holiday Sunday

The kids are spending the holiday weekend with us here at the farmhouse.

That is a very ordinary statement, no? Kids, with grandparents, at the farm, for the holiday. It happens in a million homes. But I'm going to bet that in each of those homes, it's a big event. Of course, we have the two tykes (Snowdrop and Sparrow) here a lot. Daily, in fact. Still, having young energy in the house, round the clock, for several days -- that's different. We need to get ready!

I always think about these visits way in advance. What will they eat? Where will they play. What books should I make available? And I smile at the ridiculousness of such planning. My grandmother had us over at her place for entire summers (and year round when we were very young). She didn't worry about entertaining us, of course. She worried about keeping us clean and fed, period. That was enough of a challenge.

It's different now. I'm sure when I was a toddler, I was placed in a playpen and from there I watched the world spin its crazy dance. In the winters, we all huddled in the village kitchen. There was no heat in the rest of the house. Days were dark and I can't help but think that I must have napped a lot.

None of these are my worries. I want the kids to have fun and not bang their heads on hard surfaces. Eating well is easy these days (this isn't postwar Poland in the boonies). Keeping warm? Not a problem either.



I spend the morning finishing up farmette chores. This includes putting in more stones by the path to the door -- to keep those blasted cheepers from scratching mud and chips around -- and putting in a couple of more little pots to make it all look pretty and colorful. Stop Sign horned in on the picture. She is, as always, begging for more food.






We eat breakfast on the porch!






A few more hasty tasks, a glance at the garden... (oh, that lilac!)






(You think roosters crow only at daybreak? Not so. Happy crows all the time!)






(the Big Bed and the now green crabs...)






... And I'm off to pick up the little ones!



If we had a weekend of good weather, I'd be a little more laid back about how to treat the afternoon with the kids. But looking ahead to days of storms makes me think -- I've got to pack in all outdoor stuff now!

Wouldn't it be a fine idea to take the awesome twosome to their neighborhood swimming pool? Snowdrop has tried it with her parents, but Sparrow hasn't. He likes baths. He'll love splashing about with his big sister.

It's an interesting set of minutes: I'm used to dealing with one toddler and the public changing rooms and showers of a community pool. With two -- well, there's more stuff to attend to. Still, Snowdrop is pretty self sufficient. The kids are ready!

Wait, one more thing. Let me pump some sun screen lotion onto the little guy. He is more fair than Snowdrop. I slather on a lot!

My, it's awfully sticky stuff! I can't seem to rub it in. I take a second look at the container. Oops! It's not sun screen, it's soap for after swim use! Sparrow, we're going to need to shower. A lot.

An inauspicious beginning and it goes downhill for him after that. It's too bright, too wet, too weird. Had I brought my own swim stuff, we may have romped together just fine, but I was in shorts and so the little guy could not benefit from a Gaga water hug. Sitting alone in the shallows? Nope. Not this time.






Sitting on my lap and watching his sister? That works!












Making sure both kids are showered and dressed is an interesting challenge. Sparrow is the size of a two year old even as he has the mobility of his true age (just under one). But we manage! And back at the farmhouse, we all spend a good hour on the porch playing, as the cats roam and Ed works hard to fix the shocks on my car.


 








Dinner! On the porch! Pizza and asparagus (and salad for the truly big guys)! It's such a gorgeous evening. Why oh why do we have to get more rain in the days and weeks ahead of us?











Inside again I watch the two kids engage in parallel play.






Sometimes their games intersect and that's just lovely to watch.





Near sunset, Ed announces he's about to put away the cheepers. Snowdrop is like a bolt of lightening! Shoes on, out she goes with him. Sparrow and I slowly follow.

It's a good time for me to once again get him used to the feel of grass, twigs, dandelions and spent willow leaves. I remember when Snowdrop was his age -- I so wanted her to love the outdoors and I was worried when she didn't immediately respond with joy at being placed on the ground. Her hesitancy passed so very quickly. Now, she is completely at one with the farmette lands. Sparrow will get there. But today, he is still tentative.






(Not so his big sister.)






The sun is setting. She is the wanderer, the explorer, the story teller.











Inside again. no one wants to go to bed. What a surprise. I bargain. One (ten minute) Angelina video, okay, Snowdrop?





