Saturday

You know the old saying that you don't appreciate something until you lose it? I'm finding the flip side to be equally valid: you don't appreciate the beauty of something until you get it back.

Today, as Ed and I eat breakfast on the porch on a most gorgeous Saturday morning, we listen to the songs of the birds, the clucking and swishing of chickens, and the faint sound of Ella Fitzgerald, who continues to sing as part of an old mosquito trap set up, and it becomes so clear that the construction noise this spring and summer has robbed us of the tranquility that this season has always delivered, along with the grand pleasure of a breakfast outdoors.







I had already cleaned the garden (down to 365 spent blooms today); note how early in the morning, most new flowers are just slowly opening.






(The side garden by the parked cars: it's where Stop Sign eats and where the young chicks like to hang out...)












... And I'd fed all the chicks and cats and cheepers  that come begging each morning and now both Ed and I are enjoying just being in each others company. We're about to embark on our various tasks and adventures, but today is just ours.

When you have a totally leisurely breakfast on the porch, your gaze drifts this way...


 



... and that way...

 



...and all that idle gazing draws your attention up, way up, to the coating of pollen that has cast a film over the glass roof. We'd hoped that the rains would wash it off. They haven't.

And so for the hour after breakfast, Ed and I attack the glass panels. I slip and slide outside scrubbing them, Ed fills bucket after bucket with water and passes it up to me.

My next moment on the porch is just heavenly. And the sky, as seen through the now clean panels, is the color of bluebells.






A midday garden is always rather stark and the golden yellow tones dominate. But I never tire of it. The same garden can cycle through a hundred different images in the span of twelve hours. And each image is astonishingly magnificent.






In the evening, the young family is here for dinner, along with my daughter's friend who really is like family. Snowdrop joins us in munching a bit before the meal is ready.






We eat dinner on the porch, in the evening light, mellow and sweet, comforting, soothing.











(Don't you think little Sparrow is admiring the utterly clean glass roof of the porch?)






Dinner is done. Some of us linger on the porch, others retreat inside, playing a little, straightening up some, enjoying a moment on the couch....






It's a beautiful evening.






When the young family leaves, Ed and I set out for a quick shopping trip to the big box store. He needs a pair of shorts that fits. And clip-on sun shades for his glasses. And the advice of his sweetie in the purchase of said items.

On the ride back, we glance up and see the moon. The full blood moon was to have been yesterday, but you could have fooled me: it is as big and as red as I'd ever seen it. The air smells of a sweet summer night. All is calm. Breathe in, exhale. Smile.

Friday

Time played tricks on me today: it moved forward faster than I expected. I wasn't prepared for its quicker pace and so now, here I am, at the end of the day wondering why there are so few minutes left.

As is often the case on a busy day, I'll allow myself to step back and let the camera do the story telling.


It's a breathtakingly beautiful day. Cool, sunny, lovely.

July habits are strong and enduring. I begin the day with work in the flower beds.

(looking out toward the writer's shed)





465 spent lily blooms clipped and tossed. What remains is all that outrageous beauty that a tended garden offers.





The cheepers are close at my feet until I acquiesce and retreat to the barn to feed them.

(Cupcake wants to know why Stop Sign gets fed right away, while she and the other girls have to wait. Life is unfair, young girl. It's just plain unfair.)











I love all my flowers, of course, but the flower bed by the porch is the one I've worked on the longest: it has the greatest complexity and it's the one that I study all the time, from every angle, every side.






Breakfast.






Breakfast view.






And in the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop.






We come to the farmette, but again she wants to play outside. Yep, frisbees.






She wants more players. Ahah, will you come and play frisbee with us?






She sees his bare feet and tosses her own shoes aside. The cheepers are convinced they will soon get a treat. They hover. We try to ignore them.






She jumps...






Somewhere in that hour of outdoor play, Snowdrop gets a bug bite in her lower lip. I'm guessing a horsefly, though I did not see it nor hear it. Her lip swells to some great proportions. She insists on a bandaid. Well why not.

We prepare snacks for my guests who are about to arrive. Snowdrop devours half of them: cured meats,  cheeses, olives -- she eats them by the handful.






My daughter arrives with her two good friends who are visiting right now. Sparrow and his dad are here, too, but I put down my camera after this shot.





Sometimes, you just have to let go of picture taking and listen. Young people almost always have clever and funny things to say about... really pretty much anything.


Evening. The light now is best in the back of the Big Bed. So full, so delicate and infinitely lovely.

catch your dreams

When I step out just a wee bit after sunrise, I often hesitate about taking my camera along. I tell myself -- I've given Ocean readers as many lily pictures as they could possibly stomach. So what that each day brings out a completely new set of blooms that have never been photographed before! It's still a lily field. Full of lilies. And bee's balm and phlox and false sunflower and whatever else comes into the mix.

But I swear, I take one look and I am so in love with what I see, that I go back to draping the old reliable camera around my neck again. And again. The moments when the light on a flower is exactly right...






... when the flowers are positioned just so, with their beaming faces all shining toward you so beautifully...

