Wednesday - 68th

All that delicate greenery, all the emergent blooms, the buds of future flowers, the pinks, whites, yellows, purples, the warm breezes, the blue skies with the occasional puffy white cloud -- they've conspired to help you find the joy that's so hard to work up in the weeks of the pandemic. Look here! -- they're telling us. Forget about everything else for a minute and look here!


I wake up and I scramble out of bed. Or bounce out of bed. Or spiral out and zip downstairs. If you are in Wisconsin and you have a garden and you have a bit of time on your hands, you will rush to be outside in that yard today. It's a given!

(Good morning, mighty lilac!)






(Hello, little anemonie!)






(Perfectly beautiful...)






(Swallow, returning to the garage to her nest...)






(It's all so lush...)






(the girls, gossiping...)






The rains have really helped the weeds sprout and deliver a hefty amount of invasive plant matter. Everywhere.

I weave my way through the flower beds, bucket and hand spade with me, humming, yes humming as I go along.

Within an hour or two (who's counting), Ed is up and he joins me. Ed doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve or even inside his pocket. But today he is full of words of praise and happiness. Working on some tool repair job next to patch of ferns and geraniums brings out the sweetest grin. Scanning the flower beds, he marvels at their early season magnificence. You just can't help yourself on a day like this!







Breakfast, on the porch.


\



And then it's back to my weaving pattern -- this way and that way, pluck, dig, snip. Pluck, dig, snip.

All the way until lunchtime. Not my lunchtime. A little Chicago girl's lunchtime!






Primrose! Tell me about your day!!





She does. And it's wonderful.


Snowdrop is here in the afternoon.

I have given up trying to predict what will grab her during her visits here. There will always be reading time and eat-a-huge-bowl-of-grandma-fruit time. Beyond that, the girl is very careful to pick stuff that feels exactly right.

Much of it is outdoors today. First, she wants to check if the cherries are out and ripe yet!






Then she wants to plant some flower seeds.






And water them.






She instructs the cheepers to leave her seeds alone!






It strikes her then that she ought to feed the cheepers. I'm agreeable. They're agreeable.






And eventually, after this lego project and that book and more cherries and a jam sandwich, I take her home. Where this guy is happy to see her...






Back at the farmette, all is quiet. Ed is biking. I take out the pans, bring in the mushrooms delivered today by the Funghi Farmers, rinse off Matt's spinach and get to work. Wednesday night is frittata night. It hasn't the rhyme to it, but it's nonetheless the perfect dish to have waiting for a guy who has been riding up and down the hills of south central Wisconsin for a handful of hours.







During my drive home tonight, I listened to a brief NPR news clip about how one can help kids stay upbeat during these tough times, where nothing is as it was three months ago. It seems some of us are predisposed (for whatever reason) toward optimism. Others struggle to see a cup as half full. But it's not a given that you should remain with your half empty mindset. You can actually teach yourself to redraw the image of a dire situation, so that it becomes for you a half full cup after all.

In the alternative, you can get a boost from stepping outside on a day like this one. Look closely at something green, pink, blue... Something beautiful. Take a deep breath and hold it for a couple of seconds. Then exhale. And thank nature for giving us this incredible gift of a perfect May day.

Tuesday - 67th

We spoke to a live human being today! For us, this is most unusual. Aside from my daughter's family and one dental visit, we've seen no one, except perhaps through the rear-view mirror, at a curbside pickup of groceries, flowers, or wine. But today, as I drove up the driveway (returning home after being with the kids at my daughter's), I nearly bumped into Matt from Blue Valley farms as he was dropping off his delivery of asparagus and spinach. He was pausing to chat with Ed at a very acceptable distance of course. I joined in.

It felt both like old times and a bit strange all at once.

In the course of our conversation, I learned that both Matt and his wife continue to "meet" with their book groups, albeit via Zoom. And I thought -- book clubs! I should return to that long forgotten social construct. I don't know many people (women especially) who are not part of a book club. And then I spun back to reality: I don't have the time for it. At least not if I also want to keep up with my own reading list. Indeed, I don't have time for much of anything over and beyond what is before me right now.

Retirement has never felt so busy.

It's the usual stuff. Animals in the morning. (A nice morning, though a bit cool and definitely gray. But the crab! And the lilacs!)











Then come the weekly groceries. Bags of them. Wash, scrub, wash scrub. Dry, put away, unload the rest, put aside for three days. Wash hands for the hundredth time.

And now I rush to get breakfast on the table. Ed's sleeping still, but I need to get going. Ed!






He comes down. A quick run through what's ahead for us today and I'm off to see Snowdrop and Sparrow.

