Sunday

Earth week, Passover week, Easter Sunday, Ramadan month -- all April holidays (this year), all human derived celebrations, all born of a desire to connect, to look beyond your own space, to use restraint. For me -- to engage with the natural world.

But first, well, I sort of grew up with Easter and it seems right to do a breakfast suited to the day, so I pick up a pack of cinnamon hot cross buns at Batch Bakehouse.

Ed says they are bland (this from a guy who actually likes plain bagels) and he is correct, but I think part of it is the mindset. Hot cross buns are supposed to be bland. Once you accept that, then the touch of cinnamon and the cream cheese frosted X can actually be lovely, in a soothing and cuddly sort of way.

I work in the garden despite the cold. I'd been reading more than my usual share of articles about things that grow out there and though I've been slow this year to connect with all the farmette plant life (and there is a lot of it), it's not to say that I have ignored it at some spiritual level. Still, I have this need to actually touch tender shoots and pull out domineering invasive plants. And so I work. Not too long, but I do make progress! And that's a good thing because this coming week I'll begin my planting.

Easter dinner: the young family is here of course. 

 

 

 

They've already done a bunch of traditional stuff with the kids, so by the time they come here, I think we can keep things low key. I even tossed aside the idea of baking a cake. There's a lot of chocolate floating around on Easter. Yes, even at the farmhouse. So I resist baking.

(Sandpiper the bunny rabbit)

(wait, what's Sparrow doing? ice cream? okay, ice cream!)

So, a good day. A happy day. Sweet and playful. April, despite the weather, at her finest.

Saturday

Once unleashed, you cannot hold her back. She rushes with the strength of a cascading stream, ignoring the obstacles. Others join her and soon there is not just one raging maniac, but a herd,  an avalanche of energetic movers and shakers. It all happens so fast! That's her key feature: she never once stops. She keeps on going. Fast. 

This, to me, is spring.

We were up pretty early. The two older kids are coming over for a farmette morning and Ed and I have a few things to take care of before they arrive. It's cold outside -- the water dish for the animals is frozen solid. No matter. I pour the usual warm water into it, feed the hungry beasts...

... and quickly fix a breakfast for Ed and me.

And immediately after, we go downtown to the first outdoor Farmers Market of the year. We have lots of farmette eggs which we typically trade with Farmer John for cheese. We hope to see him there. 

I often skip this first market. Many vendors don't show up for it either. Unless you grow hoop-house or greenhouse produce, you're not going to have much to sell. There are, of course, the year-round producers: the bakers, the mushroom growers, the honey merchants. The cheese guys. But to me, the market is very much produce centered and so I hold back until there is a great abundance of veggies. Asparagus, for example! Maybe in a couple of weeks?

But today, Ed wanted to go and so here we are, on the Square, expecting little, but feeling great delight in what we do find today: familiar friends, some I've known not for years, but decades now -- flower grower David, cheese farmer John, spinach farmer Bill, Jamie the mushroom guy. 

 

 

 

New people too,  like the guys with a flashing sign: Mr. Dye's key lime pies! We had to try it!

It feels unreal to be at the market again. Could it be true? Have we stepped into full blown spring?

 

The kids are certainly energetic! And hungry. For farmette play time, book time, lunch time. 

 

 

 

Finished off with market maple syrup suckers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's later, in the afternoon, when I walk back along the driveway, that I notice the explosion of Syberian Squill out front. And I remember how two or three days ago I was taking a picture of just one blue flower. This is how spring works: from one, we move to a thousand!

And it just gets better and better going forward!

Every single day of this season is so pungent and potent and bursting with something new for us.

Dinner? I cook a green soup. It seems so fitting: green onions, asparagus, peas. With basil and parsley pesto.

Such an enchanting season this is! How good it would be if all us northerners could enjoy it..

With love.

Friday

Well, us gardeners are really pushing it all forward this year here in south central Wisconsin. Six more days of cold weather ahead means six more days of waiting. Holding back. Keeping the perennials in the mudroom. Not bothering with annuals at all. Waiting, because at least here at the farmette, growing flowers isn't a business. It's a hobby and a love. If the joy of working outside isn't there yet, then waiting makes sense. 

