to be impressed

People don't often plant white gardens (or moonlight gardens as some would call them). White flowers are rare and their impact is subtle. Maybe it's what the first owners of White Flower Farm (a nursery that has been supplying me with flowers for nearly thirty-five years) were going for when they chose that name for their flower growing business -- finding the unusual among the common. In any case, I'm no different than the vast majority of gardeners: I have a few white flowers, but not very many.

Given my preference for the pink-blue-lemon yellow spring range...

(like this false blue indigo...)

 

 

 

(... or the pink flowers emerging on this weigela bush)

it is always a bit of a surprise to face one of the flower beds right around now (the one closest to where we park the cars, so it rarely gets photographed in its entirety, because cars are are not an attractive background). It is effectively all green and white: clematis at one end, a large patch of white bearded iris at the other, and the dainty (and ever spreading!) white anemone at the front. 

 

 

And it is the biggest bloomer right now. All white! Well, not entirely. Hiding behind a lilium stem is this pinky girl:

 

But you can't really see her because the lilium popped up right in front of her this year. So -- all white!

 

It's cloudy today. We hoped for a good morning of tree planting and indeed, right after breakfast...

... we took out all the equipment and got to work, aiming to fill the far flung corners with some hickories and the last of the hazelnuts and walnuts, but the rain came and even though initially we shrugged it off, it got to be too unpleasant and so after putting in just two trees, we retreated indoors.

As of this day, we have planted 39 trees. We're happy to see that some of them are budding, so they must be fairly content in their new home. (The real test, of course, comes this first winter...)  Because Ed left a handful of old trees standing in the new forest, there is less space for the new ones than we had originally thought. No matter! We have ideas on where to plant the newbies elsewhere on the property. But we have to hurry: the longer they stay in the fridge, the lass chance they have of a successful adaptation to their new environment. So guess what we're going to be doing in the next few days? Yep -- we're going to keep on planting.

In the afternoon, the rains stop (for a bit), but I am now with Snowdrop so the tree project is put on hold. 

The girl does spend a wee bit of time outside...

 

 

... but it is the end of the week and she needs her more restful moments on the couch.

But toward evening, as we walk to the car for the return trip home, she bolts on me. We haven't checked in on the chicks. She has to check in on the chicks. It's raining. She sprints to the barn.

No chicks.

 

Let's go back and look together.

There they are!

She herds them back in.  

 

And she manages to successfully flock all three back to the coop. Happy follows. But the older girls resist. Ah well. at least everyone is in the barn and out of the rain.

But the continuing shower means that Ed and I never make it back to the tree project. And maybe that's a good thing. Evening plantings mean late dinners, and late dinners mean late nights and tired mornings. Instead, I cook up some fish, steam some spinach and sautee a few potatoes. After dinner, we watch Dance chase a mouse. And I go to sleep before midnight (this is aspirational: I'm not there yet).  And tomorrow, we'll plant an impressive number of trees! Maybe.

 

work all day 'til the night time comes...

In years past, the end of May brought with it a reprieve from heavy outdoor work. Once the tomatoes went in, we breathed a big sigh of relief and settled down to a good balance of maintenance work and getting on with our lives. But this year is different. In so many ways it is so very different!

The flower planting, typically finished by now, is still trickling in, with one more package of lilies (they were on a super sale!) coming in this weekend (the last one, I promise!). Oh, there's plenty of room for them. Establishing new beds means that bare spots are numerous. So yes, I've put in some 225 new plants this year and if you sent me ten more, I could easily find places for them. (But please don't send me ten more! I want to be done with planting!)

Then came the rains and the weeds. So many weeds! Enough on that.

But by far, the tree project dominates our lives right now and zaps our energies. Ed has the heaviest of the heavy jobs: clearing that bit of farmette land was huge. And he's still not done with it. Too, he does the digging. And the soil is awful and the chunks of clay are heavy and stubbornly clumpy. I know, because I have to break them up. That hope of planting ten trees each day? Forget it. There is so much prep work for each one that we're struggling to meet half that goal. (Though today, to our credit, we put in six: five English walnuts and one pecan!)

So of course, today -- a warm day, a mostly cloudy day (we like that when we're working out in the fields!) -- was spent on all the above. Flowers, weeds, trees. Outside, working with few pauses. Sparrow typically spends some chunk of time here on Thursdays, but today the parents had scheduling issues that kept the lad home. This simply meant that after my morning walk...

(clematis)

(iris)

... and after breakfast...

we get right down to work.

But here's a pleasant change of pace: in the afternoon, we hop on Ed's motorcycle and go to our local farmer's market -- this is a first for me! I missed the entire season last year, so yes, it's been two years since I've had a face-to-face with, say, Farmer John.