(The little girl says -- gaga, I want to clean up my room. Will you help me? Sure! You do the hard stuff, I'll do the easy stuff!  Why?  You're better at hard stuff! But in the end, she does nearly all of it herself. Sparrow helps by not taking out more stuff.)






(Downstairs play: he just wants to be part of her story...)











Lunch!






(All done!)






And now I am home and thoughts of book groups are long gone. Mom issues dominate the afternoon. There are some immediate little things and, too, big stuff: messed up bills that need careful handling, coordination problems that need thoughtful attention, long waits, lots of discussion. All afternoon long. And I'm not nearly done.

I do take a break for a walk. No time for anything big. Just up and down the farmette lands. Good for the soul if not for the aerobic benefit. I don't pick weeds. After all the rains, there are too many.



Supper -- soup, with all those CSA greens. Sorrel, spinach, stinging nettle. Yellow onion, wild green ramps, white garlic, and green garlic. Sauteed. Herbs, of course. And a dice of parsnip, because I have so much! Pureed lightly, then left alone as I add chopped asparagus and a handful of corn kernels. And cannellini beans. All sprinkled with cheese. Good and nourishing. But late. Very late. (All those greens and I still make a salad. We are that hooked on salads every night.)

Emails, posting, and pop corn for the one hour thriller followed by the half hour sit com. Read a few pages, but only a few, because the eyes close. There. A day in a nutshell.

Monday - 66th

A day of this, a day of that. It's how I would describe our weather. Sunshine Saturday, rain Sunday. Clouds today, who knows what tomorrow. We're not sticking with anything extraordinary for long. No long stretches of good weather, but at the same time, no long stretches of misery either. It's like dealing with someone whose mood changes daily: you can't count on her cheerfulness, but nor can you be concerned about having a drumroll of negativity.

(By the way, I would be very surprised if any farmette outdoor photo did not contain either the crab apple or the lilac, or both this week. This is their moment! Revel in it!)






(I cannot give you the fragrance. Imagine it!)






(Is it pink? Is it white? You decide!)






The day moves quickly for me. From the get go. There is a steady trickle of tasks that need my attention. Mom issues, cat issues, other people's issues.

Breakfast is in the kitchen and rather hurried.






And because it's Monday, the grandkids arrive immediately after.











(Can you smell the lilac? The lily of the valley? Yes I can!)






(Art time: super pigs at work)






(Art time: she uses pink; must be good; he wants to use pink. Thank goodness there are two of everything,)






In this whole new era of isolation, distancing, and remote everything, I have seen the range of contacts that grandparents have with their kids and grandkids. Many live in one household. Some, like us, practice extreme isolation alongside, so that it is as if we were in one household. Others see the young ones, but they maintain physical distance. Still others would like to spend some version of contact/distance, but have no viable way of being in the same town/state/country as the kids. And now, with partial reopenings dotting the landscape, everything is even more complicated: several grandparents I know see these weeks as creating a window of opportunity: schools aren't yet open, infection rates are leveling off and so it's a now or never thing. Several of my friends are seeing their grandkids in these weeks -- for the first time since everything shut down in mid-March. But for how long and under what conditions? We have no great certainties or insights there.

This all comes up as I once again have a Zoom call with my Polish friends. The ten of us have been meeting in this way every couple of weeks. We're all grandparents. We have different situations, but many of the same questions and unease to grapple with going forward.







It's a good meeting. People may be happy to throw away Zoom parties as soon as the risk of personal contact recedes/disappears, but me, I've gained more time with overseas friends. Before, I needed to travel for a long time to get one evening of fun with them. Now, at the click of the screen, I have a fairly regular face to face. Everyone's evenings are free. And so we Zoom.

And before long it's their night and my evening. Still cloudy, but still beautiful. Remember, it's the week of the Great Farmette Natural Beauty.






Evening. Easy supper (leftovers!), easy couch time, easy shopping (week's list done, delivery for tomorrow secured), easy thoughts. Almost too easy, given the difficulties all around us. I am so lucky that social isolation is all that has been asked of us. My heart goes out to those, who have had to do so much more.

With love.

Sunday - 65th

We're getting a lot of rain today. The kind that leaves behind big puddles in the driveway. Oh, I suppose I'm glad. Everything is getting a good soak. The asparagus will be delighted, the newly planted day lilies will get a boost as well. Still, nobody -- not the cats, not the cheepers, not me nor Ed -- likes being outside in pouring rain. The brief walk to the barn in the morning leaves me soaked. Sneaking food for the two kitties, Cutie and Calico is terribly unpleasant, especially since I then have to stay outside to keep the chickens and teenage cats away from the kittie feeding station under Ed's car.

