Tuesday

Do you have friends who live far away? Like, more than a thousand miles away? If you're an American, chances are you'll have answered yes. Perhaps you're like me -- most (though not all, thank goodness) of my close friends live more than a thousand miles away. They moved, I moved, we all separated. So how do you maintain a close connections at a distance, where a cup of coffee or a glass of wine are never (or rarely) shared across the table? 

My daughters have been somewhat of role models for me here: they both have very very close friends who also live more than a thousand miles away. Texting has helped in terms of throwing out details as they rapidly unfold. I know both my daughters text with some of their closest pals constantly. Then there are visits. All their friends have spent money and time coming to see them. They have also traveled, rather regularly. Having small kids makes this tough, nonetheless, they take the time to do this and these visits give meat, so to speak to that bond.

But not all long distance friendships survive. Some people are just not cut out for this form of closeness. They can't do it. The contact fizzles. To almost nothing. A memory maybe. If that.

Is it worth it to do the work that distance friendship requires? For me -- it is. But it's a never ending delicate dance. Ocean puts my life out there for all to see. You want to check in to see what Nina is up to? Just a click away. I've paid a price for this availability. The need for detail is always greater on my part than it is for the person who wants a quick fix of friendship material. They have Ocean, I have to ask. (The good ones actually pick up on a detail from my public writing and pursue it further in a private communication. Most don't.) 

I think about this often. If I lived in Warsaw, or Paris, my friends would be a metro ride away. Not so here. Daughters are close by. Most friends are not. The dance of keeping close continues, with a few trips and  stumbles along the way, but it continues. 

Morning flower snipping...

Breakfast eating...

Granddaughter frolicking, peach picking, and fraises de bois plucking...

And in the afternoon, Ed and I do something we haven't done for a while -- we take a couple of kayaks over to Lake Waubesa. That's less than two miles from the farmette, so it's an easy peasy excursion.

Neither of us loves lake paddling. It's boring. No change in scenery. Wait: not totally boring! We watch the swallows dart and swoop over the waters... Surely the summer of the swallows!

And if you hug the shore and veer south, you can find springs and creeks that feed the lake and you can meander here for a while before you hit a wetland dead end.

The weather today is perfect for this! He and I have not paddled together for too long (this is mostly my fault). It's a glorious little trip!

Evening.

Isn't this a perfect moment to pan cook some brats and steam up some Stoneman's corn? It is!

August can have some awfully good moments!

With love...

Monday

Why is it that kids can never get excited by big projects like cleaning up the playroom? I use my most enthusiastic voice. I offer incentives (the doll house will look amazing once the furniture is properly inside instead of scattered hither and yon!). None of it inspires energetic enthusiasm. I get, instead -- can I watch TV? 

It's easy to clamp down and say -- no way can you watch TV while I clean up your play space! But that takes it away from a game, to a battle of wills, and guess who is likely to win that one! (Hint: the kid whose nose is stuck in the next in a long series of Captain Underpants.)

We make a deal: she straightens up the chaotic doll house and gets ten minutes of big screen time. As always, when she cleans up, she rediscovers how much she loves a toy from her past.  For a chunk of time, she is lost in stories of her own telling.

Oh how quickly they grow!

And speaking of growing, yes, I did do garden clean up this morning and I mowed the farmette paths with the tractor mower too, so things are looking pretty spiffy for late August (if you don't look down at the weeds).

(It's not the last lily standing, but it is the last nymphs and shepherds bloom, which, for me, is significant.)

(the rare clump of late bloomers)

(tall and a magnet for giant grasshoppers -- I always knock off a good handful)

(short and pretty)

(single)

(not single)

(a whole bunch)

(the now subdued lily field)

(the small meadow in the new peach orchard)

The morning is cool, but not nearly cool enough to give up on a porch breakfast! (I must sheepishly admit that we eat breakfast awfully late, so it's a good ten degrees warmer than when I first step out.)

