Wednesday - 222nd

I love my morning walks that cut through the farmette lands, I do.

 

And nature hikes - I adore those. They're all almost up there with morning breakfasts with Ed -- it's all so meditative, serene, soothing.

But here's something I've noticed too: if you've been isolating yourself for 222 days, never once in that time entering a store, an eatery or cafe, nor even coming close to a group of people -- friends or strangers, you come to love something else, too: walks through emergent new neighborhoods, ones where new homes are popping up at the speed of an overzealous corn popper.

I know I was among those who spoke out against the development that is going up to the west, north and eventually east of us. And it is true that the development poses a danger to the fragile wetland habitat it abuts. But since we lost that fight, I've come to appreciate two things: first of all, the construction here has been made to be much more sensitive to environmental issues than it would have been, had so many people not voiced repeated objections way back when. And secondly -- and this ties into my isolation -- I have come to love my walks through this developing new community of homes.

For one thing, it takes me exactly 300 steps from the farmette property to reach their sidewalk. That's a three minute walk along a rural road (and one that has plenty of shoulder space, so that I do not actually have to walk on the road at all). This is nothing short of fantastic for a person like me, who loves proximate walks. The kind that don't require a car ride first.

Rural roads are not safe for walking. Talk about distracted drivers! Empty roads invite all sorts of unsafe driving behaviors. Too, they invite recklessness of a different kind. For instance, why were there two empty vodka flasks thrown out a car window onto our property just in the last day? And all those beer cans! Amazing how many people disregard drinking and driving laws. Really shocking. 

But also, I love something else that six months ago would have meant nothing to me: I love the sound of new construction. Of workmen pounding nails to the loud music of seventies or eighties rock. I love seeing people fill the homes with their own nesting objects. Porch chairs, potted plants. One is putting up solar panels, another is fencing the tiny yard, allowing me to speculate -- for a dog? A child? There is human activity everywhere and to me it is as social as it gets and I am enraptured by all of it.

I took such a walk later this morning, as Ed shut off the gas (and therefore the furnace) to continue his work on the water heater. The house is actually plenty warm even without the aid of a furnace, but still, when he says things like -- "let me know if you smell gas," I know it's better that I leave the premises rather than imagine that there is a gas leak and I'm just not sensitive enough to pick it up. (He says these things to tease me. Ed is very careful when working with gas pipes.)

One of these days I'll have to take pictures of some of my favorite houses. I'd say it's a middle income neighborhood -- nothing very large or extravagant, lots of tiny lots and townhouses and single story small homes. All interesting, just because, well, it's touched by a human hand.

(as seen from the back of the farmette...)

 

In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop, outside, distanced, with masks. Except when she is eating a slice of Ed's birthday rhubarb cake.

We are so lucky! All that gray cold dreariness? Gone. It's cool, yes, of course. But not too cold for some time outside! And the sunshine! Stunning sunshine!

Because I know that Ed is out biking, I don't rush home after my Snowdrop time. I go to the park that is not too far from where she lives. Owen Woods. I have to say, this little bit of nature conservancy has some of Madison's best late October colors. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed's home in time for supper. And popcorn. And the next episode of the the series that has us tuning in every day, even though it's not very good. Perhaps we feel drawn to the characters, as if their familiar faces too were part of our social world these days. Isolation makes you like a heck of a lot of things much more than in the days when you actually had a choice of how you might want to spend your waking hours.

And maybe that openness to finding pleasure in strange places is a good thing. Maybe.

Tuesday - 221st

A momentous, memorable day! First the weird: 

I did not go upstairs to bed until close to 3 a.m. It took me that long to gather documents the credit card company needed to believe that I was really me. Apparently buying a couple of dresses and tshirts for my grandkids put me in the category of a heighten fraud alert and from there, I spun down a rabbit hole so deep that I am told it will take many days to clear the card for action. I understand their protective stance, but given that I am a rather stable, no changes, same type of purchases, from same vendors kind of card user, I cannot understand the security risk at all. Time to dig out my old dusty other credit card. Oh, I am tired! Late hours are an Ed thing, not a Nina thing.

