breakfast outside?

We have this routine: on Saturday mornings, I go to the downtown farmers market, Snowdrop goes to a class, and eventually Sparrow is off to play ball games. This means that Snowdrop, her mom and Sandpiper have a window of free time late in the morning where they can meet up with me for a second breakfast. We've been doing this outside of course. No one feels comfortable going indoors to eat, least of all us, with two unvaccinated kids. 

Since the morning began with a 32.5F temperature reading (so all my outdoor annuals almost collapsed, hanging in there by the thread of half a degree), I thought perhaps that a better game plan would be to bring the croissants to Snowdrop's home and eat our second breakfast there. It's cold outside and nice and warm inside. But the girl protested. She loves winter, she tells me. She is never cold, she proclaims. She'll bundle up. 

Okay then. I get up, feed the animals...

...go to the market (very few farmers are still out selling stuff)

... then drive over to the coffee shop where we have been meeting up on the weekends. And I wait and no one shows up. 

 

 

 

I'm in the sun, but it's windy and that coffee is getting mighty cold and I'm thinking maybe I should text...

And I find out that we have had a total miscommunication and they are waiting inside in their home for me.

Such a relief! Eating breakfast in temps that hover in the 30sF (so, low single digits C) may be charming in theory, but honestly, I think we're done with outdoor meals for the year. Now if there had been heat lamps...

 

At their house, I shed my scarf, jacket, and gloves. Warm air never felt so good!

(older brother returns from his games)

I come home right around noon. This is when Ed and I sit down to our own "breakfast."

In the afternoon, I work outside in the farmette fields. More bulbs to plant and the Great Mowing Job to accomplish: all the tall grasses we've let grow all summer long? They have to be cut back so that new stuff can easily sprout come spring and more flower seeds can be tossed into the mix. 

I am not a fan of mowing. Neither is Ed. But the guy is busy fixing barn roofs and painting house trim. So I run the tractor mower and as usual, I shake up my insides and make my head and ears buzz and after about an hour I get off and say -- never again, which is something we say to make ourselves feel good, not because we mean it.

Dinner? Leftovers. I'm spent!

Almost

We got close to a frost overnight. Today we may actually hit that crucial marker of the end of the growing season. It's a big moment for me because, in anticipation of this, I have to decide what plants will be over-wintered indoors and which potted ones will be sacrificed. I always tell Ed -- I wouldn't have to do this task if we had a greenhouse. And he always answers -- one more building to maintain? No thanks.

(morning walk)

Bringing plants indoors is only a little satisfying. We do not have enough sunlight (too many trees outside!) to sustain a good blooming habit all winter long. The southern window sill already has geraniums and so there isn't space for more. By late winter anything I bring inside is spindly and barely alive. But once it warms up, I take the plants outside and they get their strength back! The begonias, the rosemary -- they return to their awesome beautiful selves. So this is my task for today: decide! Which three or four should I bring in?

(Breakfast, with a candle that promises to remind me of Catalonia. It doesn't really do that, but it's lovely nonetheless)

I put in several dozen more bulbs. It's going well! Two more weeks of daily planting and I should be done!

(Pretty light of an autumnal morning)

And in the afternoon, Snowdrop is at the farmette again. 

Here, she finds routines that almost never change. I rarely update the toys anymore. Nothing is rearranged. The pantry, which she loves "to raid" has the same foods, the fruit bowl is in the fridge, waiting for her. Books -- I do add new books, but oftentimes she just wants the old ones again. 

(her "raid" revealed a bag of chocolate covered marshmallow bears that I stuck in my bag in Paris...)

 

 

Sparrow and Sandpiper, too, will have grown here with that same stability, but the fierce attachment to it all is definitely strongest in the little girl. It's inevitable: as the firstborn, she was here the longest and at a time where I had time only for her.

