waiting

It's amazing how much time in life you spend on waiting. Perhaps the best skill you can pick up is one that allows you to wait productively, or at least enjoyably. Some would say it's all in the journey after all.

Once again it is a day of waiting: Sandpiper, born yesterday, is ready to come home, maybe. Not sure yet.  And so we wait to hear when the family's discharge time will come. Today? Tomorrow? We do not know.

But really, I'm not thinking about any of this just at the moment. It's early in the morning and I'm thinking how I really would do anything for my kids, including stay in their house and watch the little ones, even if sleeping there upstairs means that I will have their three cats join me in bed. I do not sleep well with animals (though at least these, unlike Dance, do not feel compelled to nibble on my feet), but the cats think me to be an adequate substitute for their usual bedmates and so there they are and there I am. 

The kids wake up early (what a surprise) and join me in the grand bed and from there it's one busy morning. Baths, breakfasts, laundry (what the hell was that goop that spilled out during the last wash, coating everything with sticky, slippery curdles of... something??), feeding their cats and injecting one, the most skittish of them all (of course it would be him) with medicine -- the usual stuff. At least there is no school on Wednesdays and so we are not rushed. 

Very quickly Snowdrop and Sparrow realize that Gaga at the farmhouse -- nice and laid back, with nothing to do but cater to their play needs -- is not the same as Gaga at their house. There, I am busy and they must fend for themselves, leaving them to gaze out the window and ask somewhat wistfully -- when will our babysitter be here? I say -- not for another hour and so they take the reigns on their own time of waiting and settle in to draw.

Great stuff comes out of this time and I even hear a bunch of "I love yous" coming out of little months, making our time together a happy time indeed.

When the sitter does come, I quickly pack up and head for the farmette. It's really a perfect day -- a sunny, crisply warm day, a breezy day of the nicest kind. We will not pay attention (for now) to the fact that we are getting blasted with cold air starting tomorrow. It'll be the coldest late May weather I ever remember having. Nearly frost at night! We will have to cover tomatoes. Wish us and more importantly, farmers across Wisconsin, luck with all our tender shoots! 

But today is perfect and as I drive up to the farmette flower fields, I am deeply appreciative of (and enchanted by!) all that's growing out there now.

(my first sweet day lily!)

(the siberians...)

(and of course -- the peonies)

(hey, don't forget the tubs of annuals!)

It's late, but still, Ed and I sit down to our breakfast on the porch. (The peony is from the farmette gardens. It's rare that I pick flowers for the table -- I love admiring them among their plant friends, growing outside, but when they fall, or are overabundant, I will indeed snip them!)

Waiting never felt so good!

And now it's time to get some work done. Ed did manage to tow in the new used tractor mower and so we mow down one last row -- a very short row -- for the last three trees that may or may not survive their long refrigerated wait, but still, we plant them, enjoying the breezes, the green landscape, the day of May perfection.

In the afternoon, I return to the kids. Happy kids after a day of outdoor play.

(In front of a poster welcoming Sandpiper)

We learn that Sandpiper and parents are indeed coming home today. Well now! All is ready!

We wait.

At 6:30, some 25 hours after being born, he is here.

You can imagine all those photos we all want to take: just him, him and sibs, him and his whole family, him and grandma, him and sibs and grandma. I reconcile myself to doing just a few. There will be time for more. I'm happy to wait.

Sleep well, Sandpiper. Worry not: your family will take good care of you.

With love...

May Sandpiper

It was a morning that called for setting the alarm. Not that I ever need it, but just in case. I have to be at the young family home by 7.

(From Dance: hey, morning cat feeder-person, you're up early!)

(walk to barn: the peonies are coming into their special moment!)

Okay, I'm here! (Or rather there!) I'm to make sure the kids are ready for the day and that Snowdrop has all she needs for school. Yep, all set.

I drive the girl over. On time performance! Sparrow comes along for the ride. Can't leave him home -- no one's there to look after him. As we pull up to the school, she asks -- did you remember my mask?? I did not. I hand her a spare I keep in the car for myself, adjusting the bands a little. It's still big, but it will do until I go back and get her her regular one.

On all the back and forths, Sparrow points to random buildings and tells me -- that's my school over there. The super big one. Because I'm a big boy. Someone is missing going to school!

(he is getting tall...)

Later in the morning, his baby sitter arrives and I drive back to the farmette. Oh, the colors of a late May garden!!

(A very late breakfast with Ed...)

Back to work in the garden: I put in the last of the perennials and I weed. Always the weeding! 

