Wednesday

So how many day lily buds burst into full bloom each day here, at the farmette? Can you guess? (Ed's guess, and mind you, he lives here is 46.)

I speculated yesterday whether it would be fun (or a burden) to count how many spent blooms I snip in my morning garden rounds. Today, impulsively, I began to count.

One, two...  (I begin with the long roadside bed...)






Onto the driveway bed -- eighty-six, eighty-seven... Sorry, Ed, you're so off!





Indeed, I snip off more more than two hundred spent flowers in just the one bed to the front of the porch...





The Great Bed has the most diverse collection of flowers, but there are plenty of lilies there too...





Okay, done. All beds neatened. Only ninety minutes to do the job on this day, so the tally must have been less than, say yesterday.

And still, it is high: 702 blooms showed off their lovely colors yesterday, all of them clipped into several bucket-loads of spent blooms today.  (That does not count the lilies by Ed's sheep shed because I don't snip the blooms there. He doesn't care and, well, honestly -- they do eventually fall off on their own.)

Breakfast, at last.






With the deep satisfaction of having a well cared for garden. (Looking out from the porch...)






By the way, have I complained about the weather today? No? Well I should: sticky, with the perpetual rain in the forecast, and perhaps not surprisingly, we see again an upsurge in bugs.

It's quite frustrating to be in the thick of summer and to feel the constraints of the season in this way. The rains, the bugs -- these are not just farmette issues. We, in Wisconsin, endure the long winters for the gifts that come with summer. When those gifts are moderated in this way, we feel a tad cheated.

Well, never mind. On good weather days, Snowdrop and I spend our afternoons at the pool. If today doesn't lend itself to this -- she'll adjust.

And in any case, I made an appointment (on the suggestion of her parents) for the little girl to get a haircut at Lyndsy's haircut place (which conveniently is sandwiched between Snowdrop's school and the coffee shop).

I myself very much like longer hair (actually on both girls and boys!), but Snowdrop isn't making it easy to keep it that way. For the most part, pony tails irritate her and predictably, her fine golden hair (often sprayed by sun lotion or bug spray) looks like it has been through a hard period of play by midday. (Here she is today, waiting for a snack at the coffee shop.)





It's her third haircut at Lyndsy's and surprisingly, she remembers the routines well. If she was once even slightly apprehensive, not so today!





And as before, I have to say, Lyndsy does her a great service by giving her a terrific bob.





It's perfect for a delightfully active little girl!





I want to reward the little one with a trip to the playground and as always, she is enthusiastic about the swings...





But quite suddenly, we feel a light shower...





... and eventually, more than a shower...





We hurry back to the car and drive to the farmette, passing the beautiful field of harvested ...maybe  oats? -- with the cranes working their way majestically through the rows of fallen grain.

Snowdrop and I watch for a long while. How can you not love the image of these beautiful birds in the field of summer gold?





At the farmhouse -- dance, Snowdrop! dance to the polka music you've grown so fond of!






And later -- quiet play. Toy foods, beloved babies. You know what she's like.











Once again my daughter and I had planned to attend the Wednesday summer concert on the square tonight and once again it was cancelled because of the weather. As I drive Snowdrop home, the rains pound against the windshield. I am impressed that the little girl is not scared. Is she getting used to it?

A summer day in Wisconsin: 702 spent blooms, fistfuls of mosquitoes, a day of blinding rain.

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Tuesday

One of these days I will count the number of spent day lilies I snip off each morning. I know the number varies, because today I worked far longer than the day before. Or, I could go out and count the number of open flowers, knowing that tomorrow they'll be filling my bucket and joining their fallen sisters in the compost pile.

This morning is partly sunny and the flower colors are once again brilliant.






The beds are at their finest.






I'm still fighting the mosquitoes, but it's not such an all out attack. And so I take greater care when working the fields. I'm not merely plowing through to get things done and to return safely inside.






New comers to the scene: the false sunflowers.






The pink cosmos is reaching great heights and once again I tell myself that in the future, I should keep to the shorter varieties. The tall stalks tumble without support.






Breakfast is very late.





So late, that at its end, I almost immediately head out to pick up Snowdrop.

(There they are again! Every day, same field, same band of brothers! Well, I suppose they could be a band of sisters, or couples out on a date. You can't really tell crane gender just by staring at them, except for the fact that the males tend to be somewhat taller.)






I pick up a happy girl. Or is she tired? She chooses her seat and waits for her snack...





Revived!

I ask her what next -- playground? Pool? I'm actually not sure what she'll say. It's not exceptionally warm and the skies have clouded over.

She hesitates, but only for a moment: pool!

Here is a rare glimpse of how Snowdrop would look were she not so attached to her sweater (she is changing into her swim stuff).





I remember my one and only baby sitting job: it was a big one -- I was a nanny to a little girl for several summers and the school year in between. My charge would only wear polo shirt dresses. Her family was quite prosperous and her mom was impeccably dressed, as was fitting for her Manhattan Fifth Avenue status. I'm sure she would have liked to see her daughter in something other than a polo shirt dress, but in all the time I lived with them, the girl would look in her closet, pretend to consider other options and then point to that same dress (well, she had several, but they were all basically the same).

