Frday - 161st

We're slowly warming up again. So typical: kids are about to face school and the air gets hot. It's that parched heat the makes plants brittle and turns grass a lovely shade of yellow. I'm pretty laid back about the outside gardens. Maybe in some parts of this country gardeners rev up and plan out their spring flower beds right now, but I can't think about that. I'll pull weeds when I have more time. Right now I glance at what's blooming, smile a little encouragement and move on.











Breakfast on the porch. Of course.






Ed has plunged into a project and I'm happy about it: he's pulling out rotten boards and fixing up the front entrance in preparation for (finally!) fixing the face of the farmhouse. The stairs have crumbled, the concrete patio is no more and in general, it all looks like something you'd find in a haunted house. It seems that this will finally be the year where we attend to it.






I pick up the little girl for her Friday at the farmhouse. Again, I push for the outdoors and she resists. A brief bike ride...






("Can we go inside now??")






A quick run up the path...






And  we scoot indoors.

After a great big reading catch up, we turn to art.






Smooth today. Snowdrop explains to me that her picture (of super pigs) does not match what her imagination put in her brain, but for now, she seems reconciled to that discrepancy.

(Adding a gray cloud to my own doodle...)






Next, we play. Or rather, she plays. I stay in the background and try to tidy up old Lego arrangements. I'll never figure out what you're supposed to do with the million microscopically tiny pieces that come with these sets. Since Snowdrop has always preferred working with the domestic Lego scenes, we have a million cupcake tops, flower petals, paint brushes and who knows what else.

The girl herself moves between different places in the play room where she has invented stories and relationships between, well, anything. My small collection of European birds? She has been playing delicately with them for years.






The afternoon passes quickly. I try not to think how empty the farmhouse will be once the kids stop coming. Best to think about how grand it has been to have had them here this summer.

Evening. A supper of hot chili on a hot day (we have all those tomatoes!). Quiet time. Thoughtful time. Popcorn time.

Thursday - 160th

It's hard not to call this "another cat day." We seem destined to deal with these guys and of course, it's like with children -- the more there are, the greater the bag of issues. Eight cats can generate a lot of issues, even if theoretically they live in the wild rather than in our home.

It starts at 3:30 in the morning. Meowing and pawing at the screen of our open bedroom window. We look out over a sliver of rooftop and Dance decided that maybe this would be a good way for her to get us to pay attention to her. She is always trying to get inside the farmhouse. It's her curiosity, sure, and it's also her belief that she should have the run of every farmette space. She is the new matriarch. She, not us, makes the rules.

Dance, you are a sweet and gentle cat, but no, you cannot come inside at 3:30 in the morning. Widow closed.

Morning. Still warm, still sunny. Still very dry out there. I choose the next patch of flowers to water. The ones that still may bloom this year.
















Breakfast with a sleepy Ed. Why are we up so early? I've been up for hours! Okay...
On the porch.






The kids are here soon after and this time the message is clear: can we go straight inside?






I bargain. How about just after you water the tomato pots? And after we give the chickens some bread?






I have an agreeable bunch here.






Inside, both kids want to find some common ground: a game, a pretend set up -- something that can draw all of us in. It's not easy: she is five and a half, he is just two. But in pretend foods, there is always a place for everyone.







In the late afternoon, I pick up more medicine for Calico. We don't really know if it's addressing her problem, but she is getting better. The vet says three more weeks.
Three more weeks of lockdown?? Poor kid.

At home, we line up five animal carriers (some borrowed). It's the designated day for capturing the six teenagers and getting them to the place that gives rabies vaccinations. I've not looked forward to this at all, though I don't know why I should mind so much since Ed is the one who basically does the capture. He gets the scratches, the bites and carts them off for their shots.

We manage to get only three. The others get spooked and run away. Ed almost wants to release the victims and start again another day. We'd gotten only one of the twins: how could we ever tell, going forward, which one still needs the vaccination? Still, I urge him to start with the three.
We'll paint his tail some color! He shakes his head, but drives off.

Three cats down, three to go. 

Remind me why anyone would say tending to feral cats is fun?

Wednesday - 159th

Well now, it looks like I have to do a post titled "seniors, rural living and feral cats." Reading a couple of your comments on our two little kitties tells me that these topics are not necessarily self evident.

First of all, for those who do not live in rural homes, here's something that perhaps you don't know: feral cats are part of your daily life here. Some cats come only once, some come occasionally, some choose to linger. Some, like the great matriarch Stop Sign, come, deliver a few babies and then disappear again.

Now, I don't pass judgment on those who choose not to feed feral cats. There are many reasons not to do it. Many reasons. Attracting wildlife, depleting the bird population are just two. Everyone has to decide what's right for them.

