tumble

No, silly reader. I did not tumble or even stumble. It's all in the temperatures. Yesterday's high -- 72F (22C). Today's high? 35F (less than 2C). I mean, really! That's just mean!

It's not unexpected, but it is sudden. Like watching a train coming at you: you know you'll get hit, but it still hurts when it happens.

The chickens are hiding, the cats are hiding, Ed is hiding. Me, I set out to feed them all. First, the little animals. Outside.

Then big Ed. And me. Dance is there just for the face rub.

It's a perfect day to embark on the next writing project and yet I cannot do that without giving Like a Swallow one final push. I've been horrible at attending to my marketing obligations and the time is fast approaching when this book will be old news. It's funny, isn't it? A newly published work has value, but once it's been around for a while, it's yesterday's reading material. People always want to see what's coming around the corner. To stick with the train analogy, a book that came out a year ago is like a train that passed your station. A memory of a trip once taken. So, today I toot tooted LaS and maybe tomorrow I'll start on a new track with some new ideas.

In the afternoon, I once again break out of the normal schedule of keeping Friday's childless here at the farmhouse and I pick up a bundled Snowdrop. 

No big play outside today! Too cold! Our bones need to adjust to the seasonal tumble out there! Still, she insists on the tree. Coat, scarf, cap tossed aside.

But that was just a moment of insanity. She rarely wears a coat on her walk from car to house. Once inside, out came the blanket. Ahhh....

So, did this cold day end of my walk-a-day pledge that had started on the day of my eye crash in France? Yes and no. I missed my outdoor hike, but I tried to make up for it with an indoor back-and-forth. It was really boring and I vow to never have to do that again. But at least I closed some of my exercise rings!

Fish for supper. Somehow it so often works out that way on Fridays! Oddly conventional, without any conventional intent behind it. The cats are happy! So are we. Especially when the time comes for a shared chocolate for dessert.

records

Are you tired of hearing that a weather record was set? Okay, I'll zip over that fact really quickly: for November 10th, the record high for Madison, Wisconsin was 67F (19.5C), set in 2010. The average high for this date is 47F (8C). Today's high, this year, in this town? 72F (22C).

We could have eaten breakfast on the porch. Easily. It just would have felt so strange. So, we eat inside.

I have lots to do inside, but this is not the day for it. Out we go.

We work hard! Rip, clip, weed, mulch, compost. Ed even scrubs down the muddy porch posts. By tomorrow we'll be stuck in below freezing temps. The hose will be shut off for the season. The mower put away until there's something to mow again.

He asks me -- I taught you where to shut off the water, right? 

I answer -- yep, yellow nob in the basement by the old water heater.

We're in the basement now. Which one? 

That. I point to a yellow nob.

Oh boy. 

Good thing it didn't go below freezing while I was away. That one would have flooded the basement. It's this one! He point to an obscure nob that you cant even see and that I would have never in a million years located. 

I plant bulbs in pots to bring inside. I bought some without paying attention to the zone requirements. Lycoris radiata. In consulting with the nursery I decided it's a great experiment! If I succeed they will expand their marketing!

And now we are done. Porch cleared, flower fields winterized, chipped, mostly weeded. Bring on the cold, we are ready!

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. A few more minutes of play in the warm air...

Wit the hose, with a spade, with a hairbrush, with mud...

... then we go inside. For our usual books and games. 

Toward evening, I drop her off at a Thursday activity and swing over to my daughter's for a few minutes of catch up time. 

And the day is not done! Later, Ed and I head out to his friend's -- the sailing guy who had done this trip with him (only it was longer, further and way more congenial) three years ago. Time to sit back over dinner and wine and review all the small bits and pieces of this year's boat adventure. I have learned that sailing people can never have enough of a detailed recount. I'm fine with that. It's as close as I ever want to get to an ocean boat trip. (I should say that I have in fact sailed across the Atlantic. A handful of times. Though in a slightly larger boat. You can read about it in Like a Swallow!)

