family at the table redux

That table -- with food, flowers, family... It makes an appearance again and again this weekend.

(Morning pre-breakfast with Ed...)





Brunch is nearly always the meal that draws a visit to a close. We're at Forequarter... The young family, the young couple -- all here, much to Snowdrop's joy.






(Even as Snowdrop never forgets that there is a Gaga in this midst - one with a very welcoming lap.)






She asks to draw. She wants to improve and she fills a page of her Moleskin notebook with intricate designs...







And the food comes and we dig in...






(What is everyone talking about?)






One last piece of bacon...






And then I say my goodbyes and drive home.

(November colors...)






One last Sunday table: an evening family meal at the farmhouse. A smaller group and nothing ambitious -- but still fresh and honest.

Snowdrop leans on Ed's knee and urges him to leave the news magazine and play...





He never says no to her...

Hey, you two! It's dinner time!





We eat, they leave, and then I lose myself to my thoughts and reflections. So much to think about, so much to love!

family at the table

As you add years to your belt, you change -- a little, a lot, in this way and that. But there is one thing within me that has stayed the same: I have always held the belief that a well cooked meal, prepared in the company of your beloveds, then eaten together around one big table, is one of the most valuable and infinitely pleasurable experiences you can have in any ordinary day.

Today was to be a cooking day and it did deliver some incredible moments for all of us.

But let's roll the day back to the beginning -- not an ordinary beginning to be sure.

I wanted to clean the farmhouse from top to bottom.

Thoroughly.

And so Ed slept and I cleaned.

He wakes and asks -- why didn't you ask me to help? I smile indulgently. From top to bottom. He can't do from top to bottom. Only I can.

We sit down to a pre-breakfast of fruit...






And then I harvest the last of the flowers that wont withstand the deep freeze that will come tonight, while the cheepers watch...






(Irises! Lavender!)






And now it is noon and the young couple arrives with lunch for us and it is one beautiful, heartwarming meal!





Immediately after, my younger girl and I roll up our sleeves, don our aprons (sewn for us by my ever wonderful sister in Warsaw) and get to work.

The menu is ambitious in that it is labor intensive: stuffed agnolotti, a kohlrabi frisee salad, apple crisp with ice cream.

Agnolotti are tiny funny shaped stuffed pasta pockets. We are pros! We've made pasta dishes before (gulp! it's been a while...)! We get to it. Ed and my son-in-law leave us to play disc golf. My daughter and I revel in the smells of roasting squash, garlic and sage.

She stuffs the little pockets expertly. Hundreds of little pockets! (We will eat them all!)...

And in the late afternoon the young family arrives and Snowdrop is just so excited!!






But oh, how she has grown! She is happy to play food games with her uncle,  do a complicated puzzle with her dad...






... or to run up for a hug from her aunt...






And our cooking work continues, with only a momentary break for a picture...






As dinner approaches, we gather in the kitchen...






... and soon, very soon, dinner is served!






I think Snowdrop says it best when she looks radiantly around her and exclaims -- our big family is here!






Indeed!

The little girl's smile is ferociously sublime!






She launches into a story  -- with all the gesticulations and exclamations that are so her own!






When nudged to eat more, she demures and tell us -- I'm sorry, I'm busy talking!





You cannot help yourself -- you just laugh and laugh, because, well, just because! Does there have to be a reason?

A most perfect day. I'll remember it for a long, long time.

Zap!

Tomorrow night comes the deep freeze. One such event and the growing season comes to a crashing close. Nature can be brutal.

You want to be prepared. But you're never fully prepared. Have I forgotten something??

But first comes breakfast.





Then grocery shopping. It's not just the regular weekly trip to the store: we're planning a big time cooking marathon tomorrow. I have to keep the ingredients straight!

In a normal week, I would then pick up Snowdrop, but this week is unusual in that her school (and every other school in Wisconsin) is closed for staff inservice. As I wait for her dad to drop her at the farmette in the afternoon, I go over to the truck farmers fields to the east of us. The dahlias are in full bloom. I know that the farmer stocks the Saturday market, but he seems to have given up on this field of half faded blooms. He'd always encouraged us to pick what we want. Now is the time to pick.