With so many feral cats out there (we have a new one this week! orange! very pretty!), you know for sure that it is in everyone's interest to spay as many as you can. But this can be so tough (we have a number of scratch and even bite marks to prove it) that again, I surely don't blame those who don't even try. We avoided it until Stop Sign brought us yet another littler, within half a year of the previous one. We had to get the cages and give it a go.

Trapping all the ones that are part of her extended family, and finally trapping Stop Sign herself was nearly impossible. Ed's calm smarts and steady hand were what made this a success. I could not have done it on my own.

Okay, so we spayed them. All of them. And vaccinated them. And fed them. And they were still so young and they were not well after the operation and winter was coming. So we gave them the sheep shed, which is really a finished workshop and we trained them to come in and out of there at their will. It's grand for them, but again, it wasn't an easy decision. They bring in guts of mice, they regurgitate, they mess the place up terribly. Still, winter was coming and they were young. Ed had experience with this stuff by virtue of his work with two feral cats from before my days.

All was fine until the final generation of Stop Sign's kitties came along. The older guys ("the teens") feel bossy. They mess with them.  And so we have a situation where the older six have a comfy place to hide in the winter, food delivered to them twice a day, and the younger two have food delivered surreptitiously, under a car, and if they linger, they often get chased away.

People who haven't been around feral cats don't get that these animals, unless domesticated very early and unless their personalities are on the mellow side (Dance, the only one from Stop Sign's oldest litter, is mellow), they're not suited for indoor life. They want to be outside, even though it's not a hospitable world out there. Their instinct is to be suspicious of movement, of kids, of noise. They can be attached to you (by now, all eight cats are in some fashion attached to us), but still run like crazy the minute you introduce something that to them is strange.

Finally, you cannot assume that every time a sick cat shows up and you provide some care to that cat (I wont tell you how incredibly expensive it was to take Calico to the ER vet hospital last week), you are now binding yourself to bring that cat inside your house. Not everyone on this planet should have children. (I know too many that did have children for all the wrong reasons. Good people, just not good parenting material.) So too, not every person (especially not every senior person, who happens also to have little children running around) should take in a wild animal into her home. Even if that wild animal wants to follow you inside your home.

End of lecture.

Having said that, Calico and Cutie could do well with people who have had experience with cats. We handed over two feral kitties from an earlier litter to a friend of mine and the cats are doing fabulously! Calico is very small and pretty mellow (and thus terrified of the teens -- she wont stand up to them, she runs!). Cutie and she are terrific with each other. So, here's a photo from today's session of playing with Calico (Ed's actually combing her hair...).






If you think you know someone who has experience with cats and who wants to give it a try, get in touch with me. We will take the girls back if they don't work out for you (they've been spayed and they've had their rabies vaccination).


In other news -- well, it's a beautiful day once more. A porch day.






A "fix the garden" day.


























A kids are back day!

I offer them a morning of picking flowers in the meadow. This time I bring scissors so that whole plants aren't pulled out. My photos are all from those minutes in the young orchard.





















I suppose I should give this a "running" theme: both kids practiced their saunter -- to the meadow, then back to the farmhouse. What a surprise -- Snowdrop always beat Sparrow to the destination.
















In the evening, Ed bikes, I water a bit of the garden out front. I just can't keep looking at all those yellowing nasturtium leaves.

And then I catch up with my little grandgirl in Chicago!






I reheat the frittata and wait for my guy to come home and cook up some pop corn. Because you know, there's no way I can make pop corn all by myself!

Tuesday - 158th

Ed and I have an elephant in our farmhouse. Sometimes we talk about it, but most often, she just sits there, hazily, hugely, never letting us forget about her presence.

It has to do with Calico, the kitten who was so sick with vertigo, that she could not walk a straight line. Her legs would give in and she'd collapse before you.

She's not 100% her old self yet, but she is slowly getting better. She still walks with a telltale tilt to her head and I wouldn't trust her on a windowsill, but, she can saunter over to us when we come into the writer's shed without much difficulty. That's progress.

Except that we don't know if she will fully recover. And even if she does, something has changed: she now sees us as her caregivers. Her friends. She is supremely affectionate and she just cannot get enough of being petted, rubbed, stroked, as if making up for lost time.

Is this a problem? Well yes. Let me describe this morning: I walk out, the teen cats hover around me. I hear a mournful meowing. What now? Clearly something is up with Cutie (Calico's sister). Okay, let me feed the teens in the sheep shed and come back to the problem.

Ah. There she is, high up in the big willow, unable to get down.

What's with these little guys? Their older siblings run up and down trees all the time. These two little girls -- when they go up, they cannot get down.

So why is she up a tree, howling away? Perhaps the teen cats chased her. Or, did she hear her sister's meowing? The willow is right next to the writer's shed. The shed windows are open.