Night time. I have the feeling of deep contentment that comes from a finished outdoor job and a readiness for what's ahead. With love.

the calm

I needed sleep, Ed needed sleep. We reverted to our old schedule and both woke up satisfied. Well, eventually. Ed is still sleeping as if on boat duty: a few hours here, a few hours there. Awake at night, asleep in the morning. I don't wake him for breakfast. I turn on music, I bake muffins.

Personally I think his Circadian rhythm needs a little fine tuning. There are so few hours of light now and he spends them under a quilt. But, we're talking about a guy who has always loved the darker hours of the day. Perhaps it's a good match to his calm temperament. 

Morning animal duty is fairly straightforward so long as there isn't snow on the ground. Today we're having a burst of warm air and I don't even bother to put on a jacket.

Starting with the weekend, we're going down to the near freezing level and that is slated to stay with us every single day far into the future. It's an early start to winter! I am very glad that all my bulbs are in the ground.

The coming of winter... It happens fast. One day you're wondering if you should b ordering a Thanksgiving turkey and mulling over which size and which complicated potato dish to take on, and the next you're trying on the skates on grandkids and wondering if you still have it in you to skate on very slippery surfaces. 

At noon, I shout up to a still drowsy guy -- I'm going out for a walk. For me, it's now or never.

Wait for me!

I smile at that. However he has strayed from being my occasional traveling companion (remember those days?), he has never backed off from being my every-chance-we-can-get walking companion.

To the park!

(the underbrush is still green...)

And then it's time for me to pick up Snowdrop. A happy girl!

You sometimes take for granted that smile. I hope I never do.

(Definitely the last days of playing with the hose; we both got very wet in the process!)

Evening. Still not done with farmette chores. I sweep the porch roof, Ed mows down the maple leaves so that they mulch rather than kill all that grows in the front yard. I pick up CSA spinach, he's on a work call so I do the night run as well with the cheepers. We eat leftover frittata wedges.

Could an evening be any more beautiful? 

the stories

We stay up most of the night. For once, I was the soothing presence, the listener, the one who would be there close to him as bits and pieces of his "fabulous" (his word) journey spilled out. 

He had pulled in before 10 pm, delayed somewhat because the planes were all overbooked and arguments arose as to who should fly and who should get off. He sat squeezed in, his one pack under the seat in front, but sticking out so his long legs came up high, knees bumping the tray, making it useless for the duration of the flight. No matter. His laptop was destroyed in mid voyage so he had nothing to put on that tray except my book, Like A Swallow, which he read with fascination. You remembered all that stuff! I did. I'm that kind of a person who remembers stories.

At the farmhouse now, he was wound up like I'd never seen before. Explosive laughter, one episode piggybacking onto another, story after story, interrupted only by eating. They had thrown him off the boat in the early morning and he had had no food since the day before. Well, one beer at the airport, purchased by a sympathetic crew member from another boat, now also leaving an island under an impending siege. The hurricane is fast approaching Marsh Harbor were nearly all the boats coming in from the north are anchored.

How had it come to this? 

Ed had posted his willingness to be crew on this year's sail down to the Caribbean (it's an annual event: boats from the northeast coast leave the fast approaching cold and go down to the islands for the winter) and a captain of a catamaran nabbed him. The captain and his wife had one other crew member -- a woman who was very good at sailing and indeed racing tiny sailboats in the Chesapeake. None of them had any sailing experience out at sea.

I think not knowing how to sail in ocean waters is bad enough, but what to me sounded horrendously difficult was the fact that the captain and his screaming wife (yes, she was good at that) did not like advice from one who knew better. Inevitably, following their own convictions would get the boat into trouble and they'd have to come around and do it as he had suggested. This made them more mad. It was an admission of failure.