Too, we signed up for a new for us CSA. (Remember? A CSA is Community Supported Agriculture, where you pay a farmer for a season's worth of produce -- whatever he or she puts in the box every week.) It's called Tipi Produce and I'm quite excited by it because I think it's a good match with our eating habits. Today's box had everything wonderful in it: overwintered potatoes (great for a frittata addition!), asparagus (we're swimming in it right now and I could not be happier!), spinach (there's never too much of it!), green leaf lettuce (Ed and I eat at least a head a day), arugula (we consume a huge amount of this as well and the locally grown one is always hugely better), amara kale (I tend to stick a bunch in my veggie soup), small radishes (into the salad they go!), and green garlic (a spring delicacy!). 

Tipi's also has a wonderful blog with beautiful photos from their farm. Today's post was just perfect. If you didn't click on it, let me tell you that (in addition to cool recipes and notes on how to work with their produce) it has a lovely sentence about finding joy in a beautiful sky. So true. So much grandness from just tilting your head up a little.

Evening: I need to use up last year's tomatoes, so it's chili time at the farmette. Ever had chili with a side of asparagus? We did!

after the rain

It's a wet landscape out there. A wet and weedy landscape.  On my morning walk I can't help but notice the hundreds, nay thousands of new weed heads. I no longer dig out roots, I snip off anything above the ground, trying to take out as much as I can. Of course, I dont even make a dent. In these new flower beds, the baby plants take up no space at all and so the weeds have plenty of opportunity to come back and taunt me. But I cannot give in. I've worked too hard to establish these beds. I have to persevere. Bend down and pluck, a million times each day.

Most flowers look refreshed after the rain. And some bend their blooming heads under the weight of the added moisture. It's especially beautiful to watch the lilac curve its flower heads. A final flush of purple color, a final whiff of a heavenly fragrance.

 

(Speaking of purple...)

Breakfast, now routinely outside. It's definitely warm enough.

And afterwards we take stock. We have trees to plant, sure, but I'm the landscape planner here (Ed prefers it that way) and I do not see many sunny spaces left for the trees we have left. Walnuts, for example, love sunshine. We walk the new forest lands and look at the box elders that have created so much shade.

I suppose I can take those four trees down... This from Ed.

I know it seems odd -- take down mature trees in order to plant babies which may or may not take hold, but box elders are like cotton candy: they spin out of control quickly and their life span is short. They fall down at inconvenient times and in inconvenient places. We have dozens of them and apart from the fact that they do give some shade and protection from the winds that blow across the upper midwest, they really are as big a nuisance as creeping charlie. Like noxious weeds, they crowd out everything. I am glad, therefore, that Ed has agreed to take down a box elder grove that's growing right in the middle of our baby forest, but it does mean that we'll have to slow down our planting. We put the remaining trees in the refrigerator and turn to other catch-up chores: Ed needs to lay chips on top of the fabric that surround the new saplings. And I offer to finish planting the tomatoes.

I work in the field taking in that wonderful aroma of tomato plants, digging and planting, digging and planting one after the next until the last thirty-two are in the ground. Will they produce this year? Last year the deer ate 95% of our crop. They may have shared a little with the groundhog -- we're not sure about that, but by season's end we had nothing left. This year we're trying our magic pepper concoction that seemed to work well at fending off the groundhogs and bunny rabbits from my perennials. We'll see how effective it is on tomato plants!

 

 

 

In the afternoon we haul some furniture that Ed put together to my mom's place. We'll still have to help her with wall hangings, but at least in terms of moving stuff in -- we're done. 

The day's not over! I have my very last flower order to pick up from the Flower Factory. They're getting rid of all their day lilies and so they're selling off some pretty nice, mature plants. Yes, there is always room in the flower fields for more lilies!

Lunch? Close to 5 p.m. I know -- why not just call it dinner? (Because it's almond butter on toast, with jam. Definitely not dinner food.)

And still we're not done! Ed takes out his power saw... 

 

 

 

... and I take some walnut twigs for planting. We work until our enthusiasm for being outdoors sags and the idea of dinner sounds so good! But it's late and we are both tired. Want to see if we can get pizza delivered? That's Ed's idea. Remarkable in that the two of us have never to my recollection had a pizza delivered. Nor is there a pizza place nearby. We do live in the country!

But we call an Italian Restaurant and of course these days everyone does take out and yes, they deliver if you're within five miles, and sure enough, if you take the shortest set of roads, we fit!

I think about all that we are planting this year -- all those flowers, the tomatoes, the trees. What a grand leap of faith! A belief that we can do this, despite hiccups, despite the labor, despite all that can still go wrong. We never think in those terms. Think of all that can go right! -- that's what pushes us forward.

(All together now...)