I don't know how I ever got them up to their room and sleeping (Snowdrop insisted that she wanted Sparrow to stay in her teeny tiny room), but in fact, after a while, Snowdrop stopped coming out to ask one more question and all has been quiet.

Ed comes back from Walmart errands. We munch on pop corn and talk about goats.

Saturday

Every flower has its moment of glory. Typically, its blooming period is short. A day lily has only a day for each bud. A tulip -- a week, maybe two if you're lucky. Fruit trees -- less.

When a plant is at its peak moment, I'm in awe. It's almost as if there is nothing that could follow that would be better than this! The bloom, maybe a fragrance -- they're riveting! I wish then that it would last.





But of course, the garden would look ridiculous if everything bloomed at once and for the whole season. Nature gives us a progression of events and with every blossom there will be a wilt and a fade.

And still, the impression stays with us, for a long long time. I have stored images, recollections of enchanting moments and I'm sure you do too.  Heavy lilac heads just outside the porch, nasturtium in the gardens of Giverny, buttercups and forget-me-nots growing along the riverbanks in the village where I spent my childhood summers.

At the farmette, we're following the age old spring sequence.  And today surely belongs still to the lilac bush. (But not all lilacs: we have a white lilac that's long past her prime and a French lilac that's just budding.)

Okay, enough flower talk. Let's get on with the day.

Breakfast is in the kitchen. Not because it's cold outside, but because it feels... wet out there. Too much rain, too many clouds.






So, kitchen it is. But with a very fine view of the yard beyond.





A few minutes later, the clouds part, the sun is out. I'm meeting my daughter and Snowdrop at the Farmers Market. I have a short list, but it's an important one: flowers, asparagus, lettuces.

After you've been doing this market for as long as I have (thirty years plus!), you realize that you need to have a solid base of favorites. It's not the kind of market where you can spin around all the stalls and go back to ones you like. The walk is too long, the space too crowded. So you develop a short list of farmers to talk to.

These are my go to flower people. I love what they grow and their blooms are solid! They wont wilt on you by tomorrow.






This stand is my catch-all for produce. Whatever is in season -- they'll have it. Today I pick up their baby lettuces and baby bok choy. (And then I promptly lose the bok choy. Where the hell did I put it??)






Snowdrop's mom picks up cheese curds from Farmer John. Ed and I get our cheeses from him on Thursday, so today, I just admire her true Wisconsin nature: we are a cheese curd state!






At the end, we have our romp on the grasses. Snowdrop loves to take off her shoes and chase her mom (gaga makes excuses; I am easily captured by a four year old).






She is a free spirit, a doe, a barefoot wonder.











We take the old stroller just in case. She has to share it with my purchases.






At the farmette, I have a small list of tasks. But a porch break comes first!






After -- there's weeding and moving rocks and fixing cheeper damage and, well, taking it all in. With deep breaths, because the scents right now are phenomenal.





It's a warm spring night here, in Wisconsin. We waited a long time for it to come. The windows are open, the breeze is sublime.

storms and such

A number of people I know and love actually like storms. Not the violent ones that shatter homes and lives, but your regular, garden variety storms -- lightening, thunder and all. They tell me storms can be dramatic and beautiful.

Over the years, I have tried to be one of the pack. I've tried to not be bothered by the rumble, the clash, the roar. And I've come a lot closer to it than in years past when, in the middle of the night, if a storm roared over us, I'd run from room to room closing all the windows, checking on the kids, making sure they were safe. As if that storm could savagely snatch them out of their comfy beds and carry them to dangerous places.

I'm not like that anymore.

Still, when I hear we're in for heavy storms, I want to stay inside. I want to know where my kids and grandkids are. Vestiges of the old me remain.


We didn't get violent weather last night or this morning, but we've gotten the warnings and we surely got the rain. Again. For Ed and me, perched as we are on a hill, this simply means a muddy driveway, a small puddle in the basement, and a leaning lilac.

And I have to say, a leaning lilac is a thing of great beauty. It is perhaps the one plant that looks even better after a heavy rainfall. It reminds me then of secret, overgrown gardens hiding old buildings that have seen all that life entails -- tragedy, love, anger, renewal and hope.