If you know Ed, you'd perhaps be a little sympathetic here. Put him in the same room (or the same boat) with a person insecure about her/his abilities and things get dicey. He doesn't tiptoe around the truth. If you are a terrible sailor, he'll say as much. And yes, you should not be out at sea, but still, many people do not like being told that they are terrible at something. While you stew and grumble at his bluntness, he will work hard to fix things for you and go the extra mile to make it all work out in the end. But you remain bitter and resentful and determined never to ask him for advice again. Until your next failure.

This particular captain and especially the wife who was the real captain on board, if you bestowed such a rank to the one who screams the loudest, did not want to hear that their blundering attempts, at one point causing the boat to go round in circles against crashing waves, were putting everyone in danger. By the time they had anchored, these retired boat owners from Kentucky had had enough of advice, never mind that without that advice they would not have made it to the islands. They'd be spinning around in circles, forced to retreat with too many tangled and broken lines to keep going. (Do you know how to make a knot for cleat? No... Let me show you. No!) No good byes no thank yous. They were done with him.

So why call this a fabulous sail? For so many reasons! -- he tells me. The people were nuts, but the winds were fantastic! And the captain and wife, didn't they bother you? It was like watching a comedy -- an endless source of amusement! Wasn't their incompetence dangerous? He shrugs. In the end, they deferred to him as he fixed things and set the course of the boat and taught these reluctant learners about winds and whitecaps and all those things I haven't a clue about and, it appears, neither did they. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, I turned my head toward the window. Ed had dozed off for just a few minutes and I waited to see if this was a deep sleep. Outside, the moon went from bright and almost full, to darkness. I missed the red glow and occasionally clouds would obstruct the show. Eventually it moved out of my range entirely. Still, I had caught a bit of it -- a total lunar eclipse. Not to be repeated again until 2025.

And in the Caribbean, Hurricane Nicole is approaching Abaco Island, the island Ed had left because the sail was over and there was no reason for him to linger.

Before any sign of day break, Ed is up and out, on his way to the sheep shed where he tries to fix his broken laptop. It's a no go. He'll need a new one. 

I get up, in less of a hurry, tending to the animals, admiring the beautiful light on this cold November day.

We eat breakfast together. The stories are still there. A question will bring out another and another. All without remorse or complaint. All part of the fabulous sail with the monstrously big captain (twice my size! -- Ed tells me) and his thundering wife. 

How can you pick a better boat situation next time? -- I ask. He has an idea: I'll charge for my navigation and sailing skills. He doesn't care about the money, but he tells me that those who hire, will want to learn, want to use the experience of someone who has been out to sea many many times to their advantage. And still, you never know. Friends he made once on the island told him that their crew started with four but one was so hopelessly sea sick that he was useless and in the way and the other drank too much. Only two could be trusted to take turns at the helm.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. Briefly.

Because it's Tuesday and so there is ballet.

And in the evening, despite the fact that it's election night, I want to have a get together, a dinner with his Madison sailing friend and his sailing wife. I don't have much to contribute to such a group, but I love to listen at the side. And this sailing pal and I had kept track of Ed's progress out at sea and he had shared many stories from his voyage with Ed three years ago. 

But Ed holds back. He is now in his farmhouse mode. He wants to share stories, yes he does, very much so, endlessly even, but ... couldn't we just do it on Zoom? You know, there's still Covid to consider...

We stay home, I bake a frittata. The hens are still laying and I have the eggs and fresh CSA spinach and locally farmed oyster mushrooms. And our chocolates.

with so much love...

coming home

What luck he has! When Ed booked a flight out of the Bahamas on Saturday, for this afternoon, there were plenty of seats on the outbound plane. People were sailing in to stay, not to leave. By today the flight was booked solid. The weather service has posted a hurricane watch for the islands. An unusual for this time of year and severe subtropical storm, likely rising to hurricane levels, is heading exactly for those islands. (The last time the US has seen a November hurricane was in 1985.) He got out just in the nick of time.