It will be a very short spring this year for us.

All the more reason to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.

And to complete the odious task of filling out tax forms. This morning I finished my mom's and then groaned as I got that nasty e-filing reject email. Entirely not my fault -- the verification failed: the AGI did not match for who knows what reason. Probably because the IRS is sooooo behind in attending to last year's filings. (So you print, and you paper mail, and grunt and grumble some more, because it's all such a waste - of paper, time and mental energy...) The end of the tax season marks the end of the grumbling season. A few more days of patient waiting for better weather and we will be on track for bringing that color back into the yard!

For now, the color comes from visits with the grandkids. Snowdrop's school is closed today (I know -- so many closed days in the year!), so we do something a little different: a quick shopping trip so that I can figure out what the girl considers to be wearable clothes for the summer. 

She is the exact opposite of any shopper I've ever known: she loves trying on anything and everything in that little fitting room. But she hates buying most anything at all. I fear she has been hanging around Ed too much!

And then she comes to the farmhouse and we do the usual.

 

I know many of you are celebrating the various springtime religious holidays this weekend and I wish you a happy time of gathering and eating and bunny chasing and bread breaking. It all sounds extremely warm and wonderful, especially if you think back to the past two years. Ed and I aren't big holiday fussers around this time of the year, perhaps because our noses are so turned to the earth and the garden and plants and all those seasonal wonders that give renewal a very nature driven meaning. Still, may you have a lovely celebration. We all deserve some positive thoughts and family moments. And good foods. Never forget to appreciate what's on the table! With a toast -- to renewal and to peace.

With love.

Thursday

The second half of April starts the march toward our growing season. Onward and upwards. The lilac leaf buds grow plump, the flower gardening centers are officially opening, and my bulbs, though not yet popping out daffodils, are certainly gettin' there!

Yeas, this would be my label for this mid April day: we're gettin' there.

Breakfast.

The wind is gusty today and we have a chilly week before us, so our outdoor work time is still limited, but the tomato seeds have sprouted lovely plants under artificial lights inside, and the few daylilies I did purchase arrived in a stuffed box today. They'll wait in the mud room for a few days. Ed has finished planting all the peach trees. We have about a dozen nut and fir trees still to put in, but we're not quite sure when they're arriving, so we are happily enjoying a reprieve from heavy digging.

An equally important component of any gardening is using your eyesight to observe and take note. In this early phase of the season, I do a lot of that. I look at the strength of stems, I note where weeds are a threat. Each day has something new to show me and all of it is quite beautiful. Spring doesn't disclose the mistakes I've made. That's a summer thing. Right now, it's all good!

Snowdrop is here this afternoon and once again I am reminded how blessedly easy is the work of a grandparent as compared to that of a parent. Sure, she and I usually have a bit of homework to get through, but otherwise, my sole directive is for her to wash her hands when she comes in. Everything else is a joint project, with some small negotiation over the food consumption, but otherwise she is the master of her fate. No wonder the farmhouse is such a favored escape for her! The task of getting through the day's essentials is left to the parents, at home. Here, once the homework's out of the way, she just coasts.

I'm still a little bit taking it easy today and so Ed and I order pizza for dinner. I cannot really love it in the way we loved our pizzas in Italy, but we've finally found one that is good enough and we must be getting really ancient because for the first time this year, we've discovered the joy of pizza delivery. Imagine: you tick off a few items on their website and a pizza of your construction arrives at your doorstep! 

Isn't life amazing? That is, if you live in peace. 

With love.

Wednesday

A guilt free day! After a predawn trip to my oral surgeon for the much needed sinus surgery, so that I can continue with the usual implants and other weird things that they stick in the mouths of older people, I am told to take it easy, not move much, pamper myself as best as I can and do nothing that spells exertion. "Dont even blow your nose!' Well now, that sounds kind of gross, but okay! A do nothing day!