The farmhouse is full of dahlias.






Dahlias everywhere!






Snowdrop comes over just about the same time that the farmer drives up to survey what's left of his flower field. Most of the blooms are past their prime. As always, he tells me to pick my fill. And as always, he wont accept payment. We do each other countless favors. I am happy to hear that he plans on planting even more flowers here next summer.

Next summer! That's not too far! And in the meantime, the cheepers hover and Snowdrop enjoys the freedom of plucking her favorite blooms.





(These are they!)






Inside again (oh, does it feel good to be in a warm farmhouse after the hefty winds outside!), I suggest we play school. Snowdrop considers this to be a splendid idea and for the next couple of hours, she is the teacher and I and her babies are the neophytes, navigating our way through the complicated educational system, with one one helpful (two year old) teacher (Snowdrop) as our guide. Luckily, she is warm and gracious, so we manage quite well.






(Reassuring the baby that she will learn to draw circles... one of these days.)






In other news:

Late, very late, Ed drives out to our local bigbox to pick up a disc (for the final day or two of disc golf!). I passed on the chance to replace what I already have. Instead, I rifle through my iTunes and listen to music.

I listen to a song I loved oh some ten years ago, when visiting my younger girl at Law School.

These days, she and her husband live just three hours south of me and still, I travel down to see them far too rarely. When they come up here on a weekend, it becomes intensely their weekend, because it is just so thrilling to have them in our midst again.

They're coming to Madison tomorrow and even Snowdrop knows this -- we've been talking about it for days!

I look at the littlest one and I wonder: will her mommy miss her someday as much as I miss my youngest one? 





Still, we are all within spittin' distance of each other. A drive away, nothing more. How grand is that!

a good step back...

We have a way of complaining here, in Wisconsin, when spring seems to falter and take a step back. We say: love me my Wisconsin, but Spring gives us some rough days! Remember that snow shower in May? Or the overnight frost that came on Mother's Day?

We say things like that because we hate a retreat. There'll be a few warm days in April and they'll make our hearts spin and we'll take out our spades and get ready to plant and then we get a hail storm and suddenly we seem to be taking two steps back into the thick of winter.

But wait -- do we really hate a retreat? Or is it that we dislike certain retreats, but not others?

Take this day: once more I'm about to write a post about how fantastic it is to have sunshine and a bit of (modestly) warm air. For weeks now I've been saying things like: "this is it!" and "our last hurrah into warm weather!" "It's the last time Ed and I can play disc golf!" and "the last time Snowdrop and I can play in the park!" One last beautiful day!

And then we get another one. And a few days later -- another.

Unlike retreats into winter, these Fall days that are too warm to be true are absolutely beloved. Appreciated to the core. Oh, there may be a cool breeze, or the hours of daylight may be a tad diminished, but still, I say this with excitement and joy: today, we took a step back into warmer, sunnier days and it was sublime!

Breakfast in the sun room.





And then of course, Ed and I hit the disc golf course a mile or two up the road. We have two additional discs now for distance throwing. I'm feeling great about this. Ed is doubtful that he got the right combo of velocity/speed/blah/blah/blah in his. Plus, the new discs, which came in the mail today, were... green!

Green?? How are we ever going to find these in the bushes??

He's right, of course, but still, I am energized and ready to sail!

(The landscape has changed since we started playing just a few weeks back... More brown, less golden. But it hardly matters on a beautiful, partly cloudy day!)





Oh, my final score improved somewhat. Is it because of the more suitable disc? I cannot tell! But it was a heavenly game, relished to the core, because the weather was just so fine!






When I pick up Snowdrop, I find out that she had once more napped in school. Four days in a row now! We are good!

The temperatures never quite climb above the mid fifties F (about 12C), but with that occasional streak of sunshine, it feels grand! And I have to smile at the little girl: remember when in the heat of the summer she'd insist on that sweater? Well now, today, I remind her constantly that it feels cool and perhaps she'd do well with a sweater...
No, grandma, I have long sleeves. I am not cold!





She tells me this as I button every last button on my own sweater and pull up the zipper on my fleece.

Ah, but it's a beautiful day to be out with Snowdrop...