(to the north...)





(to the west...)






It's not really cold, but nor is it really porch weather. We eat breakfast inside.






One effect of the rain and the wind is that the crab apple quickly shed most of its petals overnight. It's always pretty at the moment when the little white flakes cover the walkway...






It's a very brief loveliness though. Very quickly, they wilt and turn brown, blending into the chipped pathway. And the tree itself? As you can see, within a matter of hours, it is more green than white or pink.






In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop. She astonishes all of us with her day's project: carefully articulated continents, painted with precision on her own atlas.






Yes, the girl has art in her blood.

The afternoon was to be stormy. I worried about getting Snowdrop to the farmette in light of this forecast. Instead, the clouds broke up into inconsequential puffs of nothing. The sun dappled the farmette land. The girl whirligigged her way across fields and paths strewn with flower petals!





















(A timed release with violets! Wait, I have to rub my eye!)






(The cheepers focus their attention on the petals. They love spent apple blossoms!)












And there you have it -- just when you least expect it, the weather can turn mean. Or, beautifully inviting. Today we went from a downpour, to beautifully inviting.

Thursday at the farmette

People in the Upper Midwest look forward to summer: lazy crazy summer. I understand the attraction: it's rarely (never?) too cool for breakfast or dinner on the porch. You swim, you play ball, you eat oversized ice-cream cones -- summer stuff.

But it comes with its own challenges. You know what they are: the heat, the bugs, the parched earth, the spent flowers. The dusty lilac leaves, the failed garden projects (oh, last year's tomatoes!).

In May, those challenges are few and far between. You may have your own personal struggles with the beauty of the season. I did: my first good friend when I moved to Wisconsin died in May, just two years after we became friends. Too, the only life threatening illness I've had to cope with attacked me in May. It's hard to be giddy under those circumstances. Nonetheless, for people (like me) who are extremely focused on creating great gardens outside (as best we can) -- it is a month full of perfect days. Days like no other!

And today is one of those days "like no other!"

Flickr, my photo hosting site is down for most (all?) of the day, so you may or may not see pictorial proof of this (I'll slide in the photos into their proper spaces as they become available), but imagine being in a place and at a time where color, fragrance, sunshine, vibrancy and freshness all coalesce. This is the farmette of today.































Breakfast, joyously, on the porch!






Immediately after, we plant our tomatoes. This is a project that is both exhilarating and fraught with life's lessons on patience, perseverance, and accepting adversity. I think this year will set us back once again: the soil is good, the plants are strong, the weather is cooperating. But since the last study of our various options, the trees have grown, the shade has crept in and I do not think we'll have enough hours of sunlight on the new patch to hit a home run. Still, we keep on trying, because we have these wee plants and we have this space...


(buckets of water)




















Time for a quick coffee/lunch break, surrounded by flowers because, well, it's May! (Lilies of the valley are the latest addition.)






In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. It's been a stressful time for the school (nothing to do with Snowdrop but rather with the realities of having kids at any school in America today), but the little girl is full of smiles because, well, she is four and though she sees and hears a lot more than we would like to believe, still, there are some things that pass her by.

(teasing me)











I have a surprise for her today -- the kiddie pool. She is of course far too old for it. And in a few days, she will tire of it. But it is a marker of the warmth of the days before us and she absolutely loves to play games in it right about now.






(cherries and juast-picked asparagus in the pool? why not!)






(mesmerized by the cheeper scratch-and-pick routines)






Inside again, I expect her to insist on continued play, but no. She has missed her faves: she wants me to read. And read. And after paging through the new book, studying it carefully to see if it is perhaps too frightening, she wants me to read that one as well.












This is our day then. I expect it to fade out quietly. I'm tired from a week of too little sleep. But Ed and I are not done yet! We must visit our local farmers market. And eat dinner. (I reheat leftovers, we settle down to eat.) And still Ed is restless. The west-facing windows, the ones we see during these long days when the sun pours through them at the dinner hour, are dirty.

Can we wash them? -- he asks.
Now? -- I groan.

We wash windows until the late hours. And I keep checking flickr, until nearly midnight. That's it: no more minutes left in the day! Good night!

UPDATE: finally, by 6:30 a.m., photo loading is complete. Good morning!