And yet, despite the fat rain drops and the cool air, I do push myself out the door for gardening reasons. I need to do my annual feeding of the plants in the front bed. They get terribly starved for nutrients after a winter dumping of salty road stuff. The time to sprinkle granules is during a rain so that the cheepers wont come after me pecking at the interesting stuff that they firmly believe must be food for them. So, sprinkle and kick some dirt over them. Up and down the bed. I am beyond wet at the end of it all.

But I do pause nonetheless to admire the crab apple. I mean, this is it! The week of glory for her! You can't let a rain shower dampen the show that she gives ever so briefly, on this one week out of the whole year!






Breakfast in the cozy kitchen. After I've already taken the time to clean the whole farmhouse. Ed is sleeping off yesterday's laborious car repair job.

Ed! Do come down please! I want my coffee!
Okay okay okay....






In the afternoon, I should do my taxes. I should also do my mom's taxes. I do none of it. I heat up water for tea and sit very close to the heating vent until it's time to start in on dinner.

(Looking out the kitchen window...)






The young family is here of course, and it is a shame that we should be eating indoors, but there you have it. May brings rain and there is plenty of it on this day.

Oh, and did you know it's Mother's Day once again? It is!






So, dinner and play, all indoors, listening to the patter of big fat drops on our farmhouse roof. It's a very pleasant sound.

What do we eat? Well, there are 4, maybe 5 menus that I basically recycle for Sunday dinners, with some, but not a whole lot of seasonal variation. I always ask if they want something new, but the response is the same: nope! Everyone eats copiously and Snowdrop is always full of compliments and so why on earth rock that ship! Today it's time for the Rick Bayless shrimp tacos (with a green mole). Oh, and I do roast some slices of sunchokes for a predinner munch. They came in the CSA box and I must put them to good use.






(At the table...)






(Dessert. He's the only one at the table who does not care for cherries.)






Late evening. Subdued. We've taken to do a late watch of 60 Minutes, which is a terrible idea as it always has CoVid stories. Valuable ones, but not great for an end of day kind of moment. And so we do add-ons afterwards: a Brit thriller, followed by an American comedy. It is close to midnight by the time the evening winds down.

One of the 60 Minute stories has me thinking about science once again and the women and men who work round the clock now to get ahead of the pandemic. Frontliners and scientists: such stressful times for them! Howl outside, bang pots, flash lights, clap loudly. With love.

Saturday - 64th

When does play become work and when is work the same as play?

(the two youngest kitties, running away from the big guys...)





Ed has always said that a goal in your search for work should be enjoyment. The best jobs are the ones you love doing. You might say -- well, that's a luxury! Maybe. But he'd retort that too many people pick jobs for the wrong reasons. Big money, higher status, and who knows what else. They don't think about whether they will actually like going to work. We watch a news clip about a garbage collector who really loves his work. Ed nods in agreement: the guy's got it right.

But how about nonwork stuff? You could say that my gardening is all play. I do it for pleasure. Indeed, my gardens are mostly invisible to the outside world (except via Ocean!), since most of them encircle the courtyard  -- all hidden from the road. Why do any of it, if it isn't fun?



It's a gorgeous day once again. Perhaps the skies aren't quite as consistently blue and we don't pass 70F (21C), nevertheless, it really is a most beautiful day. The kind that makes you sing out loud.

I do.

Ed is surprised.






Breakfast on the porch. Long, lovely.






And then I get to work, finishing up the great big spring gardening opus. (From hereon, it will be mostly maintenance.)

(Dance is eyeing the bottle; we use it for watering the tomatoes, silly cat!)






(the earliest of the iris plants...)






It's all grand, especially since one of the loveliest moments in the year starts right about now: it's when the crab apple opens up, with a quick piggy back from the great lilac (both have been part of the farmette landscape for many decades). The crab apple blooms are just starting. The pink and white and delicate green will make take your breath away. Guaranteed. The lilac will follow soon.






As I make my way to the young orchard (to check on the meadow and to see how the beets and carrots are faring), I pause repeatedly to hack away at noxious weeds. The thistle is at the top of my list. It's everywhere. Indeed, in the veggie patch behind the barn, it has so taken hold in the last several years that it would take a heroic and sustained effort to get it out of there. I don't have such grand ambitions, but I do like to keep it out of our way in the area where we are gardening, so I dig away at the prickly nightmare of a plant.

Is this even fun? What I'm doing is so minor (most of the thistle remains stubbornly in place), so harsh on the hands (even though I'm wearing gloves), and so stupid really, that I have to wonder. And yet I continue. Until a blister form on my hand and I call it quits. For now.
 