I ask her if she wants to go to the Fitchburg farmers market. It's not very exciting now: no more truck tomatoes. No carriage rides for kiddies. Still, she is willing. We pick up kohlrabi and cheese curds and she gets to ride the fiberglass cow. What could be better?!





Nothing. Really, nothing at all.

sunny Wednesday

What a difference a blue sky makes! It is a cool day, but you'd never know it: sunshine encourages us to think past the chill and to embrace all the good that is still with us today, on this late October Wednesday.

But the sun did not come early. Certainly not early enough to push us to a disc golf game, or to my finishing the planting of bulbs (less than a dozen left!). Instead, I dusted off my Great Writing Project and savored the time I had to immerse myself in it (as I tell Ed -- I love the actual work, but getting myself to toss aside all of life's distractions to get to it is hard, really hard).

All that, of course, after breakfast.






Yesterday was so cold that when I picked up Snowdrop, she could not find joy in the outdoors. Today she is prepared. When I come to her school to pick her up, she is listening with her friend to a story read by her teacher. I could recognize those Snowdrop puffs anywhere!







But in fact, the sun makes head coverings unnecessary.






The little one is thrilled to have unadulterated play outside.






And by the time we are at the farmette, she sheds the jacket as well, 50F (10C) notwithstanding.

(Practicing a jump...)






(Getting used to over-the-top cheeper pesterings...)






(Sweeping away fallen leaves...)






Three hours of superb outdoor play! How can I tell her that winter is just around the corner?

interesting Tuesday

Have you had days that are neither fantastic nor awful, but for the most part very good and significantly interesting?


We wake up to a cold, somewhat wet and definitely gray day. I'm grateful. I want that warm cozy farmhouse morning where I read and write and bake cookies.

Breakfast first, of course. Note all the pots brought in for the winter.





But then I enter into the fray: I throw out the idea that we should pick up a couple of appropriate discs for our final days of disc golf (the course closes at the end of the month).

Well now. Don't ever enter into the discussion of what disc to buy with Ed.

There are seemingly hundreds of discs and they vary as to speed, glide, velocity, resistance, turn, fade, plastic used, weight in several gradations -- on and on and on. Some are good for beginners (me!) but promise short speed (which may be a good thing). But you need glide. Except if you're playing in windy conditions. This can take you into hundreds of permutations and possibilities.

I tell Ed - when we started playing tennis some dozen years ago, we went to Dick's discount sports store and bought two light and cheap rackets. They have served us well. We've played dozens (hundreds?) of games. We never once thought about which racket would serve our game well.

But with these discs  -- it's different. We initially bought two cheap discs (well, they're all relatively inexpensive) and we thought they'd be fine. But it's obvious that they're not fine and so the question remains -- what's fine?

So here we are on a potentially cozy reading/writing day, arguing whether velocity trumps speed and whether it matters that I don't snap or spin (or at least I don't think I do). Phew!

I call it quits at noon and retreat into cookie baking mode.

I need a cookie that is good for my afternoon coffee break. This one, with all the right flours, oats, and fruits is pretty nearly perfect (wouldn't you want a cookie with cherries, blueberries and chocolate chips?).






(Well, so I thought. Snowdrop voiced a strong preference for plain old chocolate chip.)


When I pick up Snowdrop at school, I know right away that this afternoon too is going to be... interesting.

The wind is remarkable. The temperatures are low (about 45f or 7C). The skies are gray. Nothing about it is very inviting.

Still, Snowdrop wants the playground and I think to myself -- well, it's good that she feels herself to be hardy.





But even with my proffered scarf, she cannot compete with the strong gusts. Perhaps for this reason, she is far more frustrated with her inability to master her world than in any typical day.






Still, she does rally. She always rallies. She can't keep that zest for life hidden for long.

(At the farmhouse, sharpening her colored pencils...)






(Rubbing my "back" as she puts me down for nap... I am her student, the tent is our classroom...)






(Dance!)






(She is thrilled to discover that grandma has Sesame Street records! And unlike streamed music, this one comes with a record cover, with pictures to admire and adore... )






(Grandma, that's Big Bird!)






So... interesting, don't you think? Lovely and interesting, in unpredictable ways.