Still, I expect that any year now things will shift. She's a very social child (as is Sparrow; don't know yet about Sandpiper, but all indications are that he likes kid chaos). The farmette will be a safe harbor, but the tug will come from her expanding group of friends. 

 

Evening. I bring in the pink begonias. A rosemary. Two orchids. I'll move the strawberry to the garage. The cold snap outside means for us, a snug and cozy inside. How good is that!

 

planting

I never look forward to putting bulbs into farmette flower fields. I buy too many, and they all have different growing conditions, and the weather turns cold, and I neglect to dig up old bulbs that are no longer producing blooms, and I dont remember where there are old but good bulbs, so it's a mess out there! Yesterday I put in a handful of crocuses and then gave up. I needed a plan.

This morning, the weather turned seasonal. Meaning it is what it should be in October: chilly, with occasional showers. 

Breakfast in the kitchen. I'm still picking flowers for the table from the few that haven't yet faded.

We haven't had a night frost yet which is most unusual. Our CSA farmers write how they have mixed feelings about splendidly warm weather: it's been great for harvesting crops -- much more pleasant to work in warm and dry conditions -- but it's not normal for Wisconsin. We need to move on and get to the cold stuff. It's a fine balance out there and our crops, bugs, animals depend on the progression toward a colder fall. 

So late in the morning, I take out my jacket and go out to put in another handful of bulbs. Maybe that's the way to do it: a handful a day until they're all gone. 

In the afternoon, we resume a normal schedule: I pick up Snowdrop at school. It's drizzly and cool so definitely not good weather for lingering outside.

And that's just fine by her.

(Wonderful orange couch time)

Hey, I get to see Sparrow today as well! Briefly, after his own school day.

And the ever cheerful Sandpiper...

Later, as I cook up fish for dinner, I reach for last year's soy candle. Call it my first acknowledgement of the cooler, darker months, or maybe it's that the delicate scent of pine is a good cover for the smell of pan fried fish -- in any case it feels right to give that warm glow to a late October evening at home.

(sunset, from the drive home...)

16 or 71?

Which counts more -- a birthday or an anniversary? An anniversary of what, you ask. Well, of being together. Both fall on this day: Ed turns 71 and we've been together for 16 years now. October 20th is loaded!

I like that it's a double whammy because it gives me a chance to needle Ed twice over. As I've said plenty of times here, he is an even keeled kind of guy who doesn't celebrate nor despair or complain about much in his life. So I make sure to make a big deal of this day, which gives him a chance to protest and deny and squirm a little, but ultimately acknowledge our life together. 

It's at first a cloudy day, but not too bad in terms of warmth!

So much so that I dare us to have breakfast on the porch. I'm sure it's our last time this year. We may get frost later in the week, but for now, we're good!

There are small chores to fill the morning. He paints part of the house outside. I go to FedEx to send my camera for its repair after the last repair! And I get yet another Covid test, because the CDC recommends this for people who have traveled. And then I Zoom with my Polish friends. Much to discuss! Before I know it it's late afternoon and the sun is out and the day is radiant! 

Ed and I now join forces to do something together (though he claims that working in the same space at our independent projects is a form of being together): how about a walk in our local park? The turtles surely must be enjoying this afternoon sunshine. 

Yes they are!

Birthdays and anniversaries notwithstanding, it's Wednesday, and possibly the last Wednesday for Ed to do his evening bike ride. I plant spring bulbs, he pedals away.

And we come together again over a dinner of take out tacos.

There's a full moon hiding behind the clouds, but strong and splendid nonetheless. Sort of like the quiet guy who has been at my side since I plunged into a life with him on his 55th birthday, 16 years ago.

when in Rome..

You eat gelato in Rome, risotto in Milan, pizza in Naples. You're in England, slurping tea with the rest of them, downing Guinness in Ireland, and maybe sipping a champagne aperitif in France. Each country and each locality within the country offer something that we tend to associate with that place. Sheep in Scotland, koalas in Australia. On and on, the list of associations is so long! And if we travel there, we add to it our unique pleasures experienced only in that country: seeing puffins on rocks jutting out in the North Sea, riding up a Welsh mountain rail car to a windy summit, strolling among teal blue potted plants in a Moroccan garden, waking before dawn to go to the fish market in Tokyo. 