(These are my midsummer queens: their appearance is like a whiff of pure magic; when they finish their bloom, I feel like summer is packin' up its bags)







... those moments are fleeting. Indeed, a daylily bed is fleeting. So is summer. So is life. A photo allows me to take note, to linger, even as my schedule tells me I must move on.






In the thick of a snowless, monochromatic February day, I'll look at these same flower fields and think -- were they really with that much color? It seems impossible!






One glance at a July photo and I realize that it's all there, waiting to bloom again come summer.






Today, I actually was greeted initially not by my lilies or by the cheepers, but by Stop Sign.






She has been eating copious amounts of food. Either her other food sources have dried up, or she's pregnant, reminding us of our feral cat obligation to catch her and have her neutered. If it's a female. And if, in fact, she isn't someone else's cat!

So I feed her. And then I pluck my lilies (402 today) and groan at the damage to the real lilies whose heads and leaves have been eaten by deer, or groundhogs or whoever else is hell bent on devouring my flowers.





Breakfast, on the porch, despite the roar of trucks nearby. Ah, but some day there will be parkland...





This is the morning for me to shop with my mom. We're looking for certain foods she'd grown accustomed to in Berkeley. We find some plausible substitutes at the Coop.





And I take her as well to the bakery where a few times each week, I pick up pain au chocolat for Snowdrop.






Did I tell you how lovely the day is? Partly cloudy, breezy and very mild. September weather, really. Seasons come and go. But the photos stay with us for as long as we want them.


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. We do go to the playground (I find a clip in my purse for her hair -- the wind is really kicking things around by the lake)...


 


... and she swings good and hard. But a curious thing happens. She wants to be pushed -- her own pumping never gives her the height she loves. But she also wants to talk and I keep telling her that it's impossible for me to hear her because her words fly off with the wind toward the lake, away from where I'm standing.

And so she asks to go back to the farm.

As we walk back to the car, she tells me that someday she will live in a farmhouse. She'll be like Ed and fix everything. She spins a futuristic vision that is elaborate in detail and fantasy. As we reach the car, she sighs. I want to be older...  -- she tells me.
Well, you are growing up and being three and a half seems kind of fun too...
Growing is only fun because then I can be the age I want to be.
And what age is that?
Ten and a half.

I had to write down her words to get them right. I want to remember that at three and a half, you long for nothing more than to be able to do more than you can do right now. I suppose that when you get much older, you remember fondly all that you could once do, but can't anymore.


We never quite get to playing inside the farmhouse. The day is so grand that Snowdrop wants to stay out in the yard. She picks up the disks and does a mean toss. And another.





And another...








And another.






Evening. Catch your dreams before they slip away (if you're my age, you'll remember the song that gave us those words)...





Beauty pops up year round in a garden, but in July, it throws itself at you. For one magical moment, it is everywhere, all the time.You hold onto it as best you can.

parks and recreation

Ed and I are getting to know our town's administrators very well. The development all around us is huge and we have many questions. We have met with the city engineer. We have spoken to our representative. And today, we had a visit from the head of the Parks Department.

Fitchburg (the name of the town where we live) is a sprawling place. I was not surprised to hear that within its borders there are 45 parks. Nine more are being added -- some of those will abut farmette land.

It's the same old predictable story. The city Parks Department is understaffed, overworked and trying to do its best managing a diverse bunch of outdoor spaces. It's clear that any new park will have to not drain resources. (My dream of a beautifully planted space, with wide avenues, benches and chairs, fountains with boats for children and ice cream stands and weekend puppet shows is possibly a little farfetched. More in line with reality is a basketball pavement, a water fountain, and a shelter for barbecues.) Still, one can be imaginative and not spend millions, right?

We want to stay involved because the dedicated parkland is huge, at the same time that it can be buggy, sloping toward protected wetlands where fowl, cranes, frogs and bugs have a happy evening party every day of the summer season. The future use has to be clever, relying on the hard work of people who care enough to work without compensation.

Of course, before our early morning meeting with Mr. Parks Department, I have to tend to my garden. (461 lilies snipped.) I know that the future parks here will not resemble Lazienki in Warsaw or the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, but still, I want to put my best garden face forward.


























Mr. Parks Department is impressed. I beam.

We have a splendid first chat. We listen to his presentation, ask very many questions and generate not a small number of ideas. In the next year, a vision will begin to take shape.







Somewhere in the morning hours, there was a breakfast. Take my word for it.






(View from our breakfast table...)







And in the late morning hours, there is a visit with baby Sparrow. Here he is, a month and a half old, still calm, still tall as they come.






(Oh, gaga! You're so gradnmotherly!)






And in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.

(She is at the art table, making a book.)






We have a planned recreation for today: my daughter's good friend is flying in for a longer visit. We are all to meet up at the community pool for an afternoon swim. (Well, Sparrow is a little young for this; he stays home with his dad.)











We finish the afternoon with a snack at the coffee shop (and more book sketches).






Evening. Ed bikes, I cook. Eventually we'll both fall asleep on the couch. I know I'll dream of parks. Ed? Of gutsy recreation.