(Cheepers, tracking down delectable edibles...)






Perhaps every hobby, every love has its thorny sides. It can't all be fun, right?

By afternoon, I sit down to a pb & j sandwich on the porch, look out at the beautiful crab tree before me and think -- eh, it's all fun. Even the unpleasant thistle digging. The work here has merged with pleasure so completely that they are indistinguishable.


Sometime around noon, I do take a break. Primrose calls! She wants to read a book to me and she knows that she has a ready audience here, at the farmette. There's not anything that I wont drop when the little one FaceTimes me.





And yes, she and her mom do read a little, but mostly she plays and I play too. She has a bunny, I have dancing flamingos -- it's all quite wonderful.


Later, much later, Ed and I go out for a quick drive. The poor guy worked all afternoon at removing a rusted front brake disc from my car (I'm not sure that counted as fun) and it was time to test the replacement. Too, we had to pick up a box of produce from our Community Supported Agriculture delivery site. (It's still wintered veggies and spring wild garlic ramps, and green garlic, but I see a bunch of sorrel as well. Maybe a green soup should be on the menu this week?)

The brakes are working, the car is moving, the CSA box contents are in our porch cooler, ready for some imaginative cooking. But not tonight. We opt for the easiest of the easy: scrambled eggs and a mix of our own asparagus, sauteed with some of the ramps and spinach leaves.


Evening. Quiet time. Not play, not work. Quiet time has us shed those constructs. It's now all about unwinding from the day that's behind us, so that we can be fresh for the day ahead.

Friday - 63rd

We all love our kids, our grandkids, our partners, our friends. We love being with them. We love hearing stories about them, we love hugging them. All that is a given. Those are our big loves. Our anchors in life.

Then there are the little loves. Things that consistently make us happy. Content. At peace. Guaranteed. You do them, the smile comes back.

Everyone has a different bucket of small loves. Of course. And it's so interesting that the people you love will likely have only a little overlap with you in their own bucket of small joys. Oh, you may both like music or a beer at the local bar, but inevitably, you will diverge on hobbies or life styles or, well, a whole lot of things. As I often said -- Ed and I merged lives even though we had ostensibly very little in common.  It didn't diminish our love for each other. We just went on to fill our free time in very different ways.

I thought about this as I worked outside today. And what a day it is! 70F (21C), sunny. One of those totally perfect May days.

And I love perfect May days! I'm so hungry for them! The weather, the blossoms, or buds that soon will be blossoms, the freshness of it all!






I love it all completely. A small love, to be sure, but it's always there and it comes back each year as I am reminded of how much beauty returns to the landscape that we almost give up on in the dead of winter.

Breakfast, on the porch. We both love this morning interlude outside.






And then I work. I mow the path through the new orchard. I weed the front bed. I plant nasturtium. It takes up the whole morning and indeed, creeps into the afternoon, but it's time well spent. Working outside on a perfect May day stirs all those good endorphins within your brain, forcing a feeling of peace and yes, hope. You can't help but smile. A handful of small loves, all coinciding on this day to bring you a much needed break from worry.

(The crab apple is one day short of blooming!)






In the afternoon, Snowdrop is at the famhouse. But first come those moments of outside play.






I have these two garden fairies and I ask her to hide them in secret places. They'll keep an eye on the garden for us all season long.






And then she is off chasing a cabbage butterfly.






A field of dandelions brings out the puffs.






And my hurried attempt to produce a crown. I do this every year and she puts up with it every year.






But she is in a hurry to go inside. Those cherries! I show her the colander-ful. She says -- an infinity of cherries!  Ed challenges her: what's infinity? She comes up with a very credible answer.

And again a grandma thing: making earrings of the double stemmed cherries!






The rest of our time is a predictable mix of reading, building and longest of all -- story telling.





And then I take her home.


Evening. A May supper.  Just as on Mondays we want something snappy, so too on Fridays I never aim high. Today's foods? Chicken brats! With Blue Valley Farms spinach on the side.

Followed by pop corn. And cheese puffs.

You know what those are, don't you? -- Ed asks pointing an accusing finger at the bag of puffs. Ground up cornmeal with tumeric and who knows what else.
Hey, some people say tumeric is good for you.
Let's read the ingredients.
Let's not.

He does.

We laugh.

It's a good ending to a beautiful day. For all the impossibly tough times that we muddle through, there are days like this one. Yes really. Buckets of tiny loves and looming joys. Around the corner, waiting for us.

(Cat, on the porch, liking it as much as we do.)