But before I settle into my life of leisure (for the day), Ed and I drive home from the clinic with a stopover at Paul's coffee shop. We haven't been here together (indeed anywhere together) in ages! Ed has his computer, but I don't have mine (being rather dopey post surgery and not trusting myself to write anything sensible to anyone) and so I sit and just take it in -- that wonderful feeling of coffee and a cinnamon pastry, with Ed across the table, eating something unconventional (soup? for breakfast?) just because it's been a while since we've been in coffee shops so why be boring...

It's a warm and stormy day today and having now done my taxes (though I still have my mom's but I've got time!), and reviewed my manuscript edits, I feel rather free! Though I am caught in the conflict between my ENT doc (who says my sinuses are basically acceptable) and my oral surgeon (who says they are not at all acceptable), so I sniff dopey stuff and I dab and pop anti-infection this and anti-infection that and altogether it is a very forgetful day in all senses of that word! (Ask me what I did all morning! I'll have to say truthfully -- I don't remember!)

Sometime in my walk from couch to kitchen then back again, I noticed that Dance has found a new favorite resting place near the ceiling and Ed said it's quite photographable. So I took a picture, since today I allowed him to entirely tell me what to do.

And there you have it! A sniffly and odd kind of a day but hey, we ate breakfast out, for the first time in years! Something to celebrate, no?

Tuesday

April is the month when a garden person bounces with excitement. You shop for plants, you fill your pots, you begin to fulfill the winter dream of creating the perfect flower beds. I'm getting notices of plants, ordered in the coldest days of January, being packed and shipped. All are scheduled to arrive withing the next two weeks.

But all this seems unreal for me. My favorite gardening centers (for annuals) -- Natalie's and Kopke's -- are both opening this Thursday for the season and I am always there on that first day, but this year it just seems premature. It's too cold to fill the tubs (even though I have always filled them toward the end of April). It really has been a very very late spring. It's hard to believe, for example, that not a single farmette daffodil has bloomed yet. So far, it's been crocuses and snowdrops. 

But today I spot the first Siberian Squill (though this year maybe I'll use its more colloquial name -- Star of Holland). Finally. Variety!

Though the narcissus are still shut tight. (Hey, I super appreciate them on the breakfast table. From the store. Dance! Stop hogging the spotlight!)

On the upside, I'm wondering if I'll have that rare confluence of daffodils and lilacs outside. They are a heavenly match, but in years of an early spring, the daffodils fade before the lilacs bloom. Maybe this year we'll get lucky! 

In the afternoon, I pick up a happy Snowdrop.

On a warm day, she likes to pause outside. For the chickens. The tree. For the feeling of spring.

It's a good day to look around you and take note of all that's fresh and beautiful. 

Frittata time for dinner. With asparagus. Still from the south, but in a couple of weeks, the market stalls will be full of it here.

How lucky we are to be living now, in this place, and at peace.

With love...

Monday

Chefs in restaurants want people to eat their food. Clothes designers want customers to wear their clothes. Writers want people to read their stuff. It's in the nature of the enterprise. You don't do these things just for yourself. You want an eating clothed reading public and if you're an author person, you want your stuff to be included in the library of that reading public. 

But the reasons for craving a readership are complicated. People who write feel very differently about whose attention they want to grab and for what reason. Yes, we all imagine who is in our reading audience and we try to write in a way that "speaks to them." But I'm not certain if we, the writers out there (I include both bloggers and authors of Great Writing Projects) always feel sure about the message we want to deliver. Maybe some of us just want to have a conversation. Maybe we don't feel that we have any great wisdom on any big or small topic. Maybe we just want to take down the noise level a bit and offer a quieter back and forth on a given topic.

I'm thinking about this as I work through the proofs of my own Great Writing Project all day today. More than once I've asked myself "why am I doing this?" Each time I come to the same conclusion: because I want to offer a different perspective, so that the conversation would be broader than what I've heard so far (on the subject of the book). Nothing about my life is unusual or important. But I am that person in the crowd shouting (quietly) -- hey, this played out differently than you may think. Consider this.... And then I tell my story.

But to tell you the truth, I never thought that writing and then editing a million versions of that story could make me develop such great aversions to ever mentioning the events described in the book again. Instead of opening the doors to further conversation, I can tell you right now -- I can't wait to drop the topic and move on to something else! Cannot wait!

