Tuesday

We are at a seasonal turning point. Up until now, you could make excuses: fall is so pretty, fall is so colorful, fall is so photogenic! Those maple tree leaves, those pumpkins, and the cranes! Asters, mums -- all so beautiful, especially on a sunny day, and by the way, fall offers many sunny days. Yay fall!

But at some point, the color fades. The winds blow off the leaves, the last phlox puts out its last sweet little flower, the frost comes, the branches grow bare. In Wisconsin, this happens toward the end of October. In other words, now.

It's a slow transition, but to me -- an obvious one. Right now, I still admire what's left of the garden, but you have to have a cup half full mindset to call it really pretty.






Our big maples are still full of leaves, but the birches are bare and the crab apples are on their way to shedding all that lovely gold.

Nonetheless, it's a pretty day. Sunny, cool, energizing!

Breakfast, of course...






And then I run out to do some errands for my Mom. This puts me right by the Capitol -- a splendid sight on a blue sky day!





I find an hour, too, to work on those lotus seed pots. Ed and I are making quite the pile.  Bonfire material!

Ah, but here's someone who is happy with the coming of winter! I pick up Snowdrop at school and find her...

...sooooo ready for snow!






In the alternative, we take a walk to the park.






A bit nippy there, by the lake!






We make out way back to the farmette.

(Her interest in raking never lasts long.)






Too many books to read, too many stories to tell!






The last few days of pretty fall. After that comes the "interesting" half of the season.

Monday

The trapping season has begun. As I do my morning chores, I add to the list checking the basement mice traps (which we load with peanut butter). Today we have our first catch. Ed releases is later a few miles from here. At this point, I am less committed to trap and release methods. It's mice, for Pete's sake! But Ed wont intentionally kill a living thing unless it's a mosquito. So I load up the trap again and I expect to catch at least a dozen more before winter sets in. The presence of Stop Signs has decreased the mice population at the farmette a little bit, but they will always be part of the landscape here and they will always find a way to get into the warm basement. And so the season begins: I trap, Ed releases.

It really is a gorgeous day! We wont have another like this until spring, I'm sure. Sunny, reasonably warm, fragrant with fall leaves and spent garden plants. I should start gathering dropped lotus tree seed pods or else we'll have hundreds of sprouted lotus trees come spring -- a nuisance in the flower beds -- but I put it off. Monday is grandkid day. Sparrow arrives early -- before breakfast. Before Ed is awake in fact. We kill time...






(he's a thumbs up kind of guy...)






And eventually, hungry for my coffee, I call up "Ed, are you awake?" Which of course invites the response "now I am."

(that's one big thumb, grandpa Ed!)






I leave animal care to Ed. Can I emphasize again how gorgeous this day is?






My lunch? Definitely outside. In good company.





In the afternoon, we pick up Snowdrop. I worry that the little guy is a bit undernapped, but somehow it doesn't matter. Not today. Not on this beautiful, happy day.

(Rolly polly games)











And remember how I fretted about the vacuumed princess crown (see yesterday's post)? Snowdrop noticed it wasn't there, picked up a tiny ribbon and stuck it on top of the princess head instead.






Eventually the girl wants to play outside. Of course! It's the perfect day for it! What would you like to do?
Play tennis! (Frisbee and tennis are interchangeable sports in her lexicon.)
I have to feed Sparrow. You two play. 

Snowdrop does beautiful frisbee tosses. Catching is a bit harder. (The cheepers are convinced we're throwing food bits.)






("Am I going to see the rest of that bottle??")






The parents come after work to take their brood home. Not before Snowdrop ropes them into a game of bubbles.






(The three younger chickens are still children at heart. "Can we play too??")






What every child could use: food in the belly, a warm shelter, good health, a good education, and happy parents.

Sunday

We spend a good part of the day hands buried deeply in clumps of dust and dirt. Such a pretty day, too -- with an abundance of sunshine and not unreasonable October temperatures. And here we are, sorting through grime.

The day started well -- breakfast, delicious and delightful, leisurely, with stories and smiles and a perfect mug of coffee for me...





And after, Ed set the robot to work on vacuuming the big rooms. I took out the big vacuum cleaner to work around Snowdrop's playroom.

It's a tricky place to keep clean: all those Lego pieces! Tiny flowers, utensils, a wee crown for a tiny Frozen princess. I make sure all those wee items are on the mat, out of the vacuum's reach. But somehow I get ambitious and I get too close and before I know it -- woosh! in goes the princess crown. Sucked right up, into the dust bag.