The upside of such late night shenanigans is that at the tolling of the midnight hour, I get to wish Ed a very happy birthday and he gets to wish me a very happy anniversary.

It's our round number day! 10/20/2020 (In America, we put the month down first). Ed is 70. And, we have been together 15 years.

How well I remember the day our online exchange turned into the real deal! He picked me up in his rusted out tiny Geo Metro -- a faded red with pink stripes -- and we went for a drive. To an apple orchard, then to watch the ducks and geese fly in where the river meets the lake, then home. 

We've been together ever since.

In all our years, we've had only one blow-up and it was in fact a fairly recent thing -- last November -- and we were both deeply at fault. 

 I live with a person who never spouts off criticism or passes judgment on the choices I make or others make in life, a person who loves animals and nature without reservation, a guy who never wastes, never spends money on needless stuff, a guy who thinks deeply before he speaks and who is possibly the most widely read person I know. A man who uses his hands as well as he uses his brain. An older dude who never met a child he felt close to, until he met my grandkids. Fifteen years of a beautiful life.

So you can understand perhaps why we would take this day, this double anniversary/birthday seriously.

It begins with me reminding Ed a few days ago that he cannot do as he has done before -- haul me off to hunt together for a card. He's on his own. The internet has to be his friend. He agonizes over the choices, but I offer no help, except to say that I prefer his own words to prefab commercial writing.

Then I ask him for his favorite foods for the day. Oh, the terrible indecision as to what I should prepare! But in the end, we will eat what is truly our own best discovery -- a home made pizza. 

 First though, a morning walk for me. To feed the animals and to take in the season's gifts.

[There will be 15 photos here today and I will admit at the outset to uniformly adding warm tones to all of them. Because that's the way the world appeared to me today.]

Breakfast. Happy birthday, to you!

 (He looks on with a smile at the card Snowdrop made for him. He wont pay attention to any cards from big people, but kids -- well, they hold a special spot...)

Happy anniversary to both of us...

And now I get on with baking a cake. This is an easy choice: I pick the last of the rhubarb and bake a rhubarb-almond-yogurt thing he likes.

And even though it is not warm outside, nor is it sunny, we do take the time to walk along our favorite county park trail.

(Our selfie...)

 

A celebration geared to our own beloved routines, foods, habits. 

 

 

 

Seventy years, fifteen years. Happy years indeed.

With so much love...

Monday - 220th

The day started off with a call from Ed's friend. Their buddy, colleague, company board member, like-minded pal had just died this morning. Suddenly and unexpectedly. How can you not be sad... The guy lived in Arizona, but visited here frequently and stayed with us more than once. He was a New Jersey boy and that put him just close enough, geographically speaking, to Ed's home base, so that I often thought he was the only one I knew here who actually sounded like Ed. Both had the entrepreneurial drive, both had big hearts, both didn't mess with empty niceties. But man oh man, what a guy! When traveling recently with his wife through Holland, he looked at all those tulip bulbs in stores around him and thought -- Nina has a garden, she would like some. Shortly after I got a shipment of tulips.

I took my morning walk on this very cold day thinking about spring and tulips.

Breakfast. Surrounded by farmette flowers, including tiny lilac buds that I found today. I don't know why the white lilac decided it's May rather than October, but it did, and we have the flower buds to prove it.

Afterwards, Ed unloaded many wheelbarrow-fuls of dirt, followed by many wheelbarrow-fuls of wood chips, to bring the grade up to the front steps. You could say he spent the better part of the day shoveling dirt. Me, I polished windows at the front of the farmhouse -- something that one does to clear the mind as much as to clean a pane of glass.

Where do you go with a day like this? Too cold and gray for outside indulgences, too isolationist (220th day for us!) to abandon yourself into the warmth of a coffee shop where you can sip, eat and people watch. 

So I walk on my treadmill (there are goals to be met!) and then I buy clothes online for the kids. Because buying clothes for the kids is somehow deeply satisfying for me: I imagine I'm wrapping these precious souls in warmth and color. Unfortunately, my credit card triggers a fraud alert. I spend the next 3.5 hours on the phone with fraud agent number one, then agent number two, then supervisor of agent two and presumably one, all trying to clear the card. They couldn't do it. I finally said -- no more. I'm calling it quits. Write a new script on how to clear cards and call me back when you're done. 