You want to bring some of it home. You want the same thrill of eating what you ate there once you get back. You want to hike long hours, drink out of a mug with sheep on it, wear a French scarf -- anything that will transport you to a place far away, where for a few days you were on their soil, doing some of their things. Not that you don't like your own routines. You just want a seamless blend of what you had there and what you have here, so that it wouldn't be so compartmentalized and segregated.

Oh, I'm guilty of bringing home things as well. Rugs from Turkey, spoons from France. Even though I have long learned that if you eat a salad Nicoise in Nice, it's exquisite and if you eat it here, it's just eggs and beans and tomatoes and tuna (I like sardines instead) and a few other things if you're ambitious. Eating it here doesn't put you back in Nice. Walking on the Turkish carpet doesn't recall Istanbul much after the first few days. Now it's just a place where cats shed hairs.

What does stay with you from a trip are thoughts and memories and images, and you don't need stuff to remind you that you've been there. It's all within you and it will stay there so long as you live and breathe and think coherent thoughts. And maybe even that's not necessary. I can imagine being loopy and still having flashes of a seafront in Nice or sheep grazing on Scottish hills. 

I do like the fact that for a few days after a trip, I retain determinations. After this trip, I want to bake more, occasionally spray perfume on my wrists and take longer walks every single day. There! Is that ambitious enough? 

*     *     *

I am up before dawn. I never have jet lag on this end, I just need to be up and going at insanely early hours. Ed, too, is up early -- he has a very important Zoom meeting that starts at 6:45 and lasts six hours. So we're both moving around in the shadows of a still dark farmhouse. 

And then the same old routines prevail. Morning walk to feed animals..

And prepare something to feed us (even though Ed has to stay on his work call for all of breakfast) ...

The routines are a little off because Snowdrop is out of school with some bug or other, so I'm left with a long stretch of time to do exactly what I said I'd do upon my return: I take that long walk. And it's good, and I'm sure I'll keep this going for a few days, and my wrists will be smelling especially flowery today and tomorrow, but I fully expect that by the end of the week, I'll be completely settled into the here and now. My Fitbit will have to make do with something not quite as ambitious as walks from Paris to Versailles.

*     *     *

In the afternoon, I drop over some stuff for Snowdrop. She's feeling well enough, but still, here I am, with a mask on my face once more. She's not sick with THE virus, but now that we have discovered masks, it makes sense to use them for things that are not Covid related. (Sparrow is at school, but Sandpiper is bouncy and happy to see everyone!)

And then I do a very circuitous return to the farmette, pausing at the Arboretum just to see if the trees are turning yet. The answer is  -- not entirely. No surprise there -- it's a warm day in October! Just to give you an idea -- I'm wearing shorts.

(other Arboretum visitors...)

*     *     *

Toward evening, I catch up with my little grandgirl in Chicago!

And for supper I fix a salad Nicoise. For no reason except that we have many eggs and a bag of green beans and plenty of potatoes, tomatoes and olives. And a can of sardines that I'd brought back from some trip or other, probably with the hope of preserving a memory, even as over time, it has just become a can of fancy sardines, sitting on a pantry shelf, waiting to be used up for supper.

 

from Paris to the farmette

So I left Paris. 

But not until the afternoon. When you travel from Europe to the Midwest, you have two choices: take a wee early flight, so you're basically up and out before dawn, or take the late one. In normal times that late one is not the cheapest on the planet and it has awful connections to Madison. So in normal times, I set the alarm, I ignore the inconvenience, and schlep my suitcase to the RER station to get to the airport before Parisians are even thinking of wiping off the last croissant crumb and heading out to work. 

