Wednesday

Kittens still gone, air thick with heat and humidity, mosquitoes are having a ball. A July farmette day to the core!

On the upside, the lilies are indeed blooming. In the Big Bed first...







Lovely en masse...

 



... exquisite one by one...






And the porch! A haven! A real treasure! Breakfast -- sublime.






Afterwards, Ed and I run some errands for my mom. Several miles into the trip his motorbike breaks down. This is not good news. We are far from home. We are on a bit of a tight schedule.

Ed fiddles with the wiring and emerges victorious. He finds a defective fuse and pulls it out. We're set! He grins.
Wait, you don't need the fuse?
We'll be fine.
What's the fuse for if we can go without it?
It prevents fire, explosion when stuff malfunctions...
Oh.

Still, you cannot ride with Ed on a warm sunny day without melting into his big frame and feeling totally relaxed. It's like a massage, only with gentle breezes and the clean smell of his shirt rather than with hot stones and essential oils of lavender.

One big job for us is to get my mom onto a new computer. Ed has done the work of transferring files and doing the set up here, at home and you always believe you've done it all until you show up with it and you see the puzzled look on the user's face as she cannot find this file and that icon...






We spend a good bit of time on it (well, Ed does; I do more prosaic stuff like change light bulbs and give haircuts) and still, several hours later he tells me -- I should have done one more thing! It's always like that with new computers.

Ah, but the ride back on the motorbike is grand and no, the machine did not explode or catch on fire!


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school and bring her home.

After Scotland, or perhaps after having a baby brother herself, she is in love with Katie Morag books.






And always, always, there is lots of pretend play. Today we're all going to the beach!






(extending our play to the bug-free porch...)






(warm days are popsicle days)






This summer, Wednesday is once again ballet day! Guess which story they're dancing to. I know, it's easy:  Little Red Riding Hood.






Later, much much later, I cook up a red lentil soup and Ed goes out for a Wednesday Night Bike ride. I look out at the garden in the evening light and smile ...





If your July garden doesn't make you smile, call me. We'll put something in there that'll light up your days going forward. July (at least here in Wisconsin) is flower month!

Tuesday

It is about as normal a week as you can come up with these days. Routines are with us again. And I like that! The interplay of chaos and the ordinary is a good thing and it's quite pleasant to switch into a steady pace. For a while, anyway. You don't want to get complacent, or grow dull through endless repetition of the same. (Of course, the balance has to shift over time: chaos or even grand adventures become less desirable as you pass a certain age -- not sure which age, but something tells me I'm not awfully far from it!)

We have a stream of good summer weather before us: pleasantly cool in the morning, with plenty of sunshine throughout the day. The lilies will definitely rejoice!

Not that they have been completely silent. I picked off nearly 300 spent blooms from all the beds this morning, mostly from the yellow girls. They're nestled in all corners of the flower fields and they have been really blooming up a storm for a while now.






It wasn't totally pleasant work because the mosquito population is rapidly growing. It's five weeks delayed as compared to last year, but in the morning, among dew soaked foliage, they are now buzzing away.






I was up early of course because of the cats. Here are three out of the six youngest ones, hovering near Stop Sign.






All one family, all getting along right now. All needing to be neutered soon! (The task of doing this is daunting: tell me, how do you trap cats and not terrify the rest? And how do you do this when the cheepers are endlessly trying to get to the cat food?)

I go back to gardening thoughts -- enjoying the rhythm of my work outside, delighting in the slow but steady appearance of some of my very favorite day lilies: I love the ones that have many hues, gently moving between one and the next, like these Francis Joiner ones:






Breakfast is wonderful. If you were to ask me which moment of the day is the calmest, I'd say this one, right here.







Later, stepping out into the sunny path, I can only think how gorgeous gardens are right about now.






After a three week break, Snowdrop is back in school, overjoyed to see her class friend again. I pick her up, she grins broadly and announces to anyone who will listen -- my grandma's here for me!











(the devotion to drawing does not stop, thank goodness!)






Evening: the fireflies are tremendous! I go out for just a little bit. (The mosquitoes are also tremendous.) Dance comes out of the garage meowing, wanting something that I cannot understand. The other cats? Gone. Up and left. For how long? Perhaps two hours, perhaps two days.

A normal week. Predictable, yet never fully so.

work day

Most beautiful summer days provide an opportunity, especially for those, like me, who are no longer tied to a work schedule. Work in your garden, play, go for a hike. Right?

I did none of that today. For the better part of the day, I stayed in the farmhouse glued to my computer.

Before you tell me what a mistake this was, hear me out:

First of all, I did go out early. To feed the cats. All of them were enjoying the lovely, cool morning. And this is when I was able to count them: six kittens. Stop Sign had six, not five, not four like we had previously thought! They were all there, snuggled together on Ed's old sleeping bag. Oh my...

The morning itself was rather buggy, telling me that our mosquito-free days are over. Until we resume our garlic oil and rosemary essence mistings, working in weedy areas is going to be no fun.

But, breakfast on the porch? Heaven.

(View from porch)











(one of the first colorful daylilies)






(Pepper follows us as we check out the progress of the tomatoes...)






(Views of the Big Bed...)