It's beautifully warm today and yet Ed works on taxes, I work on my book. After breakfast that is.

We do go out for a walk and it feels so good to be in the thick of the warmer days of April!

On the downside, we talk about the Ukraine. Speculative stuff. Ed often looks to me for insights about the mindset of a person making decisions about the future of Russia and indeed the rest of the world and so we fill the time with trying to make sense of what is happening now and what may happen going forward.

Nevertheless, there is that joy that comes after you've been chilled to the bone for too long: a sudden infusion of warmth is like a piece of heaven on earth. The turtles are out!

Yes, this is what peace looks like. This is what we hope will take hold in places where right now, there are no turtles lazying on a log in the pond. Yep, hoping for peace. Every single minute of the day.

 

And then we return to our tasks: he adds sums of various forms and schedules, I review line after line of a manuscript that will soon be done. And oh, am I glad that it will finally be done!

Sunday

There is a difference between looking forward to something (say a trip) and being dissatisfied with what is before you as you await something better. I favor the first but shy away from the latter. If you anticipate something with pleasure, it does not mean that you are feeling grumpy about the world you inhabit. I love my days at the farmette with Ed. I love waking up to a peek outside to see if there is snow or if the crocus blooms have proliferated. 

I love that first morning walk to the barn. The smell of damp earth, of hay in the barn -- all potent reminders of a farm life that once prevailed here.

And you know that I love our breakfast. Today I drove over to the bakery that has croissants as good as you'd find anywhere...

... so our breakfast turned instantly special.

And I could continue to run through the day and list all that makes it beautiful. But it's absolutely true that I also love thinking about a next adventure or trip or something that's out of the ordinary. It's an added bonus to a life of deep contentment.

What's to be avoided, I think, is the lusting for improvement over what the day delivers. The dislike of a cloudy rainy day. Of unexpected cool air. The brown tones to an early April day. Wanting a sunny May afternoon instead of what we have today (a relatively warm if cloudy day) unfairly belittles all that's grand about the natural progression of seasonal change. Dormancy and awakening, pauses and restarts. If you stop and think about it -- they are all delightful. Each day brings its surprises and that's just grand, I think.

A good example of taking in a day as it is presented came for us this afternoon, as we walked the Ice Age Trail over in the Brooklyn Wildlife Area. It's a lovely bit of trail -- there's forest, there's prairie, there's even a view over the farmlands stretching into the horizon.

It's not yet showing new growth, but Ed and I almost simultaneously commented how beautiful the forest felt after the cold winter (which is when we last walked here, in the snow).

And the prairie grasses -- such promise of life sprouting still under the soil's surface, but sprouting nonetheless, even as the yellowed grasses of last year continue to sway in waves of gentle beauty before us.

A fabulous walk. Really fabulous.

 

 

 

And in the evening, the young family comes over for dinner once again. It's been a while!

(big cracker)

(big cracker with cheese)

Sandpiper is more active each time he comes here!

The world outside changes, the world inside changes too. What's there not to love!!

This is what peace feels like. How wonderfully lucky to be living in its thicket.

With love.

Saturday

Okay now! Sunshine! Let's get to work! Still a little nippy out there, but that's April for you! Let's get started. First task: weeds and debris. Clear the beds as best as I can.

But but but... there's still a dusting of snow on the ground!

Nah, that's night stuff. Be gone in a minute.

But but but... there's breakfast to prepare!

Alright, eat your breakfast. Then get to it!

But but but... the proofs for my Great Writing Project have arrived! I need to go over them.

Fine -- do one chapter, move it along and then pause and work outside.

No, really, I can't. I have a very important phone call with a Polish friend. We're all set to talk in the late morning! 

Well then talk! How long can that take?

Turns out it can take a while. Still, by noon, I'm done with Poland. Phone calls, emails, all of it.

And so I step outside. Snow's gone, crocuses have opened up.

So where do I even begin?

I take out a new pair of gardening gloves. That's always an inspired moment. Gloves, fresh, clean, on your hands, ready to do some serious digging and pulling.

