Sunday

You could say that the day is a culmination of everyone and everything, of a summer of swings and swirls, of interesting possibilities and incredible rewards. And that probably doesn't fully describe it all.

(Venerable farmhouse and the Big Bed...)

(Some lilies are so-called repeat bloomers, but here up north, that second bloom is modest. Still, you love every secondary bloom, because, well, it's September!)

(Breakfast greetings from the farmette!)

The plan is for me to meet up with everyone. The two young families, and with the Polish gang if the timing is right, all together at the Union Terrace.

At first I'm with just the kids and their parents.

But just as the Chicago young family was getting ready to head back home...

Just as we managed to sit the cousins down for one last photo...

... the Polish group arrived. And we had a chance to meet. All together... (well, a few of the men are parking cars, or getting cars, or taking photos!)

Still, the timing is right. We had that lovely moment together. 

And now the young families leave and the Polish group remains.

Since my pals are here only for 24 hours, I decided that we should calm down the sightseeing and concentrate on something else -- take in a whiff of Wisconsin as I know it from this wee corner of the state. It's all well and good to climb to the top of skyscrapers and to visit the musts of San Francisco. But if you step out of that tailspin and look around you, there's a bit of interesting America right here, on the Wisconsin campus...

 ... and on farmette lands. 

And so after the Union, and the campus, and after they check into their hotel, we come out to where I live.

Ultimately, we settle into an evening around the kitchen table...

And a wonderful dinner on the porch, with the song of crickets adding music to our evening. 

And it is all so grand...

Ed tells me I laughed a lot tonight. Yes, that would be right. We were feeling celebratory. And grateful for all these years of friendship.

With so much love...

Saturday

Talk about day that is not what it was supposed to be! 

My Polish friends are now in Chicago and I was to join them there. We were going to "do the city" together, much as we "did" New York before I got myself sick and landed in the hospital.

I'm close to my old self again, but not enough to trust myself to be away from home. I'm still on medications and under observation, and though I think I'm done with the toxins and fevers and god knows what else, I'd rather not take the chance. Not just yet. 

And so I sent detailed instructions on what to do when and where and I am happy to see that they have the weather for it. Chicago is not hard to navigate. I trust them to have a fine old time. I'll see them on their final day of their grand American adventure when they travel here, to Madison. But for now, they are in Chicago and I am here.

(Door County peaches, market flowers)

And guess who else is here? Well, as it turned out that, since everything got flipped, my Chicago girl brought her family to Madison tonight. And so after a morning of tidying and straightening and getting stuff in order, I meet up with the two young families for dinner. I haven't seen the both of them all under one roof since May! (We go out for a taco dinner and it is wonderful! Extraordinarily wonderful.)

("me and the girls")

(she is on the move these days!)

It's all a fantastic treat for me.

Too, I've wanted there to be an occasion where my friends and my kids and grandkids can come together, even if only for a few brief moments. Looks like that can happen tomorrow. 

But tonight, I just want to smile at how quickly the week flipped, from somewhere near some bottom, to this:  

After dinner, we retreat to my daughter's home where it's just so good to talk around the table, while the kids play...

(Sandpiper: a rare serious moment...)

(Primrose: same for her...)

(the big kids: on stage...)

And of course, the two that started it all for me...

There's a light rain as I drive home. Refreshing. Purifying. Deeply delicious. Or maybe it's that everything is feeling deeply delicious right now.

With so much love...

exploring

Things are looking so September good out there! 

The paths add balance to the farmette lands and today, I took the hand mower out and cleaned up the narrow alleys linking one segment with the next. The tractor mower doesn't fit in the alleys. 

The asters are starting to throw down their purple color, the phlox will give an occasional bloom from now until frost, even the lily will show that she's not fully dormant yet. And it all smells so autumnal! So rich! So heavenly.

Breakfast. 

Ed is pushing for a walk in the Hook Lake wildlife area. We've rarely explored it, possibly because access to it is limited. Indeed, it's been closed off lately -- overgrown and unwelcoming. Still, he thinks there is a path...

We ride out on his motorbike and we look every which way...

Nothing. No path to the lake. Lots of private property signs, despite the fact that there is a chunk of land we know is under the stewardship of the DNR. 