This time, however, I was lucky. On so many fronts, and one of them is that I was able to get a late (3:50pm) departure.

I wake up nice and late (because, you know, I had stayed up nice and late), I have my same old breakfast downstairs (and it's fine and it's free, but in normal times, I'd trot down to Les Editeurs at least for one morning bread product meal. The croissants and the people watching are both way better there).

And now I have two hours to be a flaneur again. Well, not really that: I need to find a big bag. I will never learn this simple lesson: however little you buy in Paris, there always will be something (books this time), and it wont fit in your little carry-on no matter how much you sit on it trying to get the zipper pieces to come together. So I have to do what I've done a million times here -- find something that is not expensive and not a waste of money (meaning it'll have a life after this trip) to carry on, while I send the suitcase through with the luggage. 

I hate sending stuff through because you then have to wait in Detroit to claim it and process it through customs and it takes time, but what are you gonna do... Either don't buy cookies and books and sweaters  for the kids or spend your last morning in Paris looking for a bag.

But you know what -- there are worse ways to spend two hours in this city! Especially since the weather is once again totally with me. 

I pop into the Jardin de Luxembourg where I dodge the occasional jogger and admire the fall colors...

And then I weave my way through familiar blocks, aiming for shops that have served me well before.

(Hey, do you know this sculpture of the Centaur? I pass it a lot, as it's on the way to the Bon Marche food halls. Do you see that it contains yet another Statue of Liberty? Bet you can't find it, though in all fairness, the monument is rather dark. Today is the first time that I spotted it!)

(Here, I'll help you with a close up. See it now?)

And just steps away from this I find my shop with the perfect bag. I will never leave home without packing it with me for the return. I promise.

And then I meander, pausing again at a cookie shop (because suddenly I have plenty of room!), looking into bakeries, taking big whiffs there, admiring everything. I have this unease about when there will be a return trip. These days you can't make plans. You really do have to learn to live in the moment.

(I must have gazed into a 100 pastry shops such as this one...)

(Boulevard St Germain, in a fleeting moment of emptiness...)

I love this last stroll through Paris, but, too, I'm thinking about those back home, and the farmette, and Ed's work on the farmhouse, and the mess I may find in the kitchen, and too many cats coming inside because there's no one to tell him that too many cats are coming inside. 

A lot to smile about!

 

 

*     *     *

At the Paris airport, there is the usual chaos. I cannot believe that this is called a light travel season! I have left over frequent flyer privileges so I can duck most long lines but still, it cannot be said that people are staying home. They are not staying home. I wear my super duper mask (thank you, maskc for supplying me with all those pretty colors!)  and stay away from people who think these things were invented to keep the lips shielded.

I have a bit of a wait and so I find a spot where the closest people are also wearing super duper protective N95s or some such. I notice that the woman is leafing through a guide book. She's my age and both she and her husband are American. From Georgia actually. They just arrived at CDG and and are heading out with a small group to Cairo, then Jordan.

I admire that. I ask them if they have any hesitancy at all -- they say no, not really. The trip had been long in the planning and cancelled twice already so they decided just to go already. I know many people, retired people, who feel this sense of urgency -- as if the window of travel is closing on them. Now or never.

I hope they have a fabulous trip! I know they'll have a fabulous trip. 

*     *     *

The thing about foreign travel is that it changes you. Perhaps this is the way it is most noticeably different from just watching a movie or reading an essay about a distant place. Those, too may shape your perspective, but going somewhere, across an ocean perhaps, really does stir things up inside you so that you emerge, well, not the same.

I don't know yet which moments will stand out for me, but there were many that already are percolating in my head. Down to the last elbow bump as I left my beloved little hotel and said a bientot (see you soon) to the hotel staff there.

*     *     *

As I arrive home, I get a text from Ed saying simply "I'm vacuuming." 

There is a moon, not quite full, over the farmette tonight. All is quiet, beautiful. Just as I left it.