It was a bold gesture, leaving me neither satisfied nor in possession of an active credit card. That is not a good place to be when you are in isolation, but there is only so many times I can listen to someone tell me that this time they have fixed the problem only to find that they haven't done anything of the sort.  

 

For supper I reheat yesterday's crunchy chicken, because if ever a day needed comfort food it would be this day.

Sunday - 219th

My, but it's cold! It rained last night, but only because we stayed a tiny breath above freezing. Tonight we will finally get our first deep frost of the season.

It's time to say goodbye to the scattered annuals. Because the nights are going to stay cold going forward, it's no use trying to shield them anymore. I love them for the way they carried us through the growing season, but their work is done. I pick a handful of nasturtium and cosmos blooms for the breakfast table -- one last reminder of how much beauty unfolds from one small seed, planted with the hope that always comes with spring.

Much of the day lacks a coherent theme. Call it a day of dabbles. I don't clean the house, but I clean the sink and I vacuum the play room. I do not work in the garden, though I do lay some stones. I don't take long walks, but rather I move to my 10,000 step goal in short bursts of activity.

Ed is taking a pause with his water heater replacement and so we have both heat and water for the day. I'm grateful for that and, too, for a functioning toilet! In the middle of the night, Ed whispered to me -- are you awake? the toilet is broken... Then, a few hours later -- are you awake? I took it apart and decalcified the fill valve. Not surprisingly, he slept in today and breakfast was very late.

Toward evening, I work on supper for the young family. Crunchy chicken, in the same way I've been fixing it for at least three decades. I do it with my eyes closed!

 

 

Both Ed and I deliver it to their home. He misses the kids. Masked and distanced is better than nothing.

 

And now we are home again. I've clipped all the annuals I can plunk down in vases. 

 

Time to retreat into the warmth of the house and eat our own portion of the same dinner. Comfort foods for a cold night. A perfect pairing.

Saturday - 218th

I have never paid much attention to wind before. It's windy? Oh, okay. I should probably tie my hair back. Pfft, wind forgotten.

But this Fall, it's on my mind all the time, and I swear we have had more than our share of fiercely windy days.

Wind gusts are important when I meet up with Snowdrop for our distanced, masked moments in her back yard. On these days, I bring her some art work, perhaps a sticker set, maybe some magnet toy. Most of the stuff scatters everywhere on a windy day. Worse, the blanket where she sits, even weighed down by her body and  a dozen heavy rocks, just cannot stay down. It puffs and heaves and flips every which way and you're left wondering if perhaps this time around the wind really is stronger than us mere mortals on the ground.

Unfortunately, today is another windy day. Plenty of strong gusts! Ed and I have some light outdoor work, around the new front steps, and around the path to the new flower bed..

 

But we eat breakfast in the kitchen (sorry, cats).

 

 

 

 

 

And after, we switch to indoor projects. His is a huge monster of a project: replacing the water heater in the basement. It'll take days. He has said more than once that it's not going to be easy. Today, we only have to make do without water. Towards the completion of the job, as he manipulates gas pipes, we'll have to be without heat as well. We're both hoping there will be no major hiccups along the way. Complicated projects never fail to produce their share of unexpected snafus.

(geraniums, or technically pelargonia, now inside...)

My visit with Snowdrop is, well, windy!

She runs out defiantly. No jacket needed for this young one!

 

And immediately, she loses herself in a story. No one does this with greater ease than this little girl. In everything, she finds a tale.

I only read her one book. Within an hour, she is ready to go inside. I don't blame her -- I'm ready to be in a place with calm air and preferably some heating sources as well.

I do still have an errand to run -- to pick up the CSA veggie box for the week. It's in the neighborhood where Snowdrop and Sparrow used to go to school and after I stash the produce in the car, I take a little stroll here, wondering if I can somehow bridge in my mind that entire school period before all hell broke loose in March with the days we are living now. Sure, everything has changed, but these blocks that we walked so regularly, with all their fall colors - they are still there and they will be there next Fall, and the Fall after that. 