I look around me. Here's a rose that is as faithful as that Yellowstone geyser. I don't really grow roses for many many reasons, but a while back I was tempted. I put in this one bush and it just keeps coming back. It has survived beetle attacks, droughts, high humidity, terrible winters and still, right about now it throws out lovely yellow and apricot flowers. All flowers should be this resilient!

But of course, the emerging stars are these guys!

Garden work done for now. I go to pick up Snowdrop at school. And I dare text my older girl who happens to be in the hospital. Any news??

Nothing to report yet. I drive again to the kids' home, mildly nervous about leaving Ed to his own devices today. He intends to rig up a rented trailer to his ancient truck and drive a hefty distance to pick up a used tractor mower. The weather is iffy, his truck is iffy, him handling a tractor mower and a trailer is iffy. Still, even if I were by his side, I'd be of little help. I reconcile myself to waiting. For updates from all sides.

(kids at play)

("we're ice skating!)

And finally in the early evening the call comes: Sandpiper was born at around 5 p.m., weighing in at 9 pounds. A May child, arriving without fuss, as if already content to be associated with  this most incredible time of the year..

Oh, Sandpiper! We can't come and see you today, there are COVID restrictions. Still, you were born at a safer time, though you sure had us worried early on. But you hung in there, little Wisconsin bird that you are, you held on and now here you're with us, with a crew of family to love you and friends to coo over you. Not today though. Today you get your private moment with mommy and daddy who will love you totally, always and then some.

 

(at home: p.j. time)

 

 

With love...

its leaves rustle o'er me

Snowdrop likes her music class at school. I don't know what they do in it, because as far as class time goes, the girl keeps descriptions short, but I've heard snippets about some group time and screen time and instrument time and it all seems to please her. When I was her age, or slightly older, I, too liked music class. Sometimes. We had a music teacher -- Mrs. Kaufmann -- who did not like me and I returned that favor. I have to admit, both of us had good reasons. She was awfully boring and stiff and I was a wild troublemaker (in her class). So much so that my parents got called to school for my misbehavior -- the one and only time where that happened in my school years.

But predictably, many decades later, I appreciate bits and pieces of that class and especially of Mrs. Kaufmann's choice of music material. When we were not clapping out rhythms and learning about scales, we sang. And among the many international songs (I went to an international school), she often returned to one that was my enduring favorite -- a traditional Welsh song -- the Ash Grove.

This morning I had the radio on even before breakfast, before animals, before all of it. And the first selection on the morning music program on NPR was the Ash Grove as performed by Cai Thomas.

Listen to it here:

Oh, the memories! And the way those beautiful notes came back to me on spring evenings when the "leaves rustled o'er me," or in Wales, where the song stayed with me, in the same way that Speed Bonny Boat -- another song learned in school -- was just the right thing to sing when I was on the Isle of Skye. 

Of course, it is fitting to have a song about a grove of trees stay in your head all morning on a day when tree planting still takes up a chunk of our time. (After breakfast of course.)

I admit to singing loudly rather than humming quietly. The chickens took it in stride. The cats were a little freaked out. They're very sensitive to unusual sounds.

In the afternoon I went shopping for wine. This is the first real shopping trip for me. I figured it would be brief and therefore I wouldn't feel too strange being inside a store. It was fantastic to look at real labels and to pick wines that again reminded me of places: one from Burgundy, one from the Lake Garda region of Italy and one from my beloved Catalan hills of southern France. Everything is so evocative right now!

And look what's blooming right now: this very tiny flower -- an original English bluebell! ("... around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing") I planted it last fall and had no hope for it at all and yet it flowered, bringing memories of a conversation about bluebells that I had with a whiskey craftsman on the Isle of Islay in Scotland. My own bluebell is growing in front of a lavender bush. Yes, that does remind me of France's lavender fields. How could it not!

Am I longing to set out somewhere? Nah... I'm just a little stuck in memories of past trips ("... each step wakes a memory as freely I roam"), the grand ones with lots of good walks and good food and good wine. Or whiskey, because when in Rome...

But to reiterate, I feel no tug to travel yet. Right now I am rooted at home, in our new forest and new and old flower beds at the farmette. And most of all, I am rooted to the people here, with whom my encounters were so precarious, tenuous, sometimes even impossible in this past year. ("... a host of kind faces is gazing on me")

Here's one such person! At the farmette, after school, in her pajamas, because it was pj day in her class.

She has little interest in staying outside, possibly because it feels sticky hot out there and cool and shady indoors.

