conversations

Crazy day! Cold, then colder (are you tired yet of my weather reports? Me too!), a dusting of powder, then cool sunshine -- all of it pushing away any thoughts of spring.

I go out to tend to the cheepers and notice that the girls have dug up one of my tulip beds.

I have no good words to say about them! You are so bad!
Then, to Ed: I can't believe we'll be letting loose three more wild girls into my flower beds soon!
You knew this about them. When did you think they would not dig up your beds?
In the middle of February, when I was only thinking of eggs and sweet colorful chicks.
You want to put them up on Craigslist?
Of course not! I just want them to behave!
They wont, you know that.
(Scowl.)

Breakfast in the sun room, with the three little chicks...


 


Except that the three babes are looking more and more like rebellious teens, knocking down everything in sight. Their water spills. I rush to clean it up.
(Scowl.)

Well, never mind.  We like 'em.

And the sun comes out.





And after grocery shopping, I stop by Sur La Table. I need a pitcher for the Sunday dinner table. There -- that one! Oh, hand made in Poland. How perfect is that!





Home again. In a rush, in a rush, in a rush, but oh! Here comes a trickle of Primrose photos from her parents. She is now more than a week old! Must admire -- yes, so adorable, smiling in some reflexive fashion when they play music -- so lovely!

Back to groceries and baby chicks who are now having a "mud bath" in the finer bits of wood shavings. Have to laugh at their antics! You just have to laugh!

And now Snowdrop comes for her afternoon at the farmhouse. Her mom is with her, as the two had to side step to the doctor's office for a check of the usual something or other that hits kids in their first years of school.





Her mom rests. Snowdrop and I fall into our usual: she tells stories. I interrupt them with absurd questions. She always has an answer!





The mice of Brambly Hedge and Suzie and Daffodil (her babies) are here for a breakfast celebration. Grandma, come sit right there and eat your cakes and macarons!
Yes, okay, but you know I like tea with my cakes.
Well, you can't have tea because there is none. And we can't get any because it's too cold. 
Why is it cold?
The cold air is coming through the open window.
Well then close the window.
No, we cannot close the window. It's broken.
We'll get ahah to fix it!
Grandma, you know ahah is at work. (Ed is in fact at the manufacturing firm.)
He'll be back soon! 
Actually he won't be back soon. He is enjoying his work friends and so he is not coming back for a long long long time. (Her mouth draws down in a perfect imitation of total grief.) So I'm sorry. You cannot have your tea. (She returns then to her story.)

Ed does eventually come home and Snowdrop is on him to "fix that broken (imaginary) window!"
He goes along: I need to scrape out the putty from the old window first.





Here's a knife ahah! Put your putty in the garbage here!
And I need to buy new putty and a new piece of glass.
Let's go to the store now!

And they're off!






Shopping for putty and glass.





And the wind blows, and the temps never cross the freezing point, and at least one tulip bed is a mess, and the flower beds are begging for more chips and more care, but it all has to wait until tomorrow or maybe next week or the week after. But our world inside is warm and snug and we laugh and laugh at Snowdrop's antics and toward the end of the day she'll ask -- have I worn you out yet?

Crazy cold spring!

Thursday

We're still waiting for the thrill of those warm days that come with spring. You know what I mean -- when you walk outside with short sleeves for the first time, when you linger longer than you should because the sun on your face feels so good, when you roll up your pants and start thinking of shorts -- that kind of a day.

In the meantime, we make do.

Spotted sunshine. Enough to make for a warm breakfast in the sun room.






It's still cold -- just a few degrees above freezing -- but we think it's warm enough to go out for a solid walk. We head for Madison's Arboretum. The city usually shows signs of spring a few days ahead of us out there in the hinterlands. Will we find something to satiate our thirst for this elusive season?






I can't say that we do. Traces of snow remain here, as they do at the farmette.






