Sunday

The storms begin at 6 in the morning.

Ed, I can't go out to feed the kitties.
Why not?
Listen to it! Another clap of thunder.
Then don't go.
You think it's safe, don't you?
Of course I think it's safe.
Oh fine, I'll go.

The kittens get none of my friendly voice and sweet rubs on the cheek (well, only Dark Pink and Dance let me do that). I am in and out in a flash.

By late morning, all the nastiness has moved to the east. I snip some spent buds, Ed rototills the pathways.


(garden views)











Breakfast: quiet, lovely.





Afterwards, Ed does a quick inspect of my car.
Nina, do you ever check your oil?
Well, I mean to do it...
It's below even the "minimum" line! How did you get it to run down that much?
Um, well, ah, so.... maybe we should bike to pick up corn!

 (Did you know that our corn farmers also raise and sell Scottish Highland beef? Here, look this sweet cow in the eye and apologize for your love of hamburgers!)






The afternoon is full of chores and errands, including picking up three quarts of oil for my car. Three quarts! I vow to do better going forward.

(Along the road to Walmart)






And in the evening, the young family is once again here for dinner.

(Talking to her sister...)











(An evening romp, as she and Ed go out to feed the animals...)






Late, when all the dishes have been cleared and cleaned and darkness has fully set in, Ed and I bring out the popcorn and turn on a movie. As I get up to fetch a cool drink, I see it again: the frog visitor. He came in from the porch a couple of days ago and we naively thought we could catch him and let him out. He was quicker than either of us.

Tonight, we're more careful. Ed comes in from the porch, I'm ready to throw a bowl over him in the kitchen.





And still he gets away! But he leads us to the secret little hole in the corner of the porch used by him and possibly the occasional mouse that looks for shelter in our basement.


So, maybe frogs rather than crickets  after all?

Saturday

It's summer, it's fall, it's really summer, it feels like maybe summer is nearing an end.

Ed and I both love seasonal change. True, the most anticipated and exhilarating changeover is the one that signals the coming of spring. But, it's also a time of frustration: spring never comes soon enough! You have plans, you have expectations and you find yourself waiting.

The change from summer to fall is more gentle. It's like taking your great aunt out for a walk, rather than playing tag with a ten year old. The rush is over. We take each day as they come, reveling in the feeling of lingering warmth, even as the idea of a crisper day doesn't seem bad at all.

[For some, the change to winter is the worst: these are the people who flee south. We're not among them. In the winter, the house is warm and there's always the hope for a beautiful snow cover.]

I'm still snipping lilies, but only in a couple of places are there any noticeable quantities of spent flowers. Like from these very tall girls: still going strong -- 40+ every day.







Most of the others are now singles or at best doubles and struggling to make their presence known in the thickness of phloxes, heliopsis, rudbeckias, and monardas.











A game for you: find the day lily in this picture!






We do some weeding -- Ed along the path, me by the sheep shed, but it's a halfhearted effort on my part. So there are weeds. I'll deal with them next spring.

For me, this is the last unstructured day for a long long while. The young family is returning from a few days away by the big lake and we all now have just a short time to get ourselves ready for some more travel. But today, I'm still moving slowly, letting the hours unfold without once having to look at a clock. Having breakfast at noon seems just fine! Or is it even later? I note the passage of time only by the movement of the sun from one end of the porch to the other.






Sometime late in the day, we bike over to the Disc Golf course once more and put in our 9 "holes" of disc throwing. Ed's improving so much that he wants to keep playing. Me, I like the barefoot walk across the course and the meager tosses of a disc that never seems to want to go far enough. No camera this time, but I do say hello for you to the cranes and pigs! And the three deer that crossed our path on the ride.

And in the evening, I check off a few more items from my big to do list, and I cook up a huge pot of chili (I can never take off on a trip without wanting to cook several meals for Ed, even as he laughs at my distrust of his solo eating habits), and finally we settle in on the couch for an evening of popcorn in front of some irrelevant movie.

And there you have it -- four days of a slower pace. Now let's rejoin the rest of humanity and get ourselves pumped up for what's ahead.

Friday

How can a day run past you so quickly, that you don't even notice when evening is starting to set in?
Ed asks -- are you ready to bike over to the disc golf course?
I'm tired! But from what? Sitting at the computer for the better part of the afternoon? (To my credit, I had a lot to accomplish with the help of the Internet.)

Morning was as typical as any farmette August morning: cats, flowers, flowers, kittens.











(Cats that stick together....)






(the forgotten flowers...)


 



And breakfast of course.





Then? Groceries. Because it's Friday. And after? Well, the computer. Forever.

Come on, he coaxes. You need the exercise.
Must we bike? So many hills!
You need the exercise.

We bike.

And it is a splendid evening for it! When you're on a bicycle, you are this close to all the beauty that the planet has to offer...