I think she outgrew her devotion to that style quickly enough! In the same way, I'm certain that Snowdrop's sweater phase will pass.

In the pool now, happy as a little penguin!





But here's a surprise -- despite the slightly deteriorating weather, the pool is crazy popular today! Bus pull up, kids spill out. Again and again and again.

To me, the noise level alone is enough reason to retreat. Snowdrop feels differently. She makes friends with girls twice her size and though these are not enduring friendships, I see that they are important to her. She is a kid who loves adults and children alike. When she shares in their world, she is happy.

In other words, I have a really hard time getting her to leave.






Still, Snowdrop is not a sulker. We leave, she finds other reasons to be cheerful again.
Ahah, will you play ball with me?





And later...

Gaga, can I play the guitar?





It's too easy to want only this side of Snowdrop: her good cheer is so contagious! You have to remind yourself that you're most valuable to her in those other times -- when she proclaims "I am sad," or when she wants something that she cannot have. With a kid this happy, those opportunities do not present themselves very often. When they do, I always hope that I don't give in to the great desire to fix her mood, rather than listening carefully and figuring out how best to help her muster her own resources to get to a better place.

Later, so much later, after dinner, after a few news programs, Ed and I go out to play tennis. I was tired, he was ambivalent, but we go anyway. Because when we play on those courts hidden in a fragrant pine grove, the world slows down and any vestiges of worry are replaced by a feeling of peace, of time well spent.

Monday

If you feel like you're stuck in a pattern that will never change -- take heart! Nothing is forever! (We will ignore the possibility that things could get worse; for the most part, the direction of travel in life is up -- from tremulous to better!)

After days, nay, months of stormy weather, we begin this week with terrific skies (partly cloudy, mid 70s F or 24C), no sign of rain and -- hold on to your hat, hannah! -- a significant downturn in the mosquito population!

Oh, I'm not talking about a complete disappearance. But what for you is unacceptable, for us, here, at the farmette, is delightfully modest! And so today, our mosquito problem is delightfully modest!

I did not think I would again see the day when I could walk to the mailbox and back without hearing a buzz around my head. Today, I did the walk. No buzz.

I still wear my netting for the garden clean up, but I'm starting to enjoy the act of pruning again. A few swats with the paddle and the bugs disappear for a while.

We are at the peak of day lily blooms and so I cannot leave my camera behind as I work the garden. I love the abundance of flowers, the color and variety and so yes, there will be more than one flower picture today on Ocean.

Too, I'm upsizing the photos somewhat. My daughter, who is a loyal Ocean reader (actually both daughters pop in here... hi daughters!), said that seeing the garden in person is even better because Ocean doesn't do justice to the enormity of the enterprise. I suppose a camera lens (or at least my camera lens) cannot compensate for the roving eye. Still, a larger photo tells a better farmette story and so I am going to favor the larger frames. (Until winter sets in: we can go back to a smaller scale then!)


Let's get started! I am more efficient now in working the garden: it takes me 90 minutes to snip all the spent lilies. (I do this before breakfast; I want to enjoy my coffee with a view toward a good, clean garden.)

I'm working along... Here's the great bed, looking toward the farmhouse:






But I do have to be careful. There are spent lilies that I do not want to disturb. Like this one... (These frogs are so tiny, but I keep my eyes out for them -- they survive the winter in the boulders below the top tiered bed. This is their moment of high livin'!)







The bed to the west of the porch has a number of later bloomers. They're just beginning their show.






But the front porch bed is still going strong!






And the colors are, as always, astonishing (blending here with a true lilium):






Okay, the fields around the courtyard are all taken care of. The great bed (looking toward the barn) is probably the easiest to photograph. It's both wide and long and even if you miss half the flowers in any single shot, you still get the feeling of abundance -- which, of course, is the goal here.






And now I am by the road, working on that front bed.

The palate here is terrific: no one lily is more important than its neighbor, or any of the complementing flowers that weave their way through the long bed. I'm sure you can spot the six varieties of day lily below, but in that small photo, from left to right, there is also a strawberries and cream hydrangea, a purple liatris, a white lilium and a white campanula, a gaura, a veronica, a lavender, and in the far back --  a yellow native flower with an acacia like foliage -- I cannot remember its name, but it has more bees than any single flower in the bed! They all work together!






Okay okay okay! I do not want to exhaust you! Breakfast!





With our beloved view from the porch.





And quite soon after, I am off, passing this beautiful field just across the road from us (the one where sandhill cranes hang out)...





... to the bakery, to pick up croissants for the first half of the week and from there -- to Snowdrop's school, to pick up the little girl.

Did I mention the weather is perfect? It's playground weather, no?

Yes and no. Snowdrop does a quick climb at a restless pace... She's looking for something new. I suggest the lake water. I mean, we don't have to swim in it, but how about a good splashing session?