I coax Cutie down, feed her, then go on to look in on Calico. She is all over me, as usual. I feed her. She eats ravenously. And then I can't get away. I go to the door, she follows within an inch of my legs. She meows her mournful meow. Is it because she wants to go out? Is it that she heard her sister and is looking for her? In any case, I am stuck. If I open the door, she may run out and believe me, she is still far from being able to take care of herself in the mean real world. The vet prescribed yet another treatment to help her along. She needs to stay in the shed.

I try everything: running toward the door, distracting her with a rope, sitting down, standing up. She wont leave my side.

Well, eventually I lunge at the door and manage to slam it closed before she can follow me. But the fact is, this little cat is in a dangerous place: she is at once vulnerable, semi domesticated, fiercely attached to her caregivers, and most certainly missing her sister.

So where's the elephant? Oh, it's clear, no? The best solution is to bring Calico and Cutie into the farmhouse and complete the process of domesticating them. Only inside the house can they be safe from the teens and from anything else that may harm them. Ed would be thrilled if I agreed to it, but I just cannot. I am extremely fond of those kitties. When they are outside. I don't want them inside. I dont want to sit on the couch with their little nails digging affectionately into my thigh. I don't wan to sleep with a moving animal or two in our small bed. Ed already takes up 75% of the space. The cat swould take up just that much more. No. I don't want a cat jumping over the counters, eating foods that I leave out for us. I don't want any of it.

And yet, there is little Calico, needing protection. Needing love. Needing us. Needing her sister.

Quite the elephant, don't you think?


I worked a little in the garden, but you know, that effort is now minimal. Many of the plants are drying up, in part because it's late August and in part because we haven't had a good rain shower in a long time. So I do just a little. And I water, just a little.





















And we eat breakfast and we talk about Calico, just a little.






The afternoon is split between time with my friend (well, Zoom time, as she lives in New Mexico) who is celebrating a milestone birthday...






... and a valiant attempt to get moving. I do lure Ed out for a walk, I do! Rural roads...


 


... with a detour into the new development. This gives us a nice segment of quiet, as well as some interesting opportunities to watch gravel and cement being poured into holes that soon will be houses. (A year ago -- nothing. Today -- at least three dozen new homes. Not quite the speed of construction in China, but pretty fast nonetheless!)


Tomorrow I'll be with the kids again. Today -- a frittata night, with greens and mushrooms and new garlic and new potatoes and corn. If it's August, there must be corn.

Monday - 157th

Here, in south-central Wisconsin, in August -- it's all about corn. On the cob. Fresh. Not just fresh, as in straight from the produce section of your favorite grocery store, but fresh as in picked that morning, sold (curbside!) right at the farm.

It's one of our seasonal peccadilos: we expect daffodils in April, strawberries in June, and in August, we ride the motorcycle down rural roads, usually to our closest farmer, Stoneman, to pick up what is advertised as the sweetest corn in the world. And it is. Go ahead, find me a corn that's sweeter! Can't be done!

And so after my work in the garden...











And after playing with a still ailing Calico in the writer's shed, and of course, after breakfast...






... I hop on behind Ed and we scoot over to Stoneman's.

They're closed. Big sign, telling us that today is a "ripening day."

No! My whole menu for the day, the week, the month falls apart! We need corn. We must head out further, to the next nearest farm.

But not yet. I have a Zoom party with my Polish friends at noon.





Again my friends and I compare notes. They are two weeks before the start of the school year and there hasn't been a decision as to reopening. Poland continues to have a stable but reasonably low infection rate. I'm sure if we had their rate we'd be opening Yankee Stadium and Noah's Ark, the world's largest water park, let alone schools, bars and restaurants! What? We did open Noah's Ark? Ooops. Maybe the pools are filled with soapy sudsy water. Oh well. In any case, Poland is pondering.

Once again I'm thinking how lovely it is to visit with distant friends on a regular basis. We used to wait for in person visits. Not anymore.

And later, much later Ed and I are again riding the motorbike to a farm, this time Eugster's, which is a bigger deal place, since they go beyond selling corn: they have a regular farm store with farm stuff in it. I do not know what stuff, because Ed and I do not enter stores. The Eugster corn is sold separately, under a tent and they will do curbside pick up if you ask for it.

It's a 15-minute ride, but oh, what a ride it is! I think it shows off our rural lands well! A few photos for you:



























I should have taken an evening walk, but everything outside is so dry that I relented and finally turned the hose on the garden. Not for long and not comprehensively. Just enough to make me feel better! In doing that, I was rewarded with an evening garden view.






I don't have to tell you what we had for supper. Some protein, some greens, and corn. Lots of sweet corn. From this truck:





Delicious.