We are very much in farming country. Tractors, pickup trucks. And our sandhill cranes.





This is the farmstead of the Uphoffs. They raise pigs for your Sunday breakfast plate.

Every time we pass their pig pen (and we pass it very often -- it's the road we take to Disc Golf, to cross country ski in our county park, and to Walmart, our closest general store.), I think about these fat, well fed animals. I'm not a vegetarian (though we rarely eat meat), but still, one has to look those smart animals in the eye every once in a while. And we do.






In the eye!






In the evening, I let Ed take over cat feeding. He is determined to feed all of them in the cages so that we can more easily capture Stop Sign and the littlest ones, should they ever emerge from the garage rafters.

I stir up cauliflower and corn, throw in an egg or two and slice up some heirloom tomatoes. It is a classic August dinner on a classically beautiful August night.

Thursday

Are you part of the work force? Employed outside the home? If so, don't you wish that your vacation  days were more numerous? That you could take a whole month off in the summer and still have a week off for, say, a winter escape, to say nothing of a dozen public holidays in the year and a 35 hour work week? Like those darn vacation grubbing French?

We excel at many many things on this side of the ocean, but we do not excel at being generous to working folk. Most Americans, in my view, do not have enough time off from work.

True, our country men and women do better in job satisfaction than workers in some other countries. A Gallup Poll shows that only 70% of Americans hate their work. I read that in countries of the Mediterranean Basin (esp. the Middle East and North Africa), that number soars to well over 85%. So, perhaps 30% of job-liking people here don't care about the brevity of time away from work. Still, I do think it's awesome that in some places around the globe giving lots of time away from the grind is the norm. Indeed, the law.

It does make for tricky summer travel to those vacation loving countries. Anyone who has been in Paris in August has to say to herself -- where are all the French speaking people? (Answer: by the sea, or visiting New York and northern California.) More restaurants are closed than open. The place feels somehow... quiet.

I'll be in Paris next week and in anticipation of that visit, I decided to call around and check on the annual fermetures (closings), to see what, if anything, is open. What a silly thing to do on August 15th! Those who are not away by the sea, are off for this legal holiday ("Assomption"). A double whammy! Nearly everything was closed today.



Here, at the farmette, we are moving along at our own slow pace. Yes, I'm up early to tend to the animals and flowers...

(a corner of the Big Bed)






(diagonally opposite corner of the Big Bed)






(the porch garden, aka the lily bed)






(I walked over to the young orchard; the meadow flowers planted by us this year are so pretty!)






(and finally, one of the young trees is producing!)






(a fast moving humming bird)






Ed does have some work related stuff on his plate and so breakfast is a sit down, get up, sit down, get up kind of a deal.

(waiting for him...)






And then it's my turn to knock off a few prosaic tasks. I'm a dedicated bookkeeper, counting my pennies diligently, especially before a trip, and I am a committed house tidier too. (Ed likes to do neither of those chores.) So now you know what my day was like.

Still, in the late afternoon, we take out our bikes and ride over to the local farmers market (it's just 3.5 miles each way, but hilly!). We live a stone's throw from the city, but our neighbors have been mostly corn stalks.






The ride reminded me of years past, when biking was much more part of our routines. Market, coffee shop, library -- if the weather was decent, there wasn't even a question: we'd bike over to them.

Time is more precious now and in fact, I rarely make it to the Thursday market, sending Ed alone to do the eggs-for-cheese swap. But today, we had time.






(returning home, sunflowers in my backpack; Ed's carrying corn and tomatoes in his. And cheese.)






A full day. Dappled with sunshine.

Wednesday

Every few weeks, well, maybe months, you're entitled to give yourself a thoughtful day. It should be a day where you can finish the sentences running through your head, where you challenge yourself to think deeper and read the commentary and consider the alternatives.

As we wake up, Ed asks -- want to go to Ireland for two three months? Then maybe New Zealand? And Costa Rica? Experience life elsewhere for a bit?
Who would take care of the cats? -- I ask, as if this were the most important consideration.
We'd get someone to live here, of course.
What if we didn't like the place we land in?
That's the beauty of being on the move: you can always get up and try something else. For a while.

I give what is the obvious answer, so obvious that my saying it is unnecessary, but I say it anyway, because this is our dialogue in recent weeks:
I will never leave my children and grandchildren for that long. Would you leave me if I stayed?
Of course not, gorgeous. But, want to see the world, experience different cultures anyway?

It's a cool day. Gray, a little drizzly here and there. The cats greet me now en masse and both Dance and Dark Pink ask to be petted as the others watch, fascinated that this humanoid is accepted by two of their lot.

I give them some food (they're all eating again!) and a lot of sweet words and then I tend to the flower fields. Not with real care. Just the usual snipping, this time with clippers, because stems left empty of flowers aren't that attractive.

