Sunday - 212th

It was getting to be late in the afternoon. I had started in on Sunday dinner, to be delivered to my daughter tonight, but I had paused to help Ed with his farmette project. Except that things derailed and now here I am, frantically pouring nearly a cupful of olive oil on my head, extra virgin no less, while Ed looks on. I am a mess.

How did we get to this point? 

Well, it was a normal start to a day. Breakfast, on the porch, though it's a stretch. No more heatwave.

... With a view toward a very pretty crab apple. That tree looks its best in the spring and fall. We're witnessing its ruby gold glow now.

Ed then returns to the project of the tree. He'd promised to attend to it this fall (when the flower beds, bearing the brunt of fallen limbs, would not suffer) and this weekend he'd started in on trimming the branches as best as he could. The dead tree is precariously positioned, smack halfway between two problems: the house and the power lines. If it falls on either, we're in trouble.

 

All day long, he saws and trims and I help stack the fallen branches. This really does take up the better part of the day.

Then comes the most difficult part -- taking down the entire trunk, along with the one remaining upright branch. I wouldn't be much help here. Too, I'm not sure I want to watch. So I retreat to some of the flower fields to trim them for the coming season. And while I'm cutting down some invasives, I completely miss seeing the virginia stickseed plant growing to the side.

I hate this plant. I know, hate is a strong word, but the seeds of this horror cling to everything! You walk past it and your pants, socks, shoes are covered with little burrs. Impossible to remove! Well, today, in bending down to snip back some invasives, I get my head, my head close enough to the stinker that dozens, many many dozens of prickly burrs find a nice nesting place in my hair.

I have had enough experience with this sucker to know I am in trouble. There is absolutely no easy way to get the burrs out of hair and since I have so many of them, my scalp is fast matting into something that you couldn't invent for Halloween if you tried.

In desperation, I do the obvious: shower, pour lots of conditioner on my scalp, pinch, pull -- all of it. To no avail. I call in Ed for help. We google solutions. When all else fails, they say, you have to cut off the hair.

How do you think I'd look without hair? 

Like a person without hair.

One last recommendation -- pour vegetable oil on your head and twist and work each seed free. Hence the olive oil. And the greasy mess. And a good part of the afternoon spent on the couch, twisting and separating matted hair clumps and releasing stickseed, one sticking burr at a time. Dozens upon dozens...

We emerge victorious! I return to the delayed dinner, Ed returns to bringing down the tree. This is the toughest part for him. If it doesn't fall exactly where he wants it to fall, we either lose electricity or we get a hole in the roof.

He uses wedges, and saws, and green paint, and a good deal of thinking power.

 

And he succeeds! It falls to the ground, halfway between the two obstacles. Yeah!

I deliver the dinner to a hungry young family. As my daughter finishes up the details in the kitchen, I play ball with the kids. Across the fence. With enough distance to scare away any virus.

 

 

The little guy hasn't changed: he'll still bring me the ball...

 

I wont say how late it is before Ed and I sit down to our own evening meal. But, we're burr free and we have both electricity and a roof over our heads. We are grateful.

Saturday - 211th

 A walk can change the mood. It can restore, it can  reinvigorate. It can add steps to your tally! It can do so much and... it's free! 

When it gets really cold, I feel accomplished just running over to the barn and back. But today, on a sunny and warm morning, I follow a farmette circuit that I've grown to really love. We've mowed a path that traces it perfectly. It may not look stunning here, on Ocean, but for me, it's a beautiful way to start the day.

 

To the pine grove...

 

Back of the barn...

To the new orchard...

And home again.

 

 

Followed by breakfast. On the porch. With some flowers brought in from a closing-up-shop garden. Sweet peas, dahlias.

There was farmette work then: I needed to dig up more hydrangea bushes and Ed had to take down some more branches of that tree slated for a chop down. Hard work!

And then comes the reward of a meetup with Snowdrop. 

 

It's not perfect. Very warm weather brings with it pesky little flies and crazy flights of speckled Japanese beetles. The little girl can't last on that blanket for long. We need a change of pace.

 

How about a walk? 

 

 

 

It's a first for us: a distanced, masked walk. No hand holding, no shoulder to shoulder chats. She wants to walk behind, I stay ahead. 

Something can be not perfect (I'd love to reach for her small hand), yet still it can be grand. Snowdrop took this moment to describe to me the mystery story she is writing in her head. I sang us a song we used to belt out on school neighborhood walks. And we took pleasure in the colors of Fall. 

Afterwards, we were ready for more blanket time. Restored. Reading, drawing. Favorite things become favorite once more.

A walk. Maybe several walks in the course of the day. I so recommend them. Totally.

