last October Tuesday

Somehow I missed the first half of the day. It just passed me by. Oh, sure, I fed the animals, ate another solo breakfast (Ed was on a Zoom call all morning long again), took a few pictures for Ocean...

 

But I did not seize the moment and run outside. No bulbs went into the ground. I mostly stayed in, candle lit, hoodie zipped tight and read about the art of French baking. That's not a good use of a sunny morning, no matter how you slice it!

By the afternoon, I needed a forest bath. You know -- a walk in the woods where you pay attention to the trees, the fragrance, the quiet.

 

I wanted to drag Ed out with me, but that just wasn't going to happen. He was still on his Zoom call. Still, I needed that walk, if only to slow down the day a little and have me acknowledge its tenderness and beauty.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop comes to the farmette.

 

 

This, at least, is always a good set of hours -- ones with a child in them, where the child teaches you something about her young life, thus teaching you a little about yourself too. 

(tossing crab apples at each other)

(at home, with the brothers two)

(just outside their home -- evidence that fall is at her brightest)

In the evening I go back to my cookbooks. What is it with me? An imaginary trip into another world of cooking and baking? Or maybe I'm preparing for the winter months, where kitchen work is meditative and healing and, yes, joyful. 

So many grand cookbooks out there! Ed, are you ready for a winter of overeating?

Monday

We now have too many masks. Ed says my coat rack, where I hang them, looks like one belonging to an crazy person who has a mask fetish. I think I already explained that I was upgrading cloth masks as my travels were approaching and it wasn't until the end that I caved and switched to the paper disposable ones. These days if I'm to go indoors for any prolonged period of time, I take the disposable. Surgical or KN95, depending on my rudimentary assessment of how many angry anti-everything people are likely to be present. 

This morning, I handed a KN95 to Ed before dawn. I had an appointment to conduct phase two of my oral surgery. The part where the surgeon chops up my sinuses. I don't really understand why -- possibly to make room for the coming implants (that's phase three, out of a total of five). Anyway, Ed had to come with me because I'm enough loopy after surgery that I should not be let loose on the road. Since he had one of those 6 hour Zoom meetings scheduled for this morning, he took his lap top and planned to Zoom with his engineering colleague from the waiting room.  That's pretty public and my assessment was that it's high risk so I sacrificed a KN95.

The only good thing about having all these oral surgeries is that they wrap you in a very comfy blanket and they dope you up with something that feels awfully nice before you zonk out. So there we were, in predawn hours, me waiting for that blanket and that nice doped up state when the surgeon asks me -- how come your sinuses are so full?

Well, they've been tilting toward full since the pandemic started. Maybe longer. Maybe like decades longer. I don't know. Usually I can be accused of making mountains of small symptoms so I try hard to ignore stuff that doesn't really interfere with life. Full sinuses do not really interfere with life. They just lead me to take Covid tests a lot because I never know if it's sinuses or you know, The Big One.

Anyway, he says I should see someone about the sinuses before he chops them up. Why? Because if we proceed without an ENT okay, he may be accused of making things worse. Not that he would, he assures me, but these ENT people, they like to point fingers at oral surgeons. 

Well fine, but that means that my five phase dental job has just earned itself two extra phases, belonging to an ENT doc. And more importantly, I wasted a good KN95 for Ed, who, it turns out, did not need to take me, and did not, therefore, need to wear it. Perhaps I did not mention this, but my guilt over purchasing so many cloth masks has made me extra strict and downright stingy in acquiring disposable ones. Each one is, therefore, precious. And now we're down by two. (I wore one as well of course.)

 

Back at the farmette...

... breakfast is solo because it was either that or having Ed join me with his computer and Zoom call. I thought that was okay for a one shot deal a few weeks ago, but listening to them speculate about the twists and turns needed to place a machine on slabs of granite just isn't great fun the second time around.

I was supposed to be "resting all day," so I had nothing planned but of course, there is suddenly nothing to rest from, so I (reluctantly) planted a few Fritillaria Imperialis Lutea and a couple of Narcissus Le Torch bulbs and then settled in for a Zoom chat with my friend across the ocean. 

I could have used the remainder of the day to write something. It would be really cool to get back to my second great writing project, but unfortunately, being away from it for a couple of weeks makes me realize that I like the sentences enough, but I don't like the story at all. Meaning the forest sucks even if the trees are agreeable enough. That's not good. 

Maybe with the new year I can resolve to do better. Isn't that what New Years are for? To resolve?

In the meantime I light my candle and sip my tea and bring back concepts I'd abandoned last March already -- concepts such as hygge and cozy, and I bring out socks that have a bit of wool in them. For the days ahead.

Sunday

 In a large household (to me, anything over four is large), if one person falls, the rest may soon follow. And so, in my daughter's home, first the baby sitter caught something, then last week Snowdrop picked it up, and today her mom came down with the mysterious "it." Thankfully, not Covid it, just some random bug that seems to be on the prowl for new victims.

It used to be that we would ignore such stuff and tally forth with whatever plans were made. That was then. These days, when a household member is ill, everyone, and I mean everyone -- family, friends, sitters -- wants to stay away. Poor you -- nobody wants to see you! They don't want the baggage of feeling under the weather these days. You need tests. You need isolation, You need clearance to attend school. To see a dentist. To get a haircut. No one wants to go down that path and so we give a wave and say -- call me when it's over. 

And so when my girl texted this morning that she was the next to fall, we all agreed that Sunday dinner should be called off.

A wet and cold day. Best spent on cleaning the house.

Cozy breakfast indoors.

But all this didn't feel right for the kids. They aren't sick. And we haven't had Sunday dinner here for weeks. Can't they come over without the parents??

Of course they can!

And that's how Ed and I end up entertaining the older kids at the table tonight. 

 

 

 

Or is it that they entertained us? ("Let's eat wit the lights off!")

Evening: dishes done, house is quiet. But with the echo of little voices and the movement of small ones still lingering in the air. 

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.