That bag is near full. And if you've ever been in this pickle, you'll know that when you suck something in, it doesn't stay near the entrance. It somehow manages to fly into the very bowls of the dust bag.

Snowdrop is pretty easy going about lost items. When I start to look for a missing piece, she'll say -- don't worry, Gaga, it'll turn up. But the princess crown -- well, it's essential. Without it, the plastic figure is like Clark Kent without his costume. We've lost it before and she did not say then "don't worry Gaga." She was ever hoping that I would find it and when I did, she was delighted.

I dumped several months' worth of soot and grime on the mud room floor. And I did not find it. Ed offered to help. We carried all that dirt onto the picnic table outside, because working on it inside had been insanely dirty: everything in the mudroom is now covered with dust.

An hour later we give up.

Ed offers to make a replacement out of wood. I assure him that the item is too small -- about half the size of my pinky nail. He has another idea: he logs onto EBay and sure enough, we find a Lego mini character that sports a crown. Close enough! $3.50 later, we are done.

There are lessons in this story -- one of them having to do with the ease of buying replacements, another about searching for a grain of sand on a beach, perhaps another about how good it is to have a partner who will stop what he's doing to look for a tiny piece of plastic for a little girl. In the end, I keep coming back to this one: the sweetest part of the afternoon had to be our joint search for that wee crown at the picnic table in today's glorious sunshine. I kept thinking that there are worse ways to spend a gorgeous Sunday.






In the evening, the young family comes for dinner. 

(Sparrow, with parents...)











(Snowdrop, with a story...)






(Dinner, now with just the five of us as Ed had to pop out for a business meeting.)





Clear skies, starlit night. They say the sun will be with us for a good part of the week. How lovely is that!

thirteen

I know many people who like to drop birthday celebrations when they get older. Don't remind me! -- is one common theme. I'm puzzled by this: you don't want to acknowledge how lucky you are to have lived this long? Weird. Then there are those who are so even tempered, that they can't understand the need for a high that accompanies a celebration (but then they also do not get the low of a cloudy, drizzly, achy day). Ed is like that. One day is as lovely as the one before, as full of the quiet as the one that follows, as extraordinary in its ordinariness as all the rest.

So you wont catch him celebrating his birthday (which is today). When I mock him for this, he'll retort -- it's an artifact!
I answer -- so is most everything that we do every day. We play by made-up rules. None of them have significance unless we impart significance to them.

He can't win on this day because for me, October 20th is loaded: not only is it his birthday (meaningless!), but, too, it marks the anniversary of our time together. Thirteen years. Only travel has given us time off from one another.  In all other days, since that joining of our lives thirteen years ago, there has always been a breakfast, like this one...






... and a dinner (see below). Together.


I had set aside time to do stuff with the old guy (hey, 68 is no peanuts!), but the weather -- well, the morning cold sent the cheepers scurrying...






And much to everyone's surprise, unexpected clouds dumped something that quite resembled snow (to the complete delight of Snowdrop, I hear).

A week of luminescence, a weekend of wind and the first delicate layer of the white stuff!






What? Have you forgotten what snow looks like? It's very pretty. The barest and darkest of branches profit from a cover of delicate flakes.






But is it hiking weather? Our October 20th nearly always includes a hike.

Let's wait a while.

I write, he chops trees. We are so perfect at this kind of rhythm.

The skies clear. The wind picks up, but even in this cold, cold set up, the snow melts. You want to go to Lake Farms Park up the road?

Up the road means we pass the hang out of the sandhills. And isn't that a beautiful sight?!





Our walk is brisk. The wind is strong and I'm not surprised to see most of the autumnal colors blown off the shivering trees. The remaining leaves have not yet turned crisp. Their green looks strangely out of place next to bare branches.






It is a good walk. All our hikes -- short and long, easy and not so easy are good walks.

In the evening, we return to our dinner place -- Brasserie V, where we sit at the bar and order moules frites and take that selfie that we've taken over the years...





Happy birthday, happy anniversary, or, if Ed could just have it his way -- plain old happy. Nothing more, nothing less.

Friday

It's no secret that I like to cook. And travel. And plant day lilies. And play with my grandkids. And I love to read about food. And travel. And family life. There used to be a hell of a lot more story bloggers out there who cared to write carefully on these topics. Reading them was a joy! (I say "write carefully," because in my mind, rants and scribbles are good for notification, but you rarely savor them.) Over the years, many bloggers grew tired of the constancy of the enterprise. Many moved on to other things (having to do with food or travel or family life). The list of blogs that I look at has grown really small.

