counting

Are you a counter? 505 spent day lilies snipped off today. All on a lovely summer morning, with a promise of work-friendly temperatures all day long. A high of 75f  (24c). Delightful! Breakfast is two hours later than the average, but that's because the garden beckons and I'm there with the flowers and Ed is there with the compost pile and the young orchard trees and before you know it we are close to noon.

These are the weeks of the day lilies. Such a special flower! To me, they look their finest when flanked by a mass of blooms, preferably a mixture of lilies and all the other perennials that do well here. Say a proportion of 40 lilies to 60 something else. At the farmette, sometimes they dominate a bed, sometimes they take a back seat. Well, never actually a back back seat. Just not always center stage.

 

 

 

 

Hey! My trumpets are blooming! They herald the arrival midsummer -- I mean, not the calendar midsummer -- this year, that was 15 days ago (June 24th), but the mindset that I have each year, where it feels like we are as many days into the summer season as we are away from its end. So, mid July.

These majestic day lilies bring out the song in me, but this year, instead of music, I turn to Mary Oliver. There's a reason for it: as I snip off spent lily blooms, I see our resident humming bird peck at the blooming monardas. You can't see him in this photo, but he's there!

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine
and the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in the world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power–
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money–
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens...

So beautiful... All of it.

I weed weed and weed some more (two bucketfuls) and then I count the minutes I have left before I must scoot over to my daughter's house. This afternoon, the younger family arrives in Madison again. Here for just two nights, but that gives us bits of three days. Starting right now!

(2 cousins)

(4 are eating fruit roll-ups)

(the young one)

(Primrose is very keen on babies)

We eat dinner at a bier garten. Take out foods on picnic tables, while the kids, restless little beings that they are, romp and jump and romp some more...

... and dance. Because there is music.

 

 

The kids -- now there are four of course, but only three are mobile -- they have the energy of ten galloping horses. I notice that now, when I find myself having the energy of maybe half a horse.

 

Watch, play, watch, until it's time for the youngest and the oldest of us to retire for the day. They go home, I go home. In a handful of hours, the morning will come and we'll be together again. For now, I retreat to the quiet of the farmhouse and within a very brief period of time my eye lids are heavy, my rhythm slows to a crawl and I know it is time to go to sleep.

enjoyment

I don't try to find fault with the farmette gardens, but today, I did think that in creating the flower beds, I neglected a very important aspect of gardening: room for enjoyment.

It's not my fault, really. I'm not talented at doing this stuff. Garden design isn't easy and I did not intend the fields to be anything but places of abundant blooms. I even resist calling the fields and beds here gardens because I don't think of them as such. I find space and I plant stuff in it. There is no master plan, there is no thought to how the space may change over time (by virtue of trees encroaching, for example). I want to take out weeds -- thistle, nettle, burdock, bramble, goose grass, vines, choking stuff that grows so abundantly everywhere, if you let it -- and put in something beautiful, a little at a time. That's all. End of plan.

But this evening, as I walked the farmette lands, noting that we have now entered the very peak of the blooming season, I felt like there ought to be beautifully designed spaces where you could sit back and enjoy this sumptuous season of flowering plants. Benches, carefully positioned, chairs perhaps -- anything that would encourage spending time in the middle of all this loveliness. 

(We do have the porch and of course, normally there are many mosquitoes in July, so sitting outside isn't that attractive, but still, there's something not altogether right when the best view of the flower beds is to be had when sitting on the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. The window is right to your side. The beds extend deliciously every which way. It's grand, but perhaps not as comfortable as a deck chair would be.)

The day began as always in July -- with me snipping spent lily heads. 365 today, so quite a lot, but not nearly the max. In a couple of weeks, I expect that there'll be at least twice this amount to remove each morning. Let's see what a more or less cleaned up lily bed looks like:

(with a tree frog...)

And I should add that although I talk a lot about lilies, they are only a fraction of what I grow. A big fraction, but they surely do not stand alone.

One detail to note about this day is that it's cold. I mean, relatively speaking of course. A high of maybe 65f (18c). This is most unusual for us in July and I am happy that we only have this one chilly day in our forecast. In the morning, it's cold enough for us to eat breakfast inside!

The kids come over immediately after. Before we dash inside (and huddle under a blanket!), I ask them to look around and tell me which is their favorite flower. Snowdrop surely is true to her name as she runs over to the large white lily.

I like white flowers -- she tells me.

 

Sparrow points to some potted dahlias growing right where he is standing. I don't think he really loves these best. He just doesn't want the weight of deciding. There are too many. He is too small.

(sniffing flowers...)

In the afternoon I did something unexpected: I opened the file with my Great Writing Project. I'd been asked about it recently and I have this itch to finally address the ending. And so now you know that the rest of the day is lost to me. I sit in my text and I consider changes. And I make progress! I stop only when we realize that today is market day. 

As we come back from our market run, I take a moment to look at the flower beds again. I think they're gorgeous, probably because they grew with me. I learned over the decades and I keep on learning from all the mistakes I make. But in July, the mistakes aren't obvious. All I see is the magnificence. I hope you see a tiny bit of it too.

showers

Oh, I liked this day! Yes, it was cloudy and cooler (72f, that's 22c for a high). Yes, I got caught in a sprinkle, more than once. Yes, I had to hurry through lily snipping (only 278 today). But the day was full and it was fragrant! Really fragrant.