I wanted to devote my morning to working on my trip photo book for the kids. I'd been at it for two days now and I thought I'd give it a big push forward before noon. Typically, I would pick up Snowdrop from school and have an afternoon of play with her, but I find out that she is still a tad under the weather and so she will be staying home today. That means I can devote a whole day to the book project.

And I finish it! Nearly 100 pages of photos and captions. Phew!

And so this is my day: writing, editing, and eventually uploading and printing. Well, I don't do it myself, I work with Blurb.

Tomorrow I may resume life as you and I know it. Today -- I was lost to the world.

(The two big cats, lounging in the evening...)

a July Sunday

Oh, summer! You can be a pain, a headache, a torment. But you can also provide us with days from which dreams are made! Warm, but not hot, sunny but not humid, some flower buds opening, most still holding hope for a future riot of color.





On such a gorgeous day, I get up happily. Early. To feed the cats, and to continue with weeding. The flower beds are mostly well tended by now. Weeds pop up, I pull them out. It's all rather straightforward.

But there are farmette places that are just OOC. Around the sheep shed, for example. I tug at so many weeds the size of me, that my back starts to creek. Must slow down... More importantly -- must complain to Ed. I tell him: I am swallowed up completely by the weeds of your yard. I need help!
I can't tell what's a weed and what's a plant...
Everything by the sheep shed and in the raspberry patch is a weed! Don't you see how awful it is here?
It all looks rather verdant to me...

Oh, Ed...

Three hours later, I am spent. But on a day like this, that's okay! I have breakfast on the porch to look forward to!






(looking out on a garden that is still not even close to being at full bloom.)





Ed wants to seize this great weather and do something outdoorsy, but I am too tired. Those three morning hours really wore me out. I settle in to work a little on photography issues (and watch a great soccer match!).


In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. Both kids had been a little under the weather and so it's just grand to see them chipper and joyful once again.





















(Yes, art hasn't left her blood after the trip... And that's such a good thing!)





The smell of summer is in the air. Rich, heavenly summer.

soaky Saturday

... because what we really need more of is rain.

A rush to feed the cats before the heavy downpour. But never am I so rushed that I would miss a pretty bloom, for example this iris right by the walkway to the farmhouse door.






And the astilbes on the other side of the path...






The rains pass and we linger over breakfast on the porch...






And just as I get up to head out for the farmers market, I hear the ping of a text from my daughter -- it's about to rain again, she tells me.

No market for us. Poor farmers, soaked out in the fields, rained out during the peak selling time.

Snowdrop is disappointed and so her mom offers to bring her to the farmhouse for a special play date. She hasn't been here for several weeks -- there's a freshness to everything that she plays with here. She's excited and I am very happy to see the smile on her face and bounce in her step once more.






Happiness is a catchy thing...






We play hard. I don't think it rained again, but no matter -- we had plenty to keep us busy indoors.


In the evening, Ed and I take a walk by Lake Waubesa. It's a good place to stroll -- the bugs are never intense and you can speculate to yourself what it would be like to live along the water's edge. Well, possibly not so good this year: there must be any number of flooded basements.

Back at the farmette, the evening light is gentle...





Sort of like the rest of the day: sweet and mellow.

four and a half

It's a hot day here, in Madison, Wisconsin. Toward the end of summer, one gets tired of these toasty days, strung together one after the next, like a never ending chain of heat and humidity, punctuated with storms that never really clear the air. But I'm not tired of them. I'm still smarting over the lateness of spring. Sunshine is my friend. My garden is begging for it!

(purple)






In the early morning, I work on pulling more weeds. It's getting to be a little buggy, but honestly, not even half as bad as most summers at this time.






(the annuals in pots: always strong, all summer long)






I also feed the cats. Since the kittens are less frightened, I see their little faces poking out curiously. Wait, how many little faces are there? Five??? Stop Sign delivered five this April??? We have got to fix these guys! I mean, currently we have seven cats, all related, hanging out in the garage. Ed!!






And I may as well say it: we should not be keeping goats here. It's all fine and well this year, maybe even next year. But five, ten years from now? Will I be able/happy to tend to them then? When I'm 76? Or 81?

The goats are once again off the table. The shed order is cancelled. I will write the goat owners that we are just too old to embark upon this venture now.

The garden is and will continue to be my farmette work. That's it. No more speculations about goats.


Breakfast.






Around noon, I go visit the young family. It's Snowdrop's half birthday and though normally we don't celebrate half birthdays with any of the kids or grandkids, I find it to be a good excuse to go over and say hi to the little ones.

First, Sparrow. Just one pic today. He's under the weather... can you tell?






... but Snowdrop has bounced back to her normal chipper self.






A crown...






(dimple still there at 4.5!)






A cake, with four and a half candles...






What could be better?!






At home again, I fill my hours with small stuff. Weeding. There'll be many days of it.

(Path to farmhouse, lookin' tidy!)






And indoor stuff:  I write reviews for all the AirBnBs. I count up all that I spend in travel. I attend to the details of my mother's stuff. And I exhale. April, May, June -- they were such terribly busy months. July is proving to be my month for one giant exhale.

Ed picks peas I'd planted some months back. Steamed, with a pat of butter -- perfect for a summer supper.

Evening. Stop Sign leads the little kittens to the water dish. They're curious. One climbs up to the picnic table, where Dance is sprawled out in the way you'd only want to do on a warm summer eve.