Indeed, a couple comes out of their house in the woods and questions our presence there. Should I sing them the refrain from Woodie Guthrie's song? I'm always dismayed how much rural folk guard their property against walkers. I suppose I get it: you protect what's "yours," keeping the right to chase someone off with a gun, because that walker may harm you with his own gun. Fine, but this mindset  does not make for a happy and welcoming landscape. I think about the right to roam laws elsewhere and I have to say I'm envious. Our roaming is limited to designated public spaces. 

In the end, we do find a swath of DNR wildlife land and we explore it to the max: corner to corner.

And I like it! The tall grasses, the giant oaks -- it's likely the way it was hundreds of years back.

I tell Ed it's a fantastic little walk, but I know he's hungry to probe deeper. Ed doesn't travel far, but his great desire to explore his immediate surroundings is profound. In the years we've lived here, we've gotten to know every bit of public land, every corner and crevice of it. Today, we add this small fragment to our list of explored local lands. It was the perfect day to take in its September beauty.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here once again. Though Friday isn't her typical farmhouse day, we are making up for lost time!

(I show her my crazy beanstalk!)

(we pick a few peaches...)

(she loves our watermelon patch!)

(... and the meadows...)

Oh and look who is here to pick up his sister?!

In the evening, I cook up some soup and life feels pretty close to normal once again.

With love...

pleasant tasks

Because I have clear ideas on how to mow paths over the farmette lands, I am the one these days using the tractor mower. About once a month. A job I dislike, but someone has to do it. Ed has a lot of wood cutting and shredding to do (the big willow is slowly shedding limbs) and so it's fair that I should take on some of these more tedious jobs now that my growing season is winding down.

So, a morning walk...

And a visit with the beautiful Bresse girls...

And a baking stint in the kitchen (blueberry muffins), followed by breakfast...

And then I'm on the mower.

A bumpy job. Sort of like a very cheap and dirty county fair ride. Yuk. I've neglected stuff and there'd been rain so it takes longer than I would have liked. By the time I finish, I am ready for... a nap. (I blame the medicines I'm still taking: zonk out stuff!)

But not for long. It's a pick up Snowdrop day and, too, it's a pick up CSA veggie box day and finally, it's our local farmers market day. I combine all three. My willing assistant keeps me company.

And I'm thinking that what they say is true: stick in a component of pleasure onto your todo list and the todo list grows longer, but it becomes significantly easier to work through. Snowdrop is my component of pleasure!

Still, the rumble and sway of the mower is with me even now as I write this. Nothing can make that job delightful. Nothing.

Except maybe the idea that I wont have to do it for another month.

with love...

hi world, I'm back!

That's the way it felt when I stepped out this morning, quite capable of feeding the animals and taking my morning walk. 

Such an inconsequential routine, yet for a whole week, I could not do it. Could not bend down to pull a weed. Could not throw chicken food down for the hens and their mate. Could not make a cup of tea, could not sit up for more than a handful of minutes. 

Wiped out. 

That switch from fully active, engaged and on board to incapable of doing anything at all was flicked so suddenly and so completely that I am still reeling from it all. But, not reeling so much that I want to spend the next weeks analyzing every last detail of what went wrong. Because in fact, a lot went right!

I was able to get home. I have the privilege of great medical care just eight minutes up the road from me. Even Ed was impressed with the size and comfort of my hospital room. I was impressed with the super staff of docs and nurses and technicians. You know how they say you should never go to the ER room around 5 am, because you're hitting the tail end of a tired night shift? Well, twice I went in exactly then and everyone was superb. I commented on this to them and they laughed -- that's when we're on our second caffeine hit! It's a great time to come in!

And of course, the downward spiral eventually turned around and now I am so much better. So much better!

(our meadow in the new peach orchard, to the east...)

(our meadow in the young orchard, to the west...)

I haven't eaten breakfast with Ed since... the weekend. The previous weekend.

And I am back on schedule to pick up Snowdrop at school. And she is happy.

September... It can be full of grand surprises. Like, a little girl who decides on her own to pin her hair back...

Like a bunch of lilies suddenly sprouting from a clump of autumnal buds...

So, let's stick with the grand surprises for the rest of the month, okay?