It is one beautiful aspect of living in the country: the seasonal scents are pronounced and you notice them every time you step outside, but especially after a rain shower. Most often I'm not sure which flowers are responsible for the summer fragrances. Certainly the lilium are powerfully scented, but the day lilies, too, have a delicate smell. But what I'm picking up now is not just the whiff of garden flowers. The scent includes grasses and clover and pine needles and the mint that's growing out of control by our front door. It's the entirety that I love.

My morning walk is a sensual awakening: overnight, a mass of lilies had decided to finally join the chorus of summer blooms. It's never easy to photograph these girls well. Their faces bend this way and that, the leaves of their neighbors often get in the way of a good frame. 

Still, one tries, because these beautiful flowers, so short lived and ephemeral, are really stunning and surely deserve to be seen by more than just the two of us here, at the farmette! So, here's what's blooming:

(excuse me, little frogee, but shouldn't you be doing a better job at hiding? like maybe inside a lily bloom?)

Morning breakfast? Not on the porch and not in the kitchen, but with my visiting friend, at Grace Cafe. Sure, we sit outside (and retreat under an awning when the showers come)...

... but it still feels like a cafe moment, with a cappuccino and fresh stuff from their bakery. (Have you ever had an "everything" croissant with cream cheese inside? Sort of like going to Shelsky's in Brooklyn and Les Editeurs in Paris, all at the same time.)

 I'd forgotten how much I love spending a whole morning in a coffee shop!

Since I was really close to my daughter's house, I popped in to see the kids afterwards!

(Sandpiper with mommy)

(...then with Gogs)

(the older two)

In the afternoon, I take out my moped and scoot over to pick up my CSA summer flowers (fuller this week, with a distinct fragrance of mint sprigs!). Yes, I get caught in a light shower, but it hardly matters. The moped is a summertime joy. You can smell everything around you as you zip past fields and prairies at a modest speed.

(this is one of my favorite prairies and it happens to abut a corner of the farmette lands...)

I do hope that these passing showers turn into a more substantial rain tonight. The plants need the water. And of course, we would love more whiffs of all that's growing and thriving outside.

wood pile

For as long as I have lived here, there has been an enormous pile of cut wood behind the big willow. It's where we load sawed off branches and fallen tree limbs. Winter snows and the passage of time compress the heap, but of course, each year, we add to it. The farmette has many many trees and sometimes they need to come down and oftentimes, limbs need to be removed. We've learned to hoist them up high and flick them to the top of a pile. There's a method to it. We have lots of practice.

Every once in a while Ed has wondered if he should get a wood chipper. You load the machine with branches and it shreds them. Sort of like an office shredder only you get piles of chips rather than shreds of paper. This weekend, after watching countless videos and reading endless reviews, he finally decided to buy a machine that would do the job. The super sale at Harbor Freight pushed him to move on it. He lugged the machine home two days ago.

Yesterday, he was about to set up operations out back (it will take many many days to feed it all those branches: our woodpile is very tall and very wide). But at that moment, I happen to look outside and I see them: the big groundhog, followed by two chunky little ones. 

We have had groundhogs living underneath the woodpile for years. Oh, they have other homes too -- we have holes up and down the farmette lands to prove it. But could it be that the wood pile is their principle residence? And if it is, would they be disturbed if a machine slowly ground up this place of refuge?

In other words, should we return the machine and ignore the ever growing mountain of rotting wood for their sake?

Neither of us has a good answer to this. We talk about the pros, the cons and come to no conclusion.  

(chatting over breakfast...)

(meanwhile back in the garden: see those thin stalks to the right? garlic, with long lovely scapes. somehow the garlic got started in the courtyard and we find garlic plants attractive enough to leave alone even the ones that grow right by the flower beds)

(let's see how many lilies will sport a tree froggie this summer!)

(the Big Bed is filling out; 335 spent lilies snipped today...)

In the afternoon, I ask if Snowdrop wants to go swimming again (she has daily swim lessons in the mornings). Yes she does! We meet up at our local community pool. 

 

It's a day for it: hot and humid. Like so many others this summer. Our timing is a little off though. As we enter the pool area, there is an announcement that the pool will close for twenty minutes (they have mandatory breaks throughout the day). That's okay. It gives us time to layer on the sunscreen!

Okay! Time to play! Predictably, the pool is a tiny bit crowded. I'm still into social distancing, even outside, so I steer the girl around to pockets of quiet. But of course, I would do that anyway, even before COVID.

My does Snowdrop love water play!

And then we retreat to the farmhouse.

When it's nearly time for me to take her home, I coax her into a small walk in the flower fields. 

 

 

 

I let her choose the path and the pace, though I do tell her that I want her to get closer to the flowers. 

 

 

 

She likes to put her nose to any flower within reach. To her, every bloom deserves a big whiff. She has her favorites!  (Phlox, lavender... I don't disagree.)

 

Back at her house, I have a quick visit with Sandpiper...

And then I hurry home to work on a frittata for supper. All local stuff: CSA broccoli, market mushrooms, Farmer John's cheese, cheeper eggs. I could have added garlic scapes from our yard, but I'd grown lazy by then.

At the end of the day, we're no closer to having an answer to the wood chipper question. I'm so focused on keeping the flower fields tidy in their big month of bloom that I can't seem to be able to weigh options and make decisions about other farmette issues. Do we know, for example if we are to be tilling the land around the newly planted trees? Or whether we are to transplant some of the raspberry canes that I'm about to mow down? 

Can't think about any of that. This is July. Stuff is blooming. In the garden, that's all that matters.