(morning views)
























I'd been up really late and so I had intended to go back to sleep after these morning rituals, but Ed is awake and chatty and so we stay in bed and talk our silly Ireland, or sometimes Iceland, or occasionally New Zealand talk instead.

Breakfast, on the porch.






I made a list of things that I need to accomplish in the next three or four days, but it doesn't include things like "think deeply" or "work patiently and creatively." It does include things like "imagine my days of travel," because I have a trip before me (next week!) and I want to imagine it first so that I can slide into a role that is deliberate rather than merely reactive. When I'm on the road on my own, I can let the river run its own course. I don't think much about what I might be doing on a given day. But when I travel with the young family (as I will be doing once more), I don't want to let go of opportunities.


*   *   *

I got an email with info about a new cafe that opened nearby.
It's the closest one to us! -- I tell Ed, with not a small amount of glee.
Oasis (aka Paul's cafe) is closer...
Nope! This one is only 2.5 miles. Oasis (where we used to hang out day after day after day in years past) is 3.1!  I can only win arguments with Ed with my fingers clicking away at google.

The new place is called Finca (farm in Spanish) and it's owned and run by a woman, Marleni Valle, who hails from El Salvador, and whose husband landed an opportunity in town and so here they came. The place is her passion. The coffee is fantastic! No surprise -- she has teamed with the 4 Monkeys Coffee Roasters in El Salvador -- world barista champs and renowned roasters -- and every cup is heavenly. In addition, they serve some food, including the El Salvadoran dish "pupusa" (a grilled, stuffed tortilla).

Can you put aside Costa Rica for now, and settle for an El Salvadoran adventure, and hang out at Finca?

We bike over, the longer way, via the bike path (15-20 mins each way).

I very much like the place. The vibe is very cool (that's as important in a cafe as the coffee and food) and the papusas -- a yummy comfort food (ours are stuffed with beans and cheese, but you can add pork to it as well).






It threatens to really rain on our ride back. See those skies?





We make it back without getting soaked. Amazing.


*    *    *

Toward evening, we attend an event run by an organization we support -- Groundswell Conservancy. The gathering is at Oak Grove Farm: they're showing off their beautiful prairie. I can't say that the weather is spectacular for it: cool, with the threat of rain. Nonetheless, the farm is less than two miles up the road from us. A hilly road.

We'll take our bikes -- this from Ed. You do not argue with a guy who wants to push exercise on you for all the right reasons.


(Rusty steel buffalo, in the farmer's prairie...)






(prairie trail...)






(prairie selfie...)






(the necessities: oaks and milkweed...)






Back at the farmette, the kittens are hungry! Patience -- I tell them. We must wait until the cheepers retire for the night.


In the meantime, one last view of the garden for us all. Before the last blooms wilt and the trees turn pale gold.

Tuesday

From frets, fraughts and frailties to serene gentility and calm. Isn't that always the pattern -- one day you're stumbling around, the next -- you're gliding across a lake without a ripple on it.

More kittens are returning to food, fewer minutes are spent tidying spent flowers, a kind Air France soul called to apologize and make amends, and the sound of crickets (no, not frogs) fills the air here, at the farmette.

Morning garden photos:
















Both Ed and I have loads of appointments all morning long and so breakfast is calm, but quick.






When it's time to pick up Snowdrop, dark, menacing clouds move in. My hair cut person is to trim Snowdrop's hair a bit. How to avoid a downpour? Buy a cookie and sit in the salon and eat it, waiting for the appointment. By the time we finally leave, the skies are nearly blue again.


(at the farmette...)






(silly girl...)





The little girl is determined to (nearly) finish building the Lego set and we make great progress! In a couple of hours, we work our way through three more packets of microscopic pieces! But, alas, we do not reach the end.
You want me to get it done in the next few days? I ask this, because I wont see the little girl until the weekend. (She has other family commitments.)
No! I want to work on it too!

And there you have it -- the girl is growing up very quickly.



Late in the evening...






Pretty light, sweet kitties, tranquil thoughts about the day gone by...





In the farmhouse, Ed and I flip through the channels of the TV. Typically, we watch the PBS channel or nothing at all, but today, we tune into a Western movie, one from 1966 (so, really terrible from any which way you look at it). To make matters worse, all the commercials target very old and infirm people. It feels like sitting around watching TV in a nursing home for those with greatly impaired mobility.

I tell Ed that we really should consider biting the bullet and spending the $10 per month for Netflix.

You really want to waste your time binge watching Netflix shows? -- he asks.
Better than tuning into a commercial infested bad Western from 1966 -- I retort, eyes nonetheless glued to the screen.

We go around this every once in a while. Ed is loathe to spend money on anything that isn't essential and believe me, his definition of essential is very rigorous. We like our time on the couch in the evening. A good show is an unnecessary bonus. A bad show? Something to groan about, until, like tonight, you can stand it no more and you flick the thing off and plunge the farmhouse into lovely silence.