a May work day

We have done a ton of work at the farmette. Over a half dozen years, we've taken down trees, planted an orchard, removed perhaps two million invasives and three billion weeds and dense matted grasses, spread maybe five thousand truckloads of wood chips, cut, pruned, dug, planted seeds, planted annuals, planted bushes, vines, grapes, berries, veggies -- including hundreds of tomato seedlings and of course far more perennials than I care to admit. But although you couldn't immediately tell, I think this year, I've worked harder, longer hours, with more exactitude and consistency than ever before.

Why? Maybe because spring was so long in coming that I was more than ready for the weeks of work that April and May bring. Or maybe because the land is so vast  for one person plus one very strong helper to care for, that in the past, I'd cut corners and this time, I wanted to attend to at least some of those sloppy spaces.

But most of all, I worked hard because I am so very content right now. And I want the farmette land to look as good as I feel.

And of course, I'm retired. You can't improve a farmette in twelve hour shifts if you also have a job or your kids need you.


Because I haven't Snowdrop with me for the rest of the week and the weather is again fantastically perfect (and will continue thus for the rest of the week), there was a danger today that I would overdo.

We started early.

Step outside and your lungs fill with lilac scent!






Ed's job today is to prepare the tomato bed for planting (it does take the better part of a day). Mine? Well, everything else.

But before we plunge into the dirt, we have a solid breakfast. On the porch. Commemorated with a timed release.






And then we get to it. Force yourself to get up, quit staring at the tableau before you, and get to work!






Ed suggests we improve the space around the silo and so I attack that first: it's a nice shady spot for transplanted ferns, hostas and astilbes and I've also satisfied my nature lover Ed that I'm not chucking tiger lilies as I pull them out of flower beds -- I'm merely giving them a new home. By the silo, where they can do no harm!

I also work on the front bed. Well, and the side beds and big bed and every bed and here's a very good thing: my friend who is spending just a few days in Madison, comes over with her daughter to hang out on the porch with me. Otherwise I'd be one collapsed gardener right now. The break was a godsend.






My friend is a gardener as well, though her plantings in New Mexico look very different from the farmette flora. Still, we love to compare notes! Most of my flowers grow around the courtyard and only the occasional visitor (and Snowdrop!) gets to see the full effect. I was gratified when her daughter could not get enough of the heady fragrance of blooming lilacs.

Though of course, visually, it's the crab apple that steals the show. It's a short lived extravaganza. All the more reason to not rush, to stop and admire.






(Tail end of tulip time...)












It's a long day and at the very end of it all I'm completely spent.  Let me leave you with that crab and lilac. It's hard, but not impossible to get them in the same photo frame. Now, take in a deep breath and tell me if it isn't the best fragrance on the planet?!

sunny

It's so beautiful outside that it thrills you just to glance up for a second!






Or two seconds...





It's this month's best. Oh, I know there have been other great days already and there will be many more, but when our crab apple is at her finest, everything around her picks up on the grandness of the moment.






It's like being around happy people -- the joy rubs off!






Breakfast is early (we both have appointments), but on the porch once again!





I have some time to do a little yard work... I put in several irises and the ever enchanting phlox. Oh, but it's all enchanting! And the fragrance of blooming trees and exploding lilacs is sublime! (What would I do without exclamation marks!)

Ed comments that it likely is the most perfect day you could have.



Into this bubble of perfection, I bring in Snowdrop. You may see more than the usual number of granddaughter photos today -- she has a bunch of things going on for the rest of the week, so I wont see her again until late in the weekend. And so I hang on to the camera, as if hanging on to her in this small way for a little longer.






(Ed shows her the bees working the crab apple blossoms...)






Yes, it's wading pool weather!






I put my wreath making skills to the test.






It's last year's swimsuit, but she's a funny fit: very long and very narrow. A two pice one works!






I can't help but stare at the explosion of gorgeous spring blossoms all around the farmhouse...






Snowdrop loves the little chicks for their friendliness, small size, and, too, for their meekness. They love her back probably for the same reasons.






Inside again! Good old tea time.






A clear sky above and a promise of more sunshine tomorrow. Heaven!

wet

It rained and thundered and rained some more -- all night long. Everything is soppy, muddy, thick with moisture, laden with water.

We do not need more rain.