Here, we are experiencing a cool front, but with very pretty clear skies. The crab apple is absolutely stunning in the early morning and early evening light. 

(morning light on the crab)

Really, it's a beautiful day here in calm south-central Wisconsin!

(just eight)

I do want to tidy things outside, but, too, I want to bake. These days, Snowdrop loads up on whatever baked item I have here after school. But with Ed coming home I decide to jump out of her favorites and try another snacking cake -- I messed with a recipe a little and came out with a raspberry swirl yogurt cake.

No, not for my breakfast! I'm stuck with oatmeal today as a penance for being so free with the croissants over the weekend.

Sticking with my daily walk goals, I take the time to go to the local park. To hobnob with the cranes.

And soon after, I pick up Snowdrop. 

(tree girl)

I tell her to keep the cake crumbs off the couch please! I think she thinks I'm a tad batty on this one. She knows Ed's not a fusser about such stuff. Still, she tries. 

(evening light on the crab)

It is dark before I pack her into the car. I have to say, I'm with those who want to stabilize our clock reading. I can be convinced to stay with Standard time year round, or Daylight Savings time year round. It's the flip from one to the other and then back again that feels so violent. There's no progression here, no tiny adjustment each day, just a sudden slap in the face with darkened evenings. They say it's healthier to load the daylight onto morning hours. Fine with me. Just let's stick with one plan and run with it!

I have soup in the fridge, I make a salad. There's cake, there are fruits. And chocolates, ones we had purchased but that haven't been touched, waiting for when we are both finally home.

with so much love...

life, love

The last time I dug a grave for one of our animals was exactly three years ago. Ed was sailing, I was home with a clowder of still mostly feral cats and a flock of chickens. In the space of his three week absence, I lost two young kittens -- one to disease and the other to the car (she'd been hiding underneath... who knew...). Since that year, we have had predators attack the coop. Last year, Java was taken down by an opossum and Tomato was hauled away by who knows what animal. Coyote maybe? But the cats have thrived (and avoided cars) and the other hens are bonded and laying and overall happy as can be. Well, Cherry, sometimes called Cinnamon (she is of the Cinnamon Queen breed) was not pleased with the addition of the Bresse girls. She was boss! But eventually they knew how to stay happy and healthy.

Until a few days ago when Cherry Cinnamon lost her oomph. 

I could tell she was not well. I tried to clean her derriere up, even as I'm not sure that this would help. (We did that with Unie and she recovered from the same type of inflammation that now hit Cherry.) In the last couple of days she got to be so weak that I carried her into comfortable places. To a sunny spot when it was warm, to a clean roosting box when it cooled down. Yesterday I did not even carry her up to the roost with the others for the night. I could tell she was no longer capable of managing anything at all. I found a spot for her in the coop, left her a handful of corn which she had no interest in eating and left. 

This morning she was dead.

Funny how we had purchased four Bresse chickens for possible slaughter (that idea is no longer even floating around) and yet, here I was absolutely saddened by the loss of Cherry. 

She was young! We got her when she was just two days old, in the middle of the pandemic (February 2021).

She was a reliable layer and a good pack girl, though turning bossy toward the white newbies this summer.  Still, we liked her! She was part of the farmette family.

Sigh...

There was nothing more to do but to clean out the coop as best I could. Shovel out most of the wood shavings. Ed would have told me not to bother. Unless you really disinfect a coop, you're not going to get rid of whatever is there. Still, I'm giving it a good shot. I dumped fresh shavings into the roost and then dug a grave in our little animal cemetery. As before, I played Sinatra's Moonlight Serenade, shed a few tears and said my goodbye.

Breakfast? Well, alone, though not for long. Ed is coming back earlier. The sail is over. He wants to get home. Tomorrow.

Snowdrop had been picking up stray feathers, pretty ones that she finds in the yard. I think they're Cherry's. I gave them an honored spot at the table and lit a new candle with the very light scent of Honeycrisp apples. 

