a warm day when offered a chance to get just a little wet!

Mother's day. In south central Wisconsin, you can typically count on okay weather. And you can count on the lilacs being in full bloom. So let me give a nod to the weather (perfect today!). And the lilac.






You'll remember that Snowdrop is sleeping over at the farmhouse. When she wakes up, her first words are "I want to go downstairs and make pancakes!"

She has her routines and her associations, that's for sure.


(On the porch, after her bath, watching Ed do his morning chores...)






Finally, our threesome breakfast. (She has her own fruit. She chooses to eat his. He lets her. So typical!)






Pancakes at last...






And then I hustle her to the car (even as she is feeling exploratory) so that she can get home to celebrate mother's day with her parents.






And oh, do I dig in to work then! I try to put in all the rest of my perennials, though at noon I abandon that project in order to help with the tomatoes. This year we're organized: I know which little babe is of which variety. 96 plants, thriving so far, in  they go!






A pause, just to talk to my younger daughter. A lovely moment on the porch with a cup of coffee and a cookie...

Then back to work.



Evening. The young family is here for dinner and it is a joyous, lovely evening meal. Preceded by gifts. For me! Brought over by Snowdrop!






The little one gives me a card just from her, with oodles of doodles inside, beautifully drawn/scribbled by her own hand.






(Gaga and Snowdrop...)






(My daughter, her mommy...)






Dinners on the porch are like a slice of heaven on a plate...






Because it's a special day, there's cake. Chantilly, with fruit (I did not bake it). She loves it. We love it. It's easy to love pretty much anything put before you tonight.






One more bit of whipped mascarpone cream!






One more bit of mother's day sweetness.

the guilt

Wake up early. C'mon, get moving. Oh, stiff back from the heavy digging? Well, a warm shower and some stretches ought to help.

Open the box of day lilies that I get every year from Kentucky. Such potentially pretty stuff! They're for the expanded front bed, but I can't resist keeping some for the court yard, for porch viewing. Let me plan out their distribution.

What's this? Blasted ground hog! Overnight, he decided to rebuild his condo number three just by the lilac, under my hostas. The weird thing is that he moved the soil and quite a number of big rocks around the hostas and dumped them to the side of my great daylily bed. Can groundhogs carry heavy stones??

I go inside.
Ed, do we have a gun?
Say what?
Well, you know how our neighbor hunts down pesky animals?

Ed knows I'm not serious, but, too, that I am annoyed. Last year we filled that very hole. The groundhog dug it up the next day. We filled it again. Eventually he gave up.

No, I don't want to shoot him, but nor do I want him right at the edge of my day lilies throwing boulders and loose dirt around.

We decide to let him keep his hole, but we camouflage it with chips so that at least it doesn't look awful to the passerby. (Who am I kidding: there are no passerbys by the lilac. Our courtyard is very private.) Ed will say -- he has as much right to be here as you and I...



Breakfast, lovely, on the porch.






A quick garden walk...












...and I'm off to my daughter's so that she, Snowdrop and I can walk to the downtown farmers market together.

(On the drive over, I spot two sandhills in the field just west of us. In the next months, this field will be given over to a development. Right now, it belongs to the cranes.)







It's a beautiful day! The sun comes out and the air quickly warms to a perfect May day (really more like a June day -- temps reach the upper 70sF, or around 25C).

While Snowdrop's mommy shops for some cheese curds, I make a mistake. I figure the girl's been sitting long enough in the stroller.
Want to stretch and run up the hill?--  I ask, taking her out of the stroller and placing her on a grassy knoll, perched just over the sidewalk.

Snowdrop is totally cooperative and she does a lovely stretch, then runs up to a tree and back down to the ledge. Only neither she nor I realize that a hefty run down will propel her with a good bit of speed, so much so, that it's not easy for her to stop when she reaches the ledge. And she doesn't stop, tumbling down the few feet to the sidewalk, face catching the concrete slab.

It's my fault.

This being Madison, people are ever helpful. A young woman takes out a first aid kit and gives me clean tissues to wipe her up.

Oh, it could have been so much worse. Snowdrop is a bit rattled and complains that her nose hurts (indeed: the skin below it is rubbed raw), but apart from that she seems to have caught the fall well and I can't find any other bruises.

By the time my daughter rejoins us, the little one is settled back in the stroller.
You wont believe what just happened... I tell her.

As we continue our walk around the Square, Snowdrop is a bit subdued and unhappy about her upper lip (which she refers to as her nose area), but, too, the sun is now squarely in her face so there are many reasons to be a tad less cheerful.


We recall the first emergency room visits my own girls endured: my older girl, when she was short of one, tumbled with greater force at the zoo, getting grit and pebbles into several wounds (I know, I know -- not really ER material, but first time parents tend to panic at the sight of a lot of blood). Then there was her sister, at two and a half, with an onset of pneumonia. I suppose Snowdrop, at 28 months is lucky to have rarely been sick enough to even call a doctor and she isn't the kind of kid who gets bloody knees and bruised elbows often.

Still, watching her uncheerful face, gaga feels the guilt.

We're done with our market walk. Oh! I spot the perfect pick me up: honey sticks!
Can I get her one?
Sure. My daughter knows how much Snowdrop and I both love honey. The little girl doesn't know about honey sticks.






She is hooked. And happy.






Her old self now, walking with us, pushing her stroller, chatting the whole way about things she sees, challenges she faces... (I can climb over that wall! I can walk by myself!)

(She appears to me as if she's ready to take on the world again, or at least the state of Wisconsin!)