Tell that to the weather gods. I hear they're to have another rumbling party tonight. And in the meantime, it's misty, cloudy, broody. And wet.

But misty cloudy broody does not bother chickens. The little girls, who are now happily sleeping "upstairs" in the coop, snuggled there with the big girls, are raring to be out exploring.

("What does she have here? Anything new? Will she be digging worms for us again??")






Ed and I are slower to get going. I suppose we miss that sunshine boost.






Still, the landscape is gorgeous now. Of this there can be no doubt.






(Yet another clump of tulips that escaped the jaws of the hungry local herbivores.)





We both do work outside though. Ed has a dead tree to remove (in the old raspberry patch, which this year has been cultivated and planted by him with buckwheat grain). I have stuff to move, weeds to dig out, and plants to put in. It wont all get done today, or even this week, but a steady work pace is far easier on the body than spurts of excessive activity followed by spells of doing nothing.

And we are rewarded by at least a short burst of sunshine! We'll take it!











I do pause at midday. I have a lunch date with my friend who is in town this week! How good it is to catch up with someone who knows so many details of your now not so young life!






And of course, in the afternoon, I come home with Snowdrop. She wants to be outside. She'd love the wading pool, but I have to be the responsible person here: it really is too cold. We settle for bubbles.






...which she loves!






... to pieces!






In short order, we all forget about the wet, misty, cloudy broody!






(You do get a little muddy on days like this. Add a bit of pain of chocolat to the mix and it's time to change attire. Grandma has spares!)






(Indoor pretend play is always exciting, delightful, crazy imaginative!)






Evening now. I don't hear rumbles in the skies. Instead, I see cracks in the cloud cover. It was, in the end, a lovely day. It will be even lovelier tomorrow to see the plants turn their faces toward warm sunshine.

Mother's Day

At some point in life, everyone has a mother. And a grandmother. Dads, grandfathers too, of course and oftentimes those dads and grandfathers or aunts or total strangers can have a profound influence on the life of the child, over and beyond what a mother might bring to the table. But even if you don't know or don't remember your mom, surely at some point you've wondered -- what was she like, this mother of mine?

You may not be at all like your mother, but I'm going to guess you have at least something of her. We all do. At least some of this (perhaps a wee bit, but maybe a lot) should make you proud.



I drive with Ed to the Flower Factory to buy a replacement plant (but really just to go there and be among flowers -- rare is the Mother's Day when I am not in a place of flowers) and en route we listen to an interview with a Turkish woman who had just written a cookbook. She'd been greatly influenced by her grandmother's cooking and as she describes the way her grandmother formed relationships with people through the food she cooked for them, I'm thinking -- what a beautiful memory she left behind.



It's a cool but dry Sunday, Mother's Day in this country.

It is for me a contemplative and beautiful day -- from beginning to end.



It actually begins for me with a climb up on the roof. I'll go far to snip branches of lilac for a Mother's Day table. Our white lilacs that hug a corner of the farmhouse are rather tall and all the blooms are, of course, toward the top. You can only get to them from the roof.

There! Fragrant and wonderful for breakfast.







Outside, the crab apples are coming into the peak of beauty. You just can't get enough of their loveliness.






At the Flower Factory, we admire a bit of landscaping: a constructed stream and pond.






It's especially interesting to us, because we think that they're building a retaining pond right next to the farmette in the new development. (There's a mighty big hole that's going in to the east of us.) We're wondering whether they'll go to the trouble of landscaping it prettily, or whether they'll ignore the aesthetics of it all. We can only wait, watch and hope.



Back at the farmette, I plant some 15 lilium bulbs and I put in decorative climbing peas. I retreat then inside, to cook dinner. And this is when I see them: four enormous hawks, perched on the barn roof, facing our chickens. The little girls take note and rush toward the shelter of trees, but of course, the hawks can easily give chase. I'm outside instantly, with a broom, waving it madly and making loud noises. I've heard that the presence of humans unnerves hawks and they prefer not to mess with their pray then.

The birds retreat into a row of trees at the edge of the property. I don't let them be. I chase with the broom, screeching all the way. They take flight, but only so far. They dive toward me again and again, as if at war. I persist.

Eventually, I win. They go away. I am so relieved!