Still, it's a lovely walk. The soil is wet, muddy, spring like! And there are the birds -- as anxious as we are to move on to warmer days.






In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop. I typically pick her up in the cloakroom, but today I look for her in her class. She's churning through puzzles, one after the next. Nothing hard, but she loves the routines -- of picking something, of putting it away, of tucking her chair in. She knows I'm watching. She has that pride of classroom that kids so often have when their adult person pops in to visit.






Outside, as almost always, she scoffs at the idea of a jacket.  Well, it's a short jaunt to the car. Just long enough to find one blooming bulb flower.






At the farmhouse, she wants so very much to go back to a game we've played for what seems like years now. (It involves tea.)






I find this to be sweetly touching. It's as if she knows she's growing out of many past games and yet she wants to hold on to her favorites, in much the same way that I held on to childhood books long after I was reading more serious stuff.

Ed comes in from a tedious set of phone calls at the sheep shed. (Don't get me going on the impact of threatened tariffs on people who try to grow a small machining business in America these days.) Snowdrop cajoles him into our play.






And he cajoles her into a visit with the cheepers. The little girl loves them -- at a distance. Their sudden movements (see below) make her back away. Understandable. Yet each day she greets them, talks to them and every now and then, her gentle finger will caress their light feathers. Until they flap their wings, trying to maintain their balance.






Evening. It's quiet in the farmhouse. Ed works through some technology sticking points that stand in the way of a more perfect integration of new ways of communicating and innovating within the company that has commanded so much of his time these past few years. For me, an evening is far less ambitious. A post must go up. A snack must be eaten. A rough sketch of the next day must be in place.

I retreat, leaving him to his work, knowing it will be many many hours before he calls it quits and comes up to rest.

the power of the sun

We wake up to a snow covered landscape.






You would think I'd be disappointed. It doesn't fit with my mental image of spring.






But the truth is, it's kind of pretty out there. Oh, sure, the cheepers are not happy.






And since they venture out before I sweep the snow away, Peach gets stuck...






... definitely in need of a helping hand!






But when the sun comes out, the snow begins to melt and it feels intensely spring like, even though it's actually hovering just below the freezing point.





We're chugging along here, slowly but with determination. Onwards! Toward the warmer seasons!


At the farmhouse, the little chicks are growing fast. We laughed at the size of the feed back when we brought it home three weeks ago. We're not laughing anymore. It's nearly all gone!

We eat breakfast in the sun room and listen to their chirpy noises.






And in the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. Sometime in the course of her school day she had put on her ballet shoes in anticipation of this afternoon's class. They stayed on.






There is just enough time for a quick Snowdrop story...






... and a lightening quick play...






... and then it's time for class.






They're enacting some butterfly story, but it hardly matters what the plot of it is. Wee little butterflies, moving this way and that -- it's enough to make you smile.





And all the while I think how incredibly lucky I am (we are) that Snowdrop's parents let the little girl open herself up to the world of grandmas and Eds and any number of others who so love this child. In turn, it is so obvious that she lives in a rich world of people who care deeply about her. There isn't a doubt that she is made stronger by their presence in her everyday.

wet and cold

As I write this, it's raining icicles outside. Inch-long picks of ice. I'd take a picture but that would give them free airtime. They don't deserve it. They belong to another season. Woosh! Be gone!

I tell the baby chicks: be glad we're not chasing you out yet! It's a mean world out there! They truly look a little shaken by my words. Perhaps the weather has put an edge to my speech.






Breakfast is deliberately not in the sun room. Why even bother pretending! It's a terrible weather day!





On the upside, isn't it the case that a terrible spring start will make for a warm season's middle? By the law of averages, we need to climb high to make up for this disastrous plummet into a chilly world of ice and wet snow (we're supposed to get that wet snow tonight).

Too, it's delightfully decadent to stay home and do nothing that requires physical effort. Normally, we avoid such horrible laziness, but today, it is a given that the only outdoor time will be time required to get to the car -- first, to vote and then to pick up Snowdrop.