And in the evening, we throw open the windows to the cooling air and I get ready for the interesting set of days ahead!

a break and a brake

You can set hefty goals for yourself and you can work hard to achieve them, all in a timely fashion, but the fact is, you'll never have total control over the outcome. Stuff happens.

I thought about this today as Ed and I rushed to be done with morning chores so that we could go out and plant more trees. It was drizzling lightly and everything was lush and green and wonderful, but also wet and soggy and muddy. 

Breakfast on the porch. Leisurely, because of the drizzle. And then, unexpectedly, the drizzle stops.

Leisurely breakfast comes to a fast end. I grab a half dozen hickories and a couple of maples to plant and settle into a morning of filling holes with dirt and breaking up chunks of clay. This is when I hear Ed calling from across the field. He needs help. The tractor-mower is not spinning its rear wheel so we have to half push half drive the machine out of a ditch and up to the courtyard. I do the steering, Ed does the pushing. He is a strong guy, but that is one heavy piece of equipment. He's fiercely panting as we maneuver it up the incline.

He does a quick inspection and concludes it cannot be fixed. Not easily and cheaply. And we cannot continue with the tree planting without its help. So off he goes to search Craigslist for another tractor mower -- one that works, while I continue to put trees in holes, and to clear beds and do all that stuff that is still part of my game plan for this growing season.

Ed has found a used machine that will be here tomorrow. Me, I'm about to grab something resembling lunch when my eyes fall on the rhubarb growing at the side of the walkway. The people who used to farm here planted it and though I myself would not have put it so close to the front door, it's there and it produces a hefty amount of stalks right about now. In other words -- I realize that I really need to do something with that rhubarb! 

I break for a pep talk with my friends. Sometimes what you need is a bit of distance from whatever it is that's filling your day. 

 

And then I get to it. No more planting. I'm in the kitchen baking rhubarb cake and sauteing crunchy chicken for the young family's Sunday dinner at the farmhouse. I mean, could a meal be more homey than that?

The family's here! The kids spend a few mins outside. Stuff to explore, asparagus to pick.

(Dinner)

And so the day disappears behind May clouds. And honestly, we did get a lot done. Not exactly according to plan and perhaps not in the way that we intended, but still, it's been a lovely day, full of interesting twists and sweet moments. And the birds sang and more flowers joined the parade of blooms.

I can only wonder what the week before us will bring!

in the heat of the day

 It's not a race. Except, it sort of is. I am planting in weather that surely belongs to July. Flowers and trees -- they need to be in the ground. Now, this week. And so we work quickly. Despite the blast. Oh, did I mention it? It's hot! Reaching a toasty 82F (28C). I'm reminded of those scenes from movies that want to create a mood of relentless summer heat: a fly buzzes  persistently, a breeze rustles a few leaves then dies down. The air sizzles. Straight out of the Godfather in Sicily, no?

(chicks and cats, restless...)

 

 

 

We eat breakfast on the porch, seeking out the places at the table that remain in the shade.

(what's blooming? at the beginning and at the end of the season, much of the color is in the tubs...)

And then immediately after the morning meal, we go back to the new forest of trees. I put in the last walnut and the last hazelnut and more importantly, we find spaces for the hickories and we add one more row to the very northern edge of farmette lands where we can slip in a few more maples.

The planted trees are doing well, except, well, one cage was trampled down overnight, obviously by a deer. It's not that she was searching for the twig inside, it's that she likely did not see the cage. They are practically invisible. Ed will be weaving bright orange strips through all of them going forward. As a warning. Watch where you're going! We're hoping it's enough to keep the deer away.

I pause in the early afternoon. I have some repair work to do in the flower beds. Irises to move. And of course, the last handful of lilies to put in. I can't really get to all that right away because I  promised my daughter I'd help out with an outside play date that Snowdrop has orchestrated for this afternoon. 

Two new school friends. Snowdrop is so very excited! Sure, there are still the precautions that we have to follow: outside, try for distance, try for masks, at least when not eating. Still, the little girl has been wanting this so very much that she just cannot wait!

(Sparrow truly believes that his school friends will come as well. Never mind that he hasn't been in school for well over a year and what friends he had back when he was a toddler wouldn't remember him any more than he remembers them.)

(pregnant mommy)

Did I mention that it's hot? When her friends arrive, the sprinkler goes on!

Sparrow joins in for a bit after his nap.

It is truly grand to be so close to an almost normal day!

Evening. Where to put the small shreds of remaining energy? The trees? The flowers? Both! A few more maples, a day lily here, and the rest? Well, there's always tomorrow. And the next day. I want to be (basically) done by Tuesday! Can we do it? We will see.

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.