Friday - 154th

The animal hospital didn't call us until after midnight. We drove over then to pick up a terrified and sick Calico and to bring her home. That is if you can call the unfinished writer's shed home. She certainly didn't feel it to be that. But it is, in fact, perfect, because it keeps her safe for now. She is in no position to go it alone outside. Of course, she's not eating or drinking and so the hope for a quick recovery is not very high. We'll see what the next few days will bring.

In the morning, I check on her, feed everyone else, and tidy the garden.





















And of course, we have breakfast. With the furrowed brow you maintain when an animal is not well and you haven't a clue as to what to do next.





Friday is Snowdrop's day at the farmhouse. I do not know why it hits me now, toward the end of summer, that I should be teaching the little girl to ride a bike. I suppose I feel it's a bit complicated, out here, in rural terrain. She's plenty eager to do it, but it requires some work.

Finding a bike is the easy part. Ed's friend had salvaged and repaired a discarded girl's bike that fits her perfectly now. Ed tweaked it and it's good to go. The little one doesn't have a helmet, but that's not hard either. I pick her up at her house and we drive over to a bike shop, where we do a curbside pick up of a helmet to fit her measured head. A light spray of disinfectant and we're good!

To say that she is excited is an understatement.

(Trying it out...)





We walk over to the bike path crossing the new development. I took a stroll here the other day and saw that it really is nearly perfect for novice riders, in that it is flat and no one uses it because it goes nowhere. It stops, just like that. If you're going fast, you'll be surprised.

Ed scoots over to watch and assist.






There are theories about learning to ride on balance bikes, learning with training wheels, learning cold turkey, without training wheels -- on and on. I take the the easy way -- with training wheels, to get her confident. She has a good run, a happy run, though keeping her on track requires oversight!






Happy girl, happy gaga.






It's a hot hot day today and baking in the sun for a while made us really and I mean really appreciate the air conditioning in the farmhouse. I read her a new mystery book and she is thrilled with it. I'm going to make a mystery lover out of her yet! A shared passion!






And yes, there is a happy session of super pig drawing!






Really, you could not ask for a better day for her. We ended it with a walk to where I tried hard to grow the skinny French beans. Most have been eaten by the groundhog, but a few are still there.





Snowdrop loves to munch on them them raw!

A final bike ride -- from house to car, along a very bumpy packed gravel path. But hey, I rode my bike for years on dirt paths (there were no paved roads within miles of where I spent my childhood summers). She manages, with a proud smile and a professed love of biking.


In the evening, I sit with Calico in the shed for a very long while. She lets me pet her, which, I suppose, is either good or worrisome. I'm thinking that at some point, we'll try to walk into the shed and she'll seize that moment to escape, but for now, we keep trying to get her to eat, drink, and rest.

Eat, drink, rest. Sounds pretty good to me as well! I cook some fish, we pop some corn, I open a bottle of Italian white. Now all we need is a good night's sleep.

Thursday - 153rd

Kids love to pick flowers. It's just such a natural impulse -- to bring it home with you. Or to give it to someone, perhaps even the person standing next to you. I'm sure if I gave my grandkids permission to raid the garden, we'd have fields of clipped green stalks.

These days, an abundance of blooms is not a given. I'm on the tail end of the day lily season. The monarda is getting to be petal-less. And the phlox, which thunders in immediately after the lily season, is starting to drop most of the little flower-ettes. Things still look pretty lush, but you definitely feel that the garden is in retreat.





















(The breakfast sunflowers are actually from Michigan. $3 a bunch at our grocery store.)













When Snowdrop and Sparrow arrive in the morning, they pause and wait to see if I have anything in mind for our outdoor time.







These days, I don't foist stuff on them. But I do use whatever enticements I can think of to keep them outside for as long as possible. Snowdrop goes off to fill the cheeper dish with water and Sparrow -- well, he heads right for the tall flowers and nips off a yellow bloom.






I don't mind. He's hitting a dense clump of false sunflowers. But of course, when Snowdrop sees my tacit approval, she wants to join in.