Friday - 210th

 Would you believe 80F (26.5C)? Indeed! We hit it this afternoon and it felt at once glorious and weird. It is, after all, October 9th. Last year, toward the end of this month, it snowed, there was ice, and Halloween was miserably freezing. Granted, we're not at the end of the month yet, but still, 80F??

 (And look what's blooming...)

 

 

Breakfast assuredly on the porch.

 

For Ed, it's back to maintenance work: he has the tractor-mower to fix (for the hundredth time, it seems), a tree to finish bringing down and a water heater to replace. When his list grows, the chances of moving through it diminish. Nonetheless, when I ask him if he'd like to go out for a hike locally, his conscience nudges him to say -- you go, I've got work to do.

 

 

And so I went. To the local park. Not a soul in sight. Plenty of gusty winds and a plethora of autumn hues.

Our men are working on the front steps and I think they're making progress! The entrance is starting to look authentically legitimate. So much so, that UPS has begun leaving packages there. That's the down side of not appearing to be a crumbling mess anymore. I may live to regret my rush to restore some credibility to that side of the farmhouse.

 

Both Ed and I have work to do on that project as well. He needs to fill in dirt to allow us to keep the steps down to three -- the legal limit for going without a rail. Me, I need to dig out a bunch of neighboring hydrangea bushes that are sending deep roots in every direction. I get to it tonight.

It is no surprise that I hit my 10,000 step target! 

Dinner: I bake some cod fillets (with lemon and cayenne) and I go purple: purple cauliflower, purple potatoes! With some chooped bok choy and corn kernels, all sauteed to a bit of a crisp. 

And after all that, after the popcorn and an episode from the series we're watching, I retreat upstairs with my kindle, loaded with two new mystery books. Escapism never felt so comfy!

Thursady - 209th

Well, we went away on a vacation trip today. I know, you're surprised. We never go far together these years, and we never go anywhere at all of note these months, and we're not the type to just get up and get away, or at least Ed's not the type.

But the weather! You can't just go to your local park and call it a day. When you wake up to all this glory, you have to do something big!

After breakfast of course.

 

Yes, Dance is there, because these days she thinks it's only right for her to be included.

In the later morning, our retired mason guy shows up with his younger sidekick-helper. They're ready to get started on our front stairs. Even as they begin work, the design idea gets adjusted once again. We have worked our way through so many design ideas that I swear it's as if we cannot move beyond the final edit -- there will always be another one. Still, the men get to work and Ed and I pack up our stuff and drive off.

Where to? Is it the airport with a ticket to Paris? Is it maybe to the Pacific coast? Or an island with golden sands and turquoise sea waters? Well, maybe nothing so ambitious. We drive south and west to Governor Dodge State Park.

I know, I know, that doesn't meet your criteria of a vacation escape. I mean, it's 50 minutes by car, door to door. But for us -- that's a lot! And the park is big (over 5000 sq acres) and it offers variety, so that on our planned hike, we would hug a lake, delve into many forested areas, and cut through a prairie meadow. We're not at a peak leaf color moment yet, but we saw plenty to enthrall us. A few photos from our rather long hike...

 

And a selfie, of course. Notable for the fact that I am not wearing glasses. I put them in my pack for the day. It felt grand to be without them.

How about looking up toward the perfectly blue sky?

We paused twice: once because Ed wanted to "take in the forest," and then again to eat our snack of mandarines and nuts.  We encountered a couple of hikers at the outset, and then no one at all for hours on end.

Perhaps in your estimation, it wont have been a full and fabulous getaway, but for us it was just that. Nearly four hours of hiking, 20,000 steps recorded on my tracking device and that perfect Autumnal weather! I will say no more.

Wednesday - 208th

You know how it is: you start in on one thing, and then one thing leads to the next, and by the time the sirens wail announcing the noon hour (it's a drill: the sirens always sound off at noon on the first Wednesday of the month), you're up on the roof of the house nailing down tiles and mumbling to yourself that this was not the project for this day.

This describes Ed's morning.

Me, I walked a more predictable path. A quick clean of some garden sore spots,  breakfast prep for my two porch breakfast companions...

 

 

And then I sit down to finally pick tiles for the soon to be fixed front entrance to the farmhouse. 

[I'm sure you've noticed a slight difference in the Ocean layout. Oh yes, I miss the old one. But, Blogger, my hosting platform, instituted changes and I have to abide by them. It's my first day manipulating photos in a new way. Bare with me!]

It's a stunning day. Warm, but not too warm. Ed is about to embark on switching out the water heater, but that requires our commitment to basement work from dawn to dusk and we keep putting off the job because there are so many other, smaller tasks that can benefit from the grand weather we've been having. Too, if you ask me if I can live without heat and water for a while (how long? depends how many things go wrong...), I'll say sure, but maybe not today, maybe starting tomorrow. Or better yet, the next day.