(Finding pleasure in the sprinklers that are dousing the Capitol Square tulips right now. What kid doesn't love a sprinkler?)






Still, I want to offer her one more small pleasure -- a visit to the toy store. Needless to say, she loves it there. Toys to admire, a free balloon to take home.





And then we're back along the lake, walking to her home, and from there I drive to the farmette, where I work the whole afternoon digging, digging, planting, moving, planting some more. Uff!


In the evening, Snowdrop is with us for supper and a sleepover. Pizza! And play. She brings her baby from home and tells her: you're visiting grandma and grandpa now! (Home baby, meet farmhouse baby!)






It's a fairly early bedtime. Perhaps she doesn't need it, but I do! Tomorrow is a very full day. One hundred tomatoes to plant, daylilies to finish... So much to look forward to! And I do. Guilt slowly receding, I look ahead to a day that I'm sure will be beautiful, in all ways.

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Not long ago, I realized that I know the land too well here. I know every plant I ever brought in and I remember many that I deeply regretted putting in (invasive beasts!). I know how the light works its way across the courtyard and how this changes dramatically with each season. I know where the soil, enriched by composted chips, hides layers of gravel which criss-crossed the land when this was once a working farm. I know what I must do to make each flower field healthy and strong. I know where the raspberries send off their root systems. I know where the cheepers like to dig. I know where the humming birds hang out and where the groundhog likes to set up his summer condominium. I know where bramble loops over the prairie and where dry pine needles add a special scent to the air.

And I know that this week, the farmette is at her gentlest, prettiest, sweetest and most beguiling, as if the season of mosquitoes, or of deep freeze, or of mice in the farmhouse, or backed up septic systems -- as if those challenges were trite nothings, because now we have our reward, our period of sheer pleasure.

This is how it feels to live here now: I am attached to the farmette as deeply as if I had lived here all my life. Ed and I try to be good stewards, stumbling, heaving, planning, digging, even as we know that we could do so much more. But not too much more, because the beauty of this place for us is in part in its tussled face, where it is never exactly right, never fully articulated, not tidy, not well groomed. It is its own story of joyous chaos.


It's Friday and so we are both in a hurry: I must grocery shop, he must attend to his machining projects. Still, even before breakfast, I struggle to create a space for that peony that made its way here last night. The soil is rocky, clayish, gravelish, awful. It takes many minutes of hammering away at it to get the spot ready. But I'm not complaining. This is what I can give to this land: my work, my sweat, my effort.

Besides, when I look up, I see the lilac, hugging the corner of the porch.






And of course, the falling petals of the crabs.






Now, I have to say this one detail about my photos (and perhaps you've noticed this on your own): they don't shy away from repeating a vignette. Just because you've seen a graceful clump of white narcissus yesterday, doesn't mean you wont see it again today. If something thrills you a few days in a row, do you turn your back, just because you were made happy by it in the past? Of course not!

Today's narcissus:











And the new tulips that almost look like miniature peonies!






Time to go in for breakfast. (The cheepers follow, always full of hope!)






Unfortunately, this morning we cannot linger. Just a handful of minutes!






Oh, just a few more!






Alright. We disperse.

And after my Friday shopping chores, I go to pick up Snowdrop, who again picnicked with her class out in their playground. As I come in, she is madly and with utter joy racing a trike between tires.






But she is also happy to be going with me for our adventure. Yesterday I dragged along the stroller even as she walked the whole way. Today I think I'm so clever in asking her -- do you want me to leave the stroller in the car so that we can walk?

She says -- yes! I want to walk!

And she does. And we stop constantly to admire everything! (She loves the name "forget-me-nots"!)






(I'm grateful to this corner lot which is rarely mowed and always full of things to admire.)






When we approach the coffee shop, she once more asks to get a treat. I've said no all week long and indeed, even today I have packed a snack for her, but on an impulse, I reconsider. It's Friday! It's a glorious day! Let's sit out for a minute at the coffee shop porch and enjoy it!

(Snowdrop picks a doughnut, which is a tad too sweet for my liking, but the little one is always quite satisfied after just a few bites.)






Yes, she is eyeing the playground. Yes, Snowdrop. You can go on the swing.

And of course, all this just tires her out. When I say it's time to get back to the car (parked at her school), she begs to be carried.

We compromise. I carry her for a block. She then walks for a block. I carry her a bit more. She walks for a bit more. Lesson learned: an energetic "yes, let's walk!" does not take into account an already full day of activity. A stroller, just in case, is never a bad idea.

But as always, at the farmette, she is revived and ready to take on.... the sandbox!






However am I going to get her out?  I'm thinking that she should be napping. It's so late in the afternoon! Luckily this day, this weather, this everything is making her so agreeable. We transition to something else:
Want to hose down your feet and hands and water the strawberries? 
Yes!

(I explain to her that we've had to put on netting to keep the chipmunks away -- they've been trying their darndest to get to the pots.)






We make our way back to the farmhouse.
Look gaga! I'm on the balance beam!
Stretch out your arms! It's easier that way!
(She does. Straight up!)






Inside, I give her just a few minutes to play. And to read. (My daughters reminded me about this book from their childhood. I found it at a used book place.)






She is instantly attached to it. All those cousins and aunts and uncles! All those children, heading to grandma's! In the book, the young families gather from the five boroughs of New York to visit the grandparents who reside in lower Manhattan.

A home is not made better or worse by where you live. I remember once liking Manhattan. Still, in May, the farmette is an effervescent bubble of sheer magic. That it's my home now and therefore, by extension, my family's home is nothing short of sublime.