People who grow things are, without a doubt, the world's greatest optimists.

hazelnuts

All trees are not created equal. If a child draws a leafy tree, inevitably there will be a trunk, with a green canopy of leaves above. Most deciduous trees follow that pattern. But then, along comes the hazelnut. If you prune it (and you should), it will do you the favor of growing more like a very full, very tall bush, making nut laden branches reachable to even small people. And here's another thing: hazelnut trees actually tolerate shade. They'll produce nuts (sometimes called hazelnuts, sometimes filberts) even if you plant them in the broad shade of another tree. This makes them very desirable for farmette planting, because Ed did not cut back all the invasive trees that should have been cut back for our forest project and so we do have large swatches of shade.

Why all this filbert info? Well, it seems that today was destined to be a hazelnut day for us. We have eight of them to plant and we start in on it even before breakfast. 

You'd think that we would pick up speed as we get the routines going, but we do not. We pause after putting in just three and honestly, it feels like we'd been at it for a good part of the day.

Breakfast is very late, but fragrant! I cut some lilac blooms to keep us in happy moods.

(What else is blooming now? Oh, small stuff here and there. Late May will bring out the irises and early June will bring out the Peonies, but we're not there yet. I'm staying with the lilac here. Plus a handful of very pretty white anemones.)

Back to the filberts. After breakfast, three more, in the ground!

And then it really does start to rain. Not anything huge, but still, I'm not going to fuss: we need rain. We'll take any amount!

I pick up Snowdrop and we go straight to the farmhouse.

Safe and dry!

But as we leave the farmhouse for the drive home, Snowdrop feels a tug. Sure, it's raining, but she hasn't checked in with "her tree." 

 

And the little chickens hover around us, and they're getting wet, and so we try to chase them to the barn, and as long as we're there, the girl and I usher all the chickens into the coop for the night. The two of us are very proud of our accomplishment, rain or no rain!

When I was little, I liked rainy days in my grandparents' village home. You'd hear the rain falling on the roof and you'd smell all the wet trees and plants outside afterwards and if the rain was stubbornly long, my sister and I would go mushroom picking in the forest immediately after. At the farmette, a rain offers gifts as well -- the sounds, the smells, yes of course. And though there are no forests with mushrooms nearby, a rain also offers a chance to sit down and take it easy for a bit. Spring is a time of never ending work for us. It's good to get the gift of a break.

The evening remains wet. And that's okay. I cook up a ton of asparagus (tis the season!) and scramble some eggs and sprinkle them with garden chives. A slice of smoked salmon on the side, a salad with many green and red things in it and we have a meal. I think about the grateful plants taking in the rain and the grateful me, taking in that much needed break. A fine day indeed!

in the heat of the day

What does it say about us hardened northerners that when the temps reach the mid seventies F (about 24C) it feels hot? Short sleeves, no jacket, not even a sweater on my morning walk.

(the colors of May!)

(the final round of tulips)

 

 

 

And a lovely breakfast out on the porch because it offers plenty of northern exposure shade.

But immediately afterwards, we go out back to continue with the tree planting. We're finishing on the pecans and starting in on the English walnuts. Both tree types require sunlight and so we work out in full sunshine.

And it feels hot. 

We mow down another row of prairie and prairie invasives and the soil feels stubborn, and the roots of weeds that took over this once farm pasture land are deep, and the work is hard enough for Ed to say -- I hope that at least fifty percent of these trees make it. It's a lot of work for them all to fail.

Why should they fail? - I ask, more out of defiance rather than curiosity.

Who knows if these young roots can compete with the aggressive stuff that's growing there now. 

But these trees sprout and do fine in forests, where they have to compete with other trees! I say this again daring them to fail on us. "You do well in a forest, can't you managed a weed infested prairie?" The fact is, we don't know.

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school. There are only ten days left of classroom instruction. It's funny to think in terms of vacation -- it's been such a strange school year!

Is it too hot for her as well? She is so in love with her cotton cardigans. More clouds roll in...

 

 

But I had been feeling toasty, so I had decided to clean out the small baby wading pool I have had for her since she was a one year old. As the summer season unfolds, this small nothing will have little to offer for her. But since it's the first time that I've filled it with water (hoping the hose water would warm up by the time she came here), her joy at seeing it (and the handful of the cheap color faded toys that I threw in with it when she was just a toddler) is immense!

Yes, of course she wants to play in it! cardigan comes off, swimsuit comes on.

(The young chicks wonder -- what is this now? Something for us??)

(Splashing Gogs is a must...)

Evening. 

 

 

 

Ed and I had planted only three trees this morning. Time to return to the fields. The sun is low, the fragrance of sprouting plant life is everywhere. But we turn our backs on the trees for now. We have to get going on the tomatoes. Thirty two plants planted tonight, a similar sized batch tomorrow.

 

 

 

It is there, out in the tomato field that I pick up a call from Primrose. 

 

 

She ends the day for us, in that nothing else that follows is either memorable or significant. The night brings in cool air. We have no more tax forms to fill out (they were all due today!). Just trees to plant. Still lots of trees to plant.

is it Sunday?