*     *     *

Then I clean the house. With lots of music playing. I can absolutely guarantee that Ed will not notice the wiped down refrigerator, the dust free walls, books, paintings, toys, the vacuumed spaces beneath the vents -- none of it, so I cannot say that I did this for him. I suppose I'm giving myself a clean house until tomorrow when we will resume our more lackadaisical approach to farmette life.

In terms of housekeeping, I suppose we are not unlike the mismatched couple, where one is Republican the other Democrat. We are not entirely on the same platform. It's not that he doesn't know how to be neat or clean (no one cleans the stove as thoroughly as he does!), it's that this is not where he wants to place his effort on a day-to-day basis. To an outsider, he is inconsistent: he'll be bothered by neatly wrapped gifts piling for the holidays. Too much clutter. He hates clutter. But look at the stack of papers along his side of the couch. And screws and cords. and cat combs and books he's been meaning to read. And the ever present dish that should be washed and in the dish rack, but instead rests all day long on the coffee table. I'm still using it! 

I'm not obsessively neat and he is not hopelessly messy, so I suppose we are like the moderate Republican/Democrat pair. Still, I have to smile at what I come home to each time I return from a trip: the first thing I do when I enter the house is tidy up the sink, the bathroom, the countertop, whatever detail that has been too neglected in my absence. No matter how many dozens of hours I've been traveling, this is what I do. He, on the other hand, will he coming home to a clean farmhouse. And he wont care.

We have this in common: neither of us ever tells the other how to live their lives and only rarely do we feel compelled to comment on lifestyle choices. If his light messiness bothers me, I simply tidy up. He'll say (as he will say tomorrow when I will tell him that I cleaned) -- thank you gorgeous, and that will be that.

I am reminded of the song I posted the last time he was coming home from a sailing trip. It was the one time in our entire seventeen years together that we had a rather emotional spat, over what was a stupid misunderstanding. We were both terribly in the wrong. But in the end, I reminded myself (as did he) why it is that, despite all these irrelevant differences, despite everything, we are consistently and steadfastly so very happy together. I like being with you -- he'll say. I like being with you too. Here's the song.

Some people live in a house on the hill
And wish they were some place else
There's nobody there
When the evening is still
Secrets with no one to tell

Some I have known have a ship where they sleep
With sounds of rocks on the coast
They sail over oceans five fathoms deep
But can't find what they want the most

Even now when I'm alone
I've always known with you
I am home 

For me it's a glance and the smile on your face the touch of your hands,
And an honest embrace
For where I lay it's you I keep,
This changing world I fall asleep
With you all I know is I'm coming home,
Coming home
(Vanessa Carlton)

*      *      *

Yes, I do take a walk. It's cool -- just 50F (10C), but hey, by the end of this coming week 50F will seem like summer. We are in for a very cold rest-of-November.

Favorite park time! Just to clear the head and fill my smart watch's exercise circles. Rather than posting a photo of my path, I'll put up a few pics of Sandhills that I met along the way. They are with us all the warmer months of the year, but in these last days before leaving for the south, they seem to congregate more. Perhaps rehashing their plans for the trip ahead.

*     *     *

I put away eight cheepers tonight. Because now they are eight.

And I cook a fish for supper. The young family isn't here today -- they have another commitment. The house remains tidy and waiting. But what matters more is that Ed had a fantastic sail and he is coming home happy.

with so much love.

Windy!

I share this with Ed today: it's windy there, it's windy here!

I woke up extra early to tract his arrival on the Caribbean island. Or at least into the protected channel of an island. You can't quite place a boat on top of an island. And in their case, you can't easily dinghy over to the shore either, because, well, they lost their dinghy somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Long story apparently, but definitely not his fault! 

There were gusty winds that allowed for a fabulous sail and I know this because once they anchored, their journey over, he called. So we are no longer outside of contact