Dinner is a table-ful of childhood favorites -- my girls' favorites. We've always started with predinner "small plates" and I continue this habit. Snowdrop is a great fan of roasted beets, olives, pepper strips and of course, a cracker with a sliver of cheese.  Tonight I add a bottle of wine (for those of us who can drink it) gifted by my younger daughter. It makes me feel she's here, too, in some small fashion!







Oh, here comes the young family, straight from soccer! I point out the young chicks -- they're examining my new plants on the picnic table!






(Snowdrop is the only soccer player I know who takes a big pink bow to the field with her.)






At the farmhouse now, opening Mother's Day presents!






(Snowdrop had already celebrated her own mom's special day. But hugs and snuggles are always in order.)






Dinner...






And just a few books. Daughter, granddaughter, mother, grandmother.






So much sweet sentimentality comes rushing forward on this day of mothers! I hope you had a wonderful day of recollections, memories and perhaps a few new joyful moments. Happy Mother's Day indeed!

Saturday

Gardening on a grand scale places extraordinary physical demands on you. And so sometimes, you take shortcuts. One favorite strategy is to invest in flowers that grow to a full size quickly, offering blooms the very year you put them in. And bulbs, the ones you dig in during the cool autumn months, hoping for a spring of heady blooms? You opt for the ones that naturalize. Meaning they divide and multiply. Imagine: you do nothing and your carpet of daffodils gets bigger and bigger!

Those are thoughts of a gardener who wants too much too soon. In growing flowers, you have to restrain yourself and resist promises of excess. Because it rarely turns out well: you put in spreading plants (coreopsis, I used to love you!) and suddenly they're invading neighbors and you can't get them to just stay put! And this year, I'm paying the price for putting in so many of those naturalizing daffodils. There should be a mass of yellow and white in my lily bed right now, but instead, there is a dense forest of daffodil leaves. The blooms have slowed down considerably. There are too many bulbs and they're crowding each other.

All this to say that today -- a still damp and gray and not too warm a day -- I pay my dues. My gardening work consists of the unpleasant task of removing dozens (perhaps hundreds) of daffodils from the lily bed. In theory, this should be done in fall, but I wont find them in fall. Right now, I see their dense mass and I can dig gingerly around the day lilies and pull them out and transplant them elsewhere (where perhaps they wont wreck havoc in the way that they do in my flower beds).

It's very unpleasant work and you feel foolish doing it, because you know that it's all your fault.

But, "unpleasant" is a relative term. My work is much for satisfying than, say, that of the family of truck farmers who came back today to dig out some of the rhubarb they'd planted in the fields next to us. Unfortunately, their farming days here are over as the development encroaches on the lands they worked for at least as long as I've lived here.






Oh, let's take a pause and think of something cheerful: my cluster of tulips -- wet from the rain, but standing tall! And no, tulips do not multiply. If anything, they fade each year and a good gardener would remove bulbs that are no longer producing much of anything. But this clump is vigorous and beautiful!






A pause for a very late breakfast. Way too cold for the porch.






Then back to work. On a more pleasant note -- I also put in seeds in the more distant flower beds. I always work with cosmos and nasturtium, but this year I added anemones and sunflowers and if the chickens would quit scratching the dirt around them, I might have a nice expanded flowering patch by the sheep shed.

Since the daffodils are looking sad after the heavy rains, I'll show off something else today. If you're a regular Ocean reader, you've seen these before, but still -- I love their presence and their demeanor especially in spring, when their small size fits so prettily into the emergent flower fields. (I'm referring to the bronze statues made by Ed's mother.)  Here's a trio of my favorites:


















And another gardening photo, this one with a focus on two flowers that theoretically should come back each year -- indeed, one of them is known to be quite the invasive! -- but neither really likes the winter conditions here all that much and most often I have to replace at least half of them from the previous season. (Here, I'm referring to my beloved gaura, aka bleeblossoms, and my equally beloved lavenders.)







In the evening, I scrub myself clean and engage in some social life. Sometimes I think late day frolicking belongs to earlier decades of my life: I rarely go out after dusk! But, there are exceptions and today offered one such opportunity. Still, as I drive to the get together, my mind wanders to my work outside: am I on schedule? Shouldn't I have put in the lilium bulbs that arrived yesterday? And what about...

May is always like that: you're either working outside or thinking about how you should be working outside.

I'll end with a pic of a really stunning set of daffodils that did not plunk down in the wind and rain. Can you blame me for planting too many of these faces of pure sunshine?