With so much love...

like a delayed flight

Leaving the hospital is like departing on a flight with engine trouble. There are going to be delays. No one seems in a hurry to see you go. People go about their business, someone comes by to do another test, you think -- ah, the definitive last check, but then someone else comes by and says one more is needed. Food trays come in, food trays go out. You think about ordering groceries for home, about taking a shower, but maybe that's the wrong move. Maybe you should wait, much like you would wait at the gate, because maybe they will have called your flight just as you stepped in the shower stall. And then you will have missed your chance to leave.

And the sunshine outside is brilliant and I can just imagine the breeze passing through farmhouse spaces right now and say, doesn't anyone want to get me out of here today? 

I think about how chaotic these days have been. No one's plans have been completely upended, but my sickness has changed things for sure. For the Polish travelers, for my family, for Ed. For me. I haven't been admitted to a hospital since my brain hemorrhage thirty years ago. I'm your average healthy Joe, (though the staff here keeps telling me that I'm the most with-it 69 year old on the floor. Well now, that can have many interpretations. Sick but with it. Is it better to be that, or well but out of it, of declining sharpness? Fuzzy on the brain but spry as a pony?)

It takes a while to bounce back from something that was so intense, but I tend not to look back so I'm sure I'll be scheming again soon enough.

*.    *     *

Once again, I am home. Warm, mellow evening light, birds butterflies bees, Ed. 

How easy it is to assume it will always be thus. A farmhouse, always waiting for you to come home to it. Ed, inside, ready to launch the next project. But how easy, too, it is to grow weak, even after a year of such energy that there wasn't much I couldn't do before that game changing Wednesday in New York. Right now, a walk in the farmette fields is about as much as I can handle in an afternoon. Afterwards -- I'm ready for a long nap!   

*.    *     *

This is the time to add a special thank you to all my good friends who have reached out to us these past few days. The sweet words! Suzanne, that soup and the wild rice salad!! 

All of you are awesome people who know how to put a smile into people's lives. 

I'll leave you with a quote that came to me from from Jean in Australia -- “there’s no such thing as a healthy person. Only an under investigated one.” A thousand tests and a million speculative diagnoses later, I surely have to agree!

With so much love...

hospital humor

So what's so funny about being stuck in the hospital for several days? 

Well, take an Ed visit: he comes, brings me a requested bottle of shampoo, a comb, he notes my half finished bagel on a tray by the door and asks -- this yours? I think so. In a minute, it's gone

The doc comes in as he licks up the last of the cream cheese. Ed tells him -- you look just like your picture! (For some reason there is a booklet of staff doctors with large photos lying o the couch, almost begging you to look and admire.) Thankfully, the doc takes that as a complement.

By this time I am in fine spirits. I'm past the berry smoothie morning, where I was woken at 6 to start drinking several bottles of stuff meant for the compost pile so far as I am concerned but which had the appealing name of berry smoothie, to stir your imagination in a good direction. (This is to scan your digestive tract.) I will never again look at berry smoothies with any amount of enthusiasm.

It is unclear if I will be a hospital patient for a day, for two days. I doubt that it will be longer than that. There is, however, a funny (broadly defining the word funny) consequence of having a whole slew of tests done for something as straightforward as a fever. At my age, if you look hard enough, you will find a carpet bag of goodies to excite you. Sinewy weird things growing, air pockets forming, nodes enlarging, passageways shrinking.  It's like going on a truffle hunt after a rainstorm. There are going to be mushrooms out there, not just the coveted truffles. Lots and lots of mushrooms of various shapes and sizes. 

Nonetheless, you teach yourself not to be such a fussbudget. Take the good enough, ignore the bad. Dont sweat the truffles, stick with the porcini, turn away from the poison caps.  

In the meantime,  I am happy as can be to send Ed downstairs to get me a guaranteed cure for my headache: a cafe latte from the coffee shop downstairs.

(I haven't had coffee since New York. Caffeine withdrawal is a terrible thing.)

How does the day end?  Fever is gone, even as a new antibiotic allergy has been discovered within me. I look right now like a poison mushroom with inverted colors: red dots on pale skin. My insides are mostly feeling fine with some question marks still floating around. Sort of like your average 69 year old's report!

And here's one final sweet and therefore funny take on life: you tell Ed that the world will end tomorrow and he'll always say -- it sure will! But you ask him -- what do you think, was it the mussels or is it that other diagnosis that you don't really want for yourself? -- and he'll say: dont be ridiculous. Of course it was the mussels.