But, not all is lost. If you're like me and you like personal insights and stories on at least food and France, I have something for you, snitched directly from the blog of David Lebovitz (whom I do read regularly and enjoy immensely): go read his latest post! (There's always a link to David in my side bar but if you can't be bothered to dart your eyes to the right, just click here). You'll see his own listing of some lovely email newsletters! They're like blogs, only different. David is correct -- if you decide to subscribe to any of them, you'll look forward to checking your email again. And that's saying something. (To keep myself happy, I read zero political blogs and subscribe to only one political daily email newsletter and even though it skews toward my way of thinking, it's still depressing to read. You need to provide email counterweights!)


In the meantime, here I am on a windy and gray October day, trying to work up enthusiasm for the weather as I work my way through the usual Friday shopping chores. I don't at all mind food shopping (so much hope for the next week's cooking!), but I do wish we had had one more day of brilliant sunshine, to kind of round off the week. So that I could end today's post with these words: now that was one luminous set of days!

Breakfast is hurried and in the kitchen. Ed has his meetings, I have my food buying. Still, it's good to start our day together. (Note the beard trim! I'm getting him spiffy and ready for the weekend!)






In the afternoon, well of course, there is Snowdrop!

(Stealing Ed's bag of chips. At least they're multigrain...)






(Insisting on hair ribbons and pigtails...)






I suggest we play art class. It's one of my favorites, because it combines so well Snowdrop's love of the dramatic with her fancy for the arts. And there's always a happy, half-observational role for me -- as student or art teacher or baby sitter to her babies.

As she sets up shop, pulling out our little coffee table (which is always her preferred art table), Ed asks her if she knows its shape. Of course she does, telling him its a square (with a touch of the "what kind of a dummy are you, anyway" in her tone). He quizzes her further and to his surprise, she distinguishes it from, say, a rectangle. He is impressed.

Where did you learn that? -- he asks, genuinely curious.
She thinks about it for a minute. In my belly, ahah.


How a book is (once again) born:


























And now it's time for her to go. Her babies are fussy (says the baby sitter, aka Gaga)  -- she tucks them in, kisses them goodnight.






I start dinner -- a stir fry. Lots of veggies, lots of patient chopping, steaming, stirring. I glance out the kitchen window and I have to smile: the setting sun chooses this moment to show its lovely face, touching just the tips of the willow, the birch, the crab apple.





So I can say it after all -- that was one luminous set of days!

Thursday

If a tree is leaning one way and you want to chop it down and have it fall in the opposite direction, there are ways to trick the laws of physics! Ed is mastering them by trial and error: the last leaning tree he felled went the way the tree gods had intended, leaving Ed to return to the drawing board to perfect his devious slight of hand.

After breakfast...





... he sets to work. In an hour or so he pokes his head in and asks -- do you want to come out to take a picture?
Now, I've taken photos of him cutting down trees before. They are never great photos because I'm too concerned about standing in the way of the tree or, in the alternative, watching a horror unfold as the tree falls on the one who is chopping it down. But for some reason, Ed likes to have me there with camera in hand, just in case all goes well.

I stand at a distance and do a halfhearted focus on him putting in wedges, while answering his constant question -- is it starting to lean away from me?
No.
How about now?
No.






And then, suddenly, there is that splintering noise of a tree coming down and lo and behold, the tree does fall in the direction Ed had chosen for it.

Did you get that? -- he asks, enormously pleased with his success.
Of course not. I was totally unprepared. You didn't tell me it was about to come down.
I hadn't known it was ready!

Ah well. It is now lying comfortably away from the old orchard, away from the pines, its top half sprawling into the construction site of the new development.

Perfect! -- Ed says, jubilantly.
I smile at his satisfaction. It makes up for the hours spent on the microwave, which still is quite broken, despite the new part Ed had wrangled in.



In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. (We're searching the school playground for her unicorn mittens. The girl is still post-nap sleepy and wishes so much I would pick her up! I do.)






Recovered. Playing truck ride at the farmhouse. Her idea.






A story unfolds. Food is involved.






Our playtime isn't terribly long because I have an early evening date with Snowdrop and Sparrow's mom. We're heading out for a glass of wine at a new wine bar in their neighborhood. As well we should. When you see your daughter only when there are kids around, you never really exhale and chat about the consequential and inconsequential details of life. Sooner or later, you're interrupted by the demands of the young ones. So tonight, we catch up.






We've had a string of pretty days. I am very very happy about that.