And then he wants to "pick more flowers!"






And now she really is just dying to gather a whole bouquet and I think -- why not? The joy of putting together a posy of flowers is just tremendous. She wants yellows. I have plenty of yellows. True, most perennials are not easy to just snip, but a grandma can assist!






Somewhere in there, a flower pot's holdings get totally decapitated and some of Sparrow's blooms are hopelessly crumpled, but hey, the kids are happy and I have new flower bunches for the breakfast table!






Inside, we confront the issue of styles of play. Snowdrop and Sparrow are very affectionate with each other, but the little girl's idea of a good playing situation is to have all three of us in the same room, but with Sparrow playing with something that does not disturb her set ups.

Well okay, but Snowdrop creates story set ups everywhere! On the floor, on the table, even on the window sill.






With characters in structures, dolls on the diaper table, artfully posed -- the whole place is a chapter book of ongoing stories.






She is lucky, because Sparrow mostly treats her arrangements with respect. And he imitates her by creating his own mini sets ups, sans the story line. Here's a favorite of his: arranging a family around a little table.





He can manipulate this little group for a long long time. Sometimes he'll do this alone. Most often he likes it when I sit with him and come up with additions to his little scene. (He considers them and mostly rejects them, unless they offer another way of sitting his little family of characters around a common table.)



At some point in the morning we read. Always on the orange couch, always with Snowdrop to my left and Sparrow to my right. I ask Ed for a photo. And he delivers.







Evening. It's a stunning time of cooler air and a dappled golden light from a receding sun. Ed and I take a brief stroll, wanting so much to take in the scents and whispers of late summer. Spring is a time of rising expectations. Now that the growing seasons have unfolded before us, I have to say -- summer certainly delivered. And for that, and for so much more, I am grateful.



After supper, we do our usual cat feed: Ed goes to the shed to feed the six teenagers (who are, by the way, no longer teenagers, but they sure move with the strength and vitality of that age category!) and I take a dish of food to the car. The two littlest girls are always there, underneath, happy as anything to be fed.

Except tonight, it's only Cutie. Well, it happens. Calico, her sister, was probably chased away earlier by the teens.

Wait. I hear her meowing. Is she stuck in a tree again? No, she seems low to the ground. Plaintive meowing. I dive into the mosquito infested thorny bushes and search for her.

She's cowering in that thicket. And she obviously is hurt, or else she'd come for the feeding, or scamper away as I zero in on her. What to do... I bend down and pet her. Well that's not good. Cutie lets me pet her. Calico is the fearful one who usually runs away. This time, she moves slowly and then plomps down again further in the thicket.

I go get Ed.

She is less scared of me than she is of him, but with the two of us there, she is, simply put, terrified. And hurt. He goes to get the cage. I grab her. Not for long though. She wiggles screeching and scratching my arm wildly. She's out of my grasp. Ed gets some gloves. She tries to climb a tree to get away, but falls down. Something is terribly wrong with her.

We can't leave her like this. We just can't. She'll be easy pray for any cat, coyote, anything at all. We chase her around a bit in those thorny bushes and finally, finally Ed grabs her, I hold the cage open and she is inside. We're scratched up, but relieved.

The vet hospital is just a short drive from here (curbside drop off!). We're off.

The doc tells us it's likely to be a vestibular problem: trauma or infection. Going forward, we have to medicate her and hope for the best. (I wont run you through all the vet lingo we listened to from a very caring and knowledgeable doc at the Madison Veterinary Specialists.)

We'll bring the little kitty back and we'll place her in the writer's shed. She is safe from the other cats there. Perhaps we can help her through this. We cannot set her free until we are sure she can manage to protect herself. When will that be?