 

 

 

You need reminders that even though much has changed, a lot more of life remains the same. We still love the same people, the same familiar spots, and at the end of the day, we still feel the comfort of the sweet smell of home.

Friday - 217th

It's amazing how one degree can transform a garden. We went down to 33F (1C) last night. Had we dipped to 32F (0C), most of the annuals would have done an instant and irrevocable wilt. But we didn't quite hit freezing and so I was granted one more day to save whatever I deem savable. 

I'd already carried in the orchids, herbs and big geranium. What else might survive in a very mildly sunny windowsill inside the farmhouse? I dig out and pot a couple of more geraniums. That's it. I don't have space for more and besides, most annuals do not like the home environment. I can almost hear them complaining: this is it? You've taken away the gentle breezes, the bees, the cool night air and you've given us this? Forget it! We'd rather fold up and call it a day.

 But it is hard to say good bye to all those potted plants outside and the cosmos and the nasturtium and the alyssum that carried me through the growing season with their colorful and often fragrant faces.

 

The cold morning air does not keep me indoors. Yes, there's the farmette walk, under brilliantly blue skies.

And after, I stay out and return to digging weeds in the new bed. Ed joins me and we shovel away until it is nearly noon and I get very hungry for my morning coffee and breakfast. And because we had been working hard, breakfast on the porch does not feel too cold at all, even though it iss barely 41F (5C).

Afterwards, we continue to work. I build a couple of paths into the new flower bed, Ed chips the soil. It's the kind of work that makes you feel so good! The brisk wind, that persistent sunshine, and the prospect of finishing a job that just two days ago seemed impossibly difficult.

 

(Path, leading out to the new bed)

 
 

 

 

And speaking of finishing a job, our mason guy and his sidekick finished building the front steps to the farmhouse. Now, this may be a ho hum feat in your eyes, but to me, it's huge! Since I've lived here, I'd been wanting to fix that horrible ugly mess out front, but we just could not come up with a design idea that would please the both of us. He wanted something simple but fitting. Farmhouse compatible. Not suburban. After a few years I stopped coming up with ideas because I was convinced that he simply did not want to find a solution. It's as if something about that crumbling unfinished mess appealed to him. But, this year he finally agreed to move forward and after much discussion (so much discussion!), we got our ideas to merge into one beautiful whole, and that whole is finally done! Well, Ed still has to fill in dirt and build a platform at the foot of the stairs, but hey, we have ourselves a proper front entrance!

Lunch is late. Like, close to dinner time. But the satisfaction from this week's outdoor work is tremendous. 

We are ready for winter! I think.

Thursday - 216th

You could say that the weather played a familiar trick on me. It threatened cold. And yes, it's a cooler day. Definitely. We will reach a high of around 50F (10C). My morning walk is brisk.

 

 

(Tuxie is our calmest and most beautiful cat...)

Our breakfast is on the porch,...

 

 

... but a few minutes into it, I tell Ed I'm just too cold. He offers me his clunky jacket and we linger. But we're not likely to do this again. Breakfast is a time of no worry, no rush. Thinking about how cold you are does not fill you with a sense of contentment and well being. It makes you want to get up and hide inside.

But then this wonderful thing happens -- the sun comes out and though it's cold, you'd never know it. Ed and I go back to that newly developing flower field. We had tilled it yesterday but today we are there with the shovel, going for the big weed roots. Slowly I shed my jacket. And then I shed my sweater.

Between the physical work and that glorious sunshine, I'm feeling mighty warm out there!

Once again, my FitBit goes wild with pleasure. I pass 10,000 without a thought to the whole enterprise.

In the afternoon, I pause to visit with my friends. Well, okay, it's a Zoom visit. Nonetheless it's a terrific way to sit back and give yourself a few hours of downtime. With friends who matter.

And then it's evening and it's getting dark but hey, don't let this get in our way of doing more digging, more dragging out of weed roots... until we can't distinguish a root from a worm because it is just too dark and Ed steps on a cat's paw and we throw down our shovels and call it a day.