If the goal of a Sunday is to take it easy, then Ed and I failed miserably. We again spent half the night on taxes -- me learning how to file corrected returns, Ed plodding along with his own paperwork -- and we again spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon on the farmette tree project.

It's a warm and pretty day for it. 

 

 

 

I do still have flower work ahead of me and Ed has said that we really have to start putting the tomatoes into the ground, but all this is put on hold: we need to plant the bare root trees (more like pencil twigs at this point) before they start to bud. The goal is to do at least ten a day. Yesterday, Ed caught us up on his own, but today, after breakfast...

... we both go out and get to work. We put in a few maples, then switch to chestnuts, and still in the sunny stretch of land -- finish off with a handful of pecans. 

It takes time. Once again I stop before we reach the magic number of ten. I switch to dinner prep because the young family is here this evening and honestly, these are the last minutes of a life as a family of four for them. In a few days, life will get more complicated, in as much a newborn complicates routines for a bit before a new rhythm is found.

Before we sit down to dinner, we have a few moments of play. It is the perfect day for it -- not too warm, not too cold, not yet buggy. I mowed some paths earlier in the day so that the kids can go further afield. And of course, we visit the newly planted trees.

Dinner.

 

And afterwards? Well, we return to the tree planting, working past sunset to get the last three into the ground. So no couch time, no sip a cool drink outside time, no slow paced time at all. But you know, we did occasionally pause and listen to the birdsong. In the evening, the sandhills came to the edge of farmette lands as well and Ed looked around and said -- we should have done this tree project fifteen years ago: this is such a good place for trees!  Yes it is. And I'm glad we pushed ourselves to finally do it this year.

showers

Oh, the unpredictability of scattered showers! If you look at the little weather chart on your device, you'll get drawn into believing that those percentages actually tell you something: At 10 a.m. there is a 40% chance of showers. At 1 it goes down to 12%. But by 4, it's 35%. Why do we buy into this? Showers spring up like pop corn -- randomly, in one place but not another. They'll try their damnedest to fool you! No, not coming your way. And then boom! The drizzle starts.

Mind you, we could use rain. A steady one. A good soak of all those thirsty roots. But this cold weather fleeting drizzle (thankfully only a day of it) is just a nuisance!

But, we start the day with no rain. Lookin' good out there!

(Still a lilac moment...)

Ed wants to get started with the tree planting right away. No way! Breakfast first.

And of course, life gets in the way immediately after: I need to tidy, clear, feed, put away, pick up asparagus -- I mean, a morning is never totally clear. Well, for Ed it may be. He works according to his own schedule, avoiding most dictates that the world may wish to impose on him.

Finally. We set out to the back of the barn. But how do we even begin? Setting up a step-by-step plan of attack is half the struggle.

Alright, I think we've got one! Here it is:

Mow down parallel rows. 

Till a square spot every 25 feet on each row. 

Dig out a hole. 

Bring in composted dirt. 

Put in the tree. 

Bury it with compost and clay mix. 

Cover it all with a tarp. 

Nail down the tarp. 

Put up the cage. 

Wire it to the ground nails. 

Voila! All that for each tree, so seventy times.

By noon, we have put in three trees.

 

 

 

And then, just as a drizzle moves into the area (completely by surprise of course), I have to stop. I'm off to a planned and predicted shower -- for my daughter, given by some of her friends.

The shower is outdoors and though I am absolutely sure that all adults there were fully vaccinated, we were still mostly in masks (well, not for the photo). Some kids were present, so it's good not to completely go hog wild just yet.

It was, despite the cold and the frequent spontaneous drizzle, a lovely afternoon. My daughter, whom we would all place high on the extrovert scale, has had (because of her work) an ungodly amount of zoom meetings this past year and almost no real face to face time with anyone and I know she has missed these guys (well, mostly women) terribly. Colleagues, school friends, book club friends, family. They make up her world and today, just ten days before the expected arrival of her third child, she got some of it back again. (Far away friends and family participated by Zoom, but we integrated them well I think, with some clever games that used the talents and recollections of all.)

In the late afternoon I am back at the farmhouse and my first goal is to dry off and warm up. Ed asks -- you want to plant some more trees?

No, I do not. Tomorrow, we can plunge into putting in more trees. Today -- I'm turning my back to the threat of showers. A nice tea with a stolen cupcake from the planned shower. That's my idea of a perfect late afternoon. 

Evening. He does taxes, I do taxes. And in doing my mom's, I realize I omitted something in mine. Outcomes the X form, amending my omission. Gotta now do this one too. It's not only just late by the time we sit down to dinner -- it's stupidly late. Like maybe around 10. Take-out sushi, because it's the only place we know of around here that delivers. Rain, snow, sleet, late night, wet night, tax night. They will deliver.