In all this running around after dusk, we notice several things: the bats are back! I know this sounds nuts, but it's a good thing. Bats serve a protective function here. You wouldn't want one in your attic or worse, in your hair, but you do want them in your barn. Second observation -- the mosquitoes are revving up for a strong come back! And finally this -- we really do care about the animals that live here, pea chicken brains and all. When the vet called me tonight and asked how far to go with treatment, I told her that we cannot let her free unless she is healthy. Calico would be mincemeat in the wild if she didn't have her full wits about her. "Do everything you can" is definitely not right for her, but surely she deserves at least a modest attempt to get her to a healthy state.

As I post this, we are waiting to hear back from the animal hospital. Ed's cleaning the writer's shed, I'm thinking about what a tough recovery awaits the little kittie. People, animals -- some have it so easy. Others? Not so much.

Wedensday - 152nd

It came out of nowhere. One minute I was moving through the morning rituals, the same ones that have been with me all summer long and then Primrose, during a breakfast FaceTime with me...





... mentioned the nicknames she used for her best stuffy. I told her one nickname I used for her mom some years back. And this is when the song came back to me -- the one that had originally pushed me to use the nickname in the first place. A wave of emotion washed over me so suddenly, that I had to sit down on the couch to recover.

Mind you, beautiful emotion, bringing to mind days with my girls when they were little, and now, alongside that, time spent with my two little granddaughters and one grandson, each and every one wrapped in such authentic innocence, such youthful wisdom too. Images came to mind of farmette meadow strolls, wild daisies and green eggs, clover hunts, cherry harvests and the utter glee of a grandchild when, imagine that, she manages to touch one of the more skittish hens. It's what you'd think of as a groundswell of positive emotion.

Here's the song (by Kenny Loggins), with a bit of the text from the book, Winnie the Pooh:

Childhood years are busy years for parents. But a grandparent, if she is lucky, can take it more slowly. I may not have noticed the way my daughters talked to their stuffies or how they slurped their spaghetti or let ice cream dribble down their chins when they were little. I was too busy finding a damp washcloth to wipe down the mess. Now, of course, I look at it all very differently. Corn on the cob has an entirely new place in my heart these years. All three grandkids love it and I can't imagine not steaming some ears for them for a summer supper at the farmette.

*     *     *

The morning was otherwise gloriously calm. Let's go back to the early walk through the garden...































... with a pause for that wonderful Primrose moment...






And finally, a pause for breakfast on the porch with you know who...





*     *     *

The kids came...





... the chickens were there to greet them. The moon was out, Sparrow took note.






Both chickens and kids wanted to go to the barn. Eggs were found, corn, in copious amounts was dispersed. (Never give a child free reign to reach into the corn bin. They will always scoop out heaping cupfuls. It's a mixture of sweet generosity and playful mischievousness.)






On the way back, we pick a few peaches.






The courtyard tomatoes need water and Snowdrop is happy to turn the hose on them. Sparrow knows to hide when his sister takes control of the hose.






One more photo in the garden. Snowdrop is asking -- can this plant be called "a child's plant?"





At the farmhouse, the little girl draws again. It's a super pig picture, but she is reluctant to make a book out of it. The story unfolds for her as she draws and once she is done with it, she is done.

(I bring out a lemon to show her how imperfectly interesting a fruit shape can be. She had drawn a lemon and scowled at its elongated shape.)






In the meantime, Sparrow again adds just a few brush strokes to his evolving canvas.






*     *     *

You wonder when you should expose kids to certain realities. I mean, mostly, stuff just sort of comes up. But sometimes it doesn't. Snowdrop, the oldest of the grandkids, knows at least a little about many tough subjects. Racism. Bullying. Guns. Jail. She used to hound me endlessly for explanations of how jails work and who gets locked up for what reason and at what age.  Today, I found out that she doesn't know something that some kids are forced to learn way too early: medical operations.

We are driving home and she once again brings up the subject of childbirth. I don't know why. She likes talking about it. Today, though, I clarified that not all kids are born well, you know, through the birth canal.
How else are they born?
With the help of an operation, where the stomach is cut open by a doctor and the baby is taken out.
Your stomach is cut open??
Oh, but afterwards, the doctor sews it up. Like in Madeline. (I search for the familiar...)
Sews it up with what??
A needle and...
A needle?? Ewwwww! I don't want my baby born that way!