Nope. This next pic says it all: I'm happy just looking at the lake!






Somehow she has gotten it into her head that fish bite. And so the minute I say -- come here, Snowdrop! you can see tiny fish swimming! -- she backs away.

I think I am, with Snowdrop, pretty go-with-the-flow. But every once in a while, I just want her to reconsider. Wearing a sweater is a good example and I do admit, I have made no dent in getting her to reconsider even that much!

I have better luck with the lake.





Oh, she's not 100% on board, but her few splashes are good enough!

And now, are you ready to go swimming in the pool?

Is she ever! It's as if she hadn't been to the pool for months!

The fact is, it's still a bit cool and so the pool remains quite empty for the first half hour.

(She tells me she's doing yoga in the water...)





But even as it fills, she does not want to stop her play in the water.

Here's an interlude: she sees kids on the seesaw to the side of the pool. We try it...





Fine, but her weight is too slight for the seesaw to ever go down.

We're back at the pool. For a long, long time.


Finally, we return to the farmette. What's this! Ed has been picking our little tomatoes! Snowdrop finds the basket...





And dives in. (And when I take the basket away, she retrieves it, to devour the little tomatoes. She reminds me of myself not too far from her age: I'm told I hung out at my grandma's tomato patch and picked and ate the tomatoes as quickly as they ripened.)






Evening. Ed comes in from his beetle hunt (he has been taking care of the beetle population in our orchard): the mosquitoes are definitely at a low for the month! -- he tells me enthusiastically.

Perhaps. I wont count on it, but on the other hand, we've had a horribly buggy season. Maybe it's time to turn it around?

Sunday stories

There are several truths that must be told -- perhaps all are obvious to you, but still, I should be blunt and write it as it is.

First of all, I must admit it: I am a weed addict.

I heard a story on the news about a guy like me, who just wouldn't face up to it until his wife spelled it out for him: what started for you as a minor event turned into an obsessive drive. From a trivial thing there came the addiction.

Yes, I suppose the same is true for me.

Indeed, my first thoughts when I get up this morning are not -- I must finish cleaning the kitchen after yesterday's dinner, but -- I must find time today to go out to my flower fields, because it's too hard to be eating breakfast on the porch with a view toward spent lily blooms and sprouted locust and creeping wood sorrel and who knows what else.

Yep. A weed addict.

Despite promises of dry weather, the rains keep popping up in forceful cloudbursts and the bugs rejoice and multiply. Yet I will withstand it all just to pull the weeds, snip the blooms and tend to my flowers.

But not immediately. Ed and I have a quick and small breakfast interlude. There is a family brunch later on and one cannot be totally piggish about eating before the noon hour.





And here's the second truth: I do love all family meals, whether they're at the farmhouse, or at daughters' houses, or restaurants here, or  Chicago.  They are always festive, comfortable, happy events. But just as I have a special fondness for breakfast with Ed each morning, so, too, I hold a reserved spot -- a sweet special love for family brunches. Maybe it's because I never otherwise eat brunch -- not with friends, not with just Ed -- it's always with daughters and their families. It is, therefore, always wonderful.

This morning we are all at Forequarter -- a longtime family favorite that has only recently (to my knowledge) offered Sunday brunch.

And guess who else loves, loves, loves it when the young families come together here, in Madison?





Yep: Snowdrop.  She just cannot stop smiling.

So many laps to sit on!





So many faces smiling right back at her...





Even the bear, with a claw suspended over the little girl seems... well, at leas nonthreatening.





It is true that after a Sunday brunch, there is the inevitable good bye to the young couple as they must head back home to Chicago.






Just one more chance for Snowdrop to hold her aunt's hand...





And they're off. But, Chicago isn't the other end of the world and even if I don't quite see them as often as I would like, knowing that they're close by makes it easier to see them drive off.


Now I must get back to the farmette, past freshly harvested fields where sandhill cranes have taken to hanging out...





And into my netted armor, so that I can take a big bucket and head out to do my work in the flower fields.

There, things are in order once more!





I have to admit to one more thing: when I work on a mature flower bed, I always, always have a song running through my head, for the entire time I'm there. Lately, it's been this one: "Nymphs and Shepherds" by Purcell.

Nymphs and shepherds, come away,
In this grove let's sport and play;
For this is Flora's holiday,
Sacred to ease and happy love,
To music, to dancing and to poetry.
Your flocks may now securely rest
While you express your jollity!
Nymphs and shepherds, come away.

The mood is exactly right. As perfect as the lilies that are standing proud proud and tall!






Jollity and love. Renewal, growth, beauty, expressed in a field of flowers.






Evening. The young family is here for Sunday dinner.

Snowdrop is growing alright: stronger, more patient, she and Ed do things that even a month ago would have been too tough for her.











We eat on the porch and occasionally, I'll throw a glance toward the cleaned up garden, feeling the satisfaction of having kept up with its demands today.

But mostly, my gaze is in this direction:






A happy girl! She had a grand weekend. And so did I!