And I do have a vision of sorts: my motto for this year? Don't be thorough. Don't clear all the spent stuff. Don't pull all the creeping charlie. Attack the biggest offenders first and then, as if expanding beyond the core, work on a bit of the detail. 

So that is what I do. For an hour. Ed comes out then and offers to help, but garden clearing weed pulling are tricky jobs for him. He cant tell a weed from a perennial and he doesn't see new growth, so moving around an early spring flower bed risks having him trample down new tips. Instead, we go on an inspection walk. To the new tomato field, and lavender patch. To the new orchard. Up and down farmette lands, in the glorious sunshine of mid April.

In the later afternoon, I pay a visit to the young family. 

(Kids, at play)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At home again, another Zoom call, and before you know it, it's evening and the work day, or rather the potential for outdoor work fades. 

But that's okay. I had a good start. Only please do not remind me that our taxes are due in a few days. I do not want to hear it.

Ed, want to make some popcorn? 

We settle in to watch the next series that sucked us in -- about British people who, with very few pounds, want to build a home of their dreams. It's a great reprieve from the violence and horrors of what we'd been watching before I left for my trip. Mellow, tame. Spring time hope. Dreams, realized.

Friday

If I had to give a one word title to this post, I'd fall back on this one -- time. With a few pat phrases thrown in: how time flies... how we waste time... that project takes too much time... not enough time to read and play... time to go now... time is everything.

Several events conspired to make me very much aware of time. First - the weather sucks. It's April at its worst. Yuk.

(what you see is snow on the trees and timber)

Time for a reset! Although Ed warned me that we are in a La Niña year, where the cool air has gripped the northern hemisphere and will likely linger into the summer. Cool and wet? Hmmm. I suppose we're due for that. We've had such pretty summers the last few years!

Breakfast, alone this time. I have a Zoom call soon and Ed is fast asleep upstairs and I am feeling compassion and sympathy.

My Zoom call is with a Polish friend -- he'd sent me a photo of our group taken fifty years ago. Before we were all married and settled, and certainly before we were anywhere near thinking about retirement. These young men were my best friends in those days, and they had come to New York to visit me. So we talked about it. How young and brazen we were. Puffed out chests, cocky, self assured. Big hair. Ready for anything. Taking chances with our lives. Traveling, always traveling. 

Then came the fifty years of real life. Some really good years, some amount of tragedy, all unpredictable, unexpected. We're not shriveled and resigned by any means, but man oh man, have we ever changed over the years! 

 

Interrupted thoughts. Time to pick up Snowdrop. Even though I have little time with her today, as she has a phone date with other grandparents later in the afternoon. She and I have just enough time to finish that wonderful book that swallowed us whole yesterday ("Measuring Up").

And then I quickly take her home and return to the farmhouse to my old yellow pot in which I have cooked a million stews, soups, chilis, and who knows what else over the nearly fifty years that I have cooked with it. Ed and I are still talking about replacing our gas stove this summer, but I have to say, I would not have been so willing to do it if the new stove-top could not have handled my Big Yellow Pot. (Fortunately it's a fit!)

In the evening, I come back to thinking about my garden. It's time to reevaluate my strategy here: last year I expanded, it grew, some of it was taken over by weeds, other parts I gave up on, figuring that the maple roots will never allow for a good flower growing experience. So, lots of good outcomes, but also some poor results. The thing is, I'm not sure I want to fix the poor results. The bed by the sheep shed will never be free of the invasive growth of pernicious weeds. The bed by the road will never thrive in the way that I imagined it would when I first planted it. So what's the long term plan now? I mean, I'm planting a lavender bed out back, but how about the remaining beds -- what's the vision?

I'm thinking about it. That's something, isn't it? Time to reimagine where I'm heading. It'll take time, but I am definitely re-conceptualizing how best to approach the challenge of maintaining a dozen huge flower fields.

And of course, because I'm still with a half a foot in Europe, I drift off to sleep before it's time for me to do so. Bed time is fluid when you travel and when you return! Good night then. May we wake up to a warmer day! Enough of this dusting of snow already. It's time to move on.