And so Ed begins on another project which is 99% his -- bringing down the dead tree that stands right at the corner of the farmhouse. Right between the electrical wires and our home. How many things can go wrong there? Oh, let me count the ways!

First though, a trim of the smaller branches.

 

And then -- well, he finds the loose roof tiles and so he is up there hammering away while I abandon ship and go out for a walk.

In the afternoon, I have some outdoor time with Snowdrop. Talk about gifts! Most of our distanced meetups have been in really good weather. Some have been on the nippy side, but today surely is one of the best! Sunny and 70f (21c). Incredible!

 

Here's the little guy, standing behind the deck railing, but looking like he's behind bars!

 

 

On the way home, I stop at a home improvement store to do a curbside pick up of our selected tiles. From this small sample we'll choose the winners.

It's hard for me to believe that in another couple of weeks, we'll actually have stairs to the front, rather than the crumbling mess out there now. Small pleasures indeed!

Ed is biking today and I have some slight concern there, because he does the same route each week and so he is slated to pass the house with the vicious dog once again. Maybe if I worry just a little, the dog will take pity and grant us a pass. And indeed, at dusk, I watch him pull in, body intact!

I scramble some cheeper eggs, sautee mushrooms and leeks, and steam up broccoli -- a veggie we love, especially with grated parmesan dusted over the flowerettes. A sliver of smoked salmon on the side, a tossed salad with beautiful radishes and cukes, and we're set to watch the debate. The good thing about watching anything at all is that you can always turn it off.

And if you're a southern Wisconsin resident, you're surely looking forward to the next few days: more sunshine, more warm weather, as if to nudge us out of our battered state and remind us -- not everything is going wrong with the world right now. For one thing, on this day, and the next, there is this glorious fall weather!

 

 

 

Tuesday - 207th

I could divide this day into two: farmette restlessness and Arboretum escape.

It's a beautiful day. You can't possibly hope for better. Sunny, warm, in fact more like late August or early September rather than mid-October. Sometimes Autumn throws us these surprises. We are grateful!

(One last lily bloom...)






Breakfast on the porch. For sure.






And we have another farmette job: to attack the pear tree in the young orchard. It's one of the few trees that has actually given us a bit of fruit this year. A couple of dozen pears. Here's the question though: when do you pick pears? In the old orchard, you know they're good when the first one falls to the ground. The rest can be plucked immediately after. If I may be honest, I don't care for the old orchard pears. The skin is tough, the rest is... variable. But in the young orchard, we were the planters and we picked varieties that would be tasty for sure. And now here we are, nearly midway into October and not a single fruit has dropped. So... when are they ready for picking?

Turns out there's a trick to this business. Pears do not ripen on trees. You have to pick them just before they're ripe! Now I want to know: what kind of an instruction is that? It's like giving the following driving direction: turn left about a mile before the gas station.

Further googling around tells us that if you lift the pear at a right angle to its growing position and it comes off readily then it's good to go. So today, we lifted lots of pears at right angles and determined that some of them were indeed good to go!






What happens next? -- I ask.

It seems that now you wait, keeping the "nearly ripe" (but not yet edible) pears in a cool place. So they're in the mudroom and we're waiting.


Now about my steps.... If you think Fitbit, the step tracking device, loads on the pressure to march and meet your goals, let me say that a brilliant day that comes just before winter is even worse. You can't stay home. You shouldn't stay home. Walk, take stock, look nature in the eye! You must get out!

But where to? The hiking trails (for example our favorite, cutting through the Brooklyn Wilderness Area) are not much fun during the hunting season. The local park -- well, we like to save it for a quick run on a busy day. So where do you look for Autumnal beauty?

We do have the Arboretum.

There is a lot to love there, especially in October. It's our destination for this day.

Yes, we're on the early side of seasonal color.  But still, it's there. Real beauty.












We linger for a longer while. Ed likes forest walks, so we veer off into the woods. The paths are quiet. If we run into the occasional hiker, we put on our masks, they put on theirs. We care. They care.

There's still a lot of green...






But plenty of gold too...






And of course, the occasional scarlet.







Oh, it would have been fun to finish the day with a drink at Finca Cafe, but we're still isolating and so instead, we go to a pharmacy that offers curbside flu shots. I mean, not quite a match for a moment at a coffee shop, but it's an outing and an adventure, no? Except, the pharmacy has run out, scheduled appointment notwithstanding. Tomorrow then? Maybe.


I make chili tonight. That's sort of a strange cooking choice for a very warm day, but we have the tomatoes and the beans and the big yellow pot hasn't had its moment on the stove for a while. Today it has its moment on the stove. And the smell of cooking chili is so good, and yesterday's vexing issues seem so far away...