And then I pick up Snowdrop and after a bounce around the farmette lands...

... she loses herself in her books. Not the tempting stuff I leave out for her, but in her favs. When did kids learn to voice such strong preferences anyway??

In the evening, I'm mowing those paths and Ed is working on some aspect of his machining project/invention that I just barely understand and we eat leftovers because, you know, it's Monday! The reheat-whatever-is-in-that-plastic-tub day!

And the play room? It looks very very neat. You would not recognize it!

With love...

Sunday

It began in a slow fashion: light garden work -- maybe an hour, not more, and animal feeding of course --  that sort of thing.

And breakfast -- we defrosted the pastries from Chicago and they were delicious and despite the cool morning, we ate outside.

But then the day stopped in mid track. I had a Zoom call with a friend who shared at least part of my childhood history. She had just finished Like a Swallow and she wanted very much to reflect a little on that past. 

It turned into a three, or was it four hour Zoom conversation.

I'd been thinking about this before we began and I knew she held some missing pieces for me -- what happened to X after I left Poland, and what happened to Y... And today I found out and it pushed me into further thought about how incomplete our stories are, and how they always need a prologue and an epilogue. On the other hand, since we do inevitably live our lives with incomplete stories, maybe it doesn't matter? Maybe we're happier not knowing everything? 

In any case, I listened. 

And then I was in a mad rush to get dinner on the table, because, yes, it's Sunday and the young family is here for dinner. 

The usual: Snowdrop tries to lure Ed away from his reading, Sparrow builds, Sandpiper hovers. And then we eat.

A lovely ending to an interesting day -- provocative, full of thoughtful nuance. 

I learned a lot.

With love...

Saturday

I'm still working with my camera -- different lens, different settings -- and this means that the kids will occupy more than their fair share of Ocean space. Just a heads up on that. If you're one of those persons who thinks kids should be neither seen nor heard, today is not your Ocean day.

It's still gray, still a little cool. But here's charming news: I only needed an hour in the flower fields. The number of spent blooms was that low. Sure, I could weed the fields some, but it's a bit buggy out there right now, so I choose to forgo that tiresome task and keep my eyes focused on flowers rather than all the invasive nonsense that's creeping in at the ground level.

Breakfast, on the porch.

And then I head out to the Farmers Market on the Square. I tell Ed -- I really only need some flowers. Later, much later I come back loaded down -- with tomatoes, with beans, with beets, with summer spinach. What can I say -- you see the stuff, you imagine its place on your week's menu.

On this market adventure I have company: my daughter brings her three kids to it. We meet up by the Children's Museum.

They are such good kids that when they ask for treats, it's tough to say no to them. Nonetheless, when right off the bat they spot a balloon shape maker and plead for one, I point out that inevitably, the balloon pops and someone gets upset. My suggestion -- at least get it on the way out, so we can have a nice run around the market without balloon drama. They are agreeable. We get balloon "wands" at the end of the market trip. 

They bring them back to the farmette.,

One immediately pops. Drama ensues.

The market trip itself though is lovely. The flowers! Oh, the flowers!

And the veggies. Snowdrop loves to eat things right out of the bag: she polishes off all the baby tomatoes and coaxes me into the spinach so that she can munch on a few raw leaves. What, you're going to say no to your kid's request for spinach?

In between, there's the cookie, the lemonade... All fun stuff

And as is our tradition, toward the end, we give the kids some free time to romp on the lawns. For this, Sandpiper joins the older two.

It's a beautiful sight to watch them here...

The two older ones come back to the farmhouse with me for lunch, for books, for play. 

(Ed brings in a melon from our own produce patch. It's huge...)

It's late by the time I return them home. Too late to go for a walk, too late to write a book or even read a book. Too, I'm starving for a big meal. With lots of corn!

I could not have had a more typical Madison family Saturday. Textbook August stuff! Lovely, all of it.