Okay, operations explained. Check.

*     *     *


In the afternoon I talk to my two friends who live way down south...




We always have a lot to review, no matter how often we get together on Zoom. This time is no different.


*     *     *

Evening. Ed bikes, I cook up a frittata. With garlic, many mushrooms, broccoli, corn.




And tomorrow? What's in store for tomorrow?

You'd be surprised there's so much to be done,
Count all the bees in the hive,
Chase all the clouds from the sky... 

Tuesday - 151st

 In the middle of the night, Ed and I talked about schools. We'd both read an article about how some kids do not thrive in schools -- quite the contrary, they suffer. What if you have such a child? Forget about the option of home schooling. Assume you are a working parent. Do you, nonetheless search for alternatives to school? In other words, do you take seriously a child's misery when she or he is forced to go to school?

Ed was such a kid. He is, perhaps, one of the most widely read persons I know, but he did not like school. I'll skip a description of what that lead to, but I do know that a pandemic type forcing of online learning would have thrilled him. I pushed back that this is only good for privileged children who have at least pseudo-supportive environments, but Ed shook off such generalizations.

I'm not talking about solutions, he tells me, at about 3:30 a.m.  Those take far greater thought and discussion. I'm just saying that it should be recognized that for some kids, schools are a terrible idea.

*.    *.    *

Do you know the weed purslane? It sort of looks like a spider web, with little droplets of water stuck to it. We have it all over our courtyard. At least I think that's what we have. Today,  I read an article in a local news source that claimed purslane leaves are incredibly healthy and should be used in veggie dishes or even salads. The question is -- how much do I trust myself in plant identification? What if what we have is actually not purslane at all, but some toxic horror that gives you hives in your stomach? (I know you can't really have hives in your stomach.)

When I worked for three years in Madison's high end restaurant as a line cook, I heard a lot from our chef about cooking with weeds. She was big on that. Forage and cook up what you find. She was one of few chefs at the time who liked to make a nice batch of nettle soup and charge you a small fortune for it. I'm far less trusting of what grows in the wild (or in our courtyard). Too many stories from my childhood of village people poisoning themselves with mushrooms and weird berries. Still, we have so much purslane! Should I be brave?

*.    *.    *

It's a beautiful day today. Stunning to the core. Sunny, warm, completely inviting. Still, I do only a modest garden clean up. Ed has a morning meeting and we need to fit in a breakfast before that.

(Not so busy that I can't load a whole bunch of garden photos for you!)

























(Breakfast: Dance sniffs, we eat.)





*.    *.    *

The kids come and today their enthusiasm spills over. We feed the chickens, check for eggs, take a stroll to the new orchard. And we look up at the moon. There in broad daylight.











I do get an eye roll from one of the grandkids in response to my constant identification of all the blooming flowers in the meadow. As in -- does it really matter what that one is called? Can't we just concentrate on looking for four leaf clovers? But I like that image of a child groaning at grandma's flower obsession. It's sweet.






More super pig sketches!






*.    *.    *

And in the afternoon I catch up on calls and owed letters, while the sun moves gracefully from one side of the farmhouse to the other and the cats stretch lazily on the porch and the crickets make a racket somewhere in the grasses of the farmette lands.






Finally, just before supper, I take a walk -- to the development.

(stepping out the door...)





(Looking at the farmette from the back...)




I have in the back of my mind a bunch of new virus worries (not ours but of friends, exposed), but I'm keeping them neatly pushed back. I mean, this is life right now: a new question, a symptom, an exposure. Worry wont get you anywhere. Belief in good outcomes is way more satisfying. So, I believe in good outcomes.

We eat a typical summer supper of grilled stuff. It almost doesn't matter what it is, right? The taste is of the grill (even if for us, that's a cheat because we don't actually use a grill to grill foods!). With corn of course. In August, you cannot have too much of good corn.