She is prepared! She has her umbrella!






At the farmhouse, we move from one activity to the next, never once giving much thought to the weather outside.


(A Snowdrop story is like a field of daffodils ready to bloom...)






(Giving Pepper a bit of human contact...)






(They're so small and cute, Gaga!)






(Exercise = swinging on the treadmill bar...)






(The baby chicks clamor to get a boost from us so that they can rest at the edge of the box...)






And by evening, the rain and the ice turn to a delicate snow and you just have to shake your head and wonder what's next.






It's a beautiful day -- to be indoors, away from it all.

fighting the disappointment of a non-spring

I don't recall a spring in Madison that came this late (actually it hasn't yet arrived if you judge by the signs of new growth). And though in January I may have appreciated a thermometer reading of just above freezing, in April, I think that's terribly unfair. It doesn't help that last year I was filling flower pots outside by the second week of April. This year, I'll think we're lucky if we can do it by May.

And tomorrow, we're going to be pummeled by snow. Followed by a series of frigid days. That's not what we expect from you, April!

True, we wake up to a bright morning. Breakfast in the sun room, to the sound of chirping voices of the girls in the box.





But then comes the back and forth:

Ed, we really should go out for a walk.
And we have to finish planting the tomatoes. 48 containers planted, 48 to go!
You're right. We should. We have to.

Every half hour we recycle this dialogue, as we continue to sit in front of our reading material, immobilized by the prospect of stepping out into that cold brown landscape.

But by noon, the push to get going becomes urgent. I'm back on schedule with Snowdrop care, and we really do have to finish planting the seeds, and we absolutely should take that walk.

But the day should not look like this! Both of us, bundled in warm outerwear, he stuffs cups with dirt...






... I plant the seeds.







Our walk reveals more of the same winter sluggishness. The park pond, without turtles sunnying and just a few ducks swimming...






The lone crane, wondering why he bothered flying north so soon...






Well, at least at Snowdrop's school the littlest snowdrops are popping up.






And Snowdrop herself is like spring in full bloom!

(No no, you're too big to bounce on my knee!)






(Story telling time)






(See how much Pepper has grown?)






(A moment with her Polish magnets...)






Happy child, happy household!

Evening. Snow tonight, cold spell the rest of the week. I mean, you gotta love the cold if you live here. Just not into April. Can we agree on that? 

Easter

It's funny how the day is a holiday (not for all, but for many) and yet it feels to me so ultra normal as compared to the last dozen.

It's cold and so Ed and I stay mostly indoors. Even as the little chickens (who, at nearly three weeks are not so little anymore) use every feather and ounce of energy to see the world beyond their box.





What are you doing outside your quarters??

Once again we manipulate the sides of the box so they can't readily fly to the edge. We think it'll buy us 24 hours until they figure out this next hurdle.

Breakfast. How normal! In the sun room.






And then I settle into cooking. The meal isn't elaborate, yet it requires time. Today, I have that time.

Hey, at least dessert's easy! I serve a plateful of treats from Warsaw friends, with a few Parisian madelines thrown in for good measure.





(And I am near my computer, clicking to the album of Primrose photos, supplemented by others as the day progresses. She is already four days old today!)

In the afternoon, Ed and I try to motivate ourselves to plant the tomatoes. April first. We must! In eight weeks they should go in the ground. Today is the day to fill the cups with soil and push a tiny seed into each container.

But who wants to work outside when it's so cold out there? What's one more day, right?






We do half of what we need to do and then our fingers get cold. We retreat inside promising ourselves that tomorrow will be warmer (will it?).


In the early evening, the young family comes for Easter dinner.






Snowdrop is in her most playful form...






Full of stories and smiles.










And so we're back in our routines as if nothing has changed. Except that of course, in our minds and hearts, we now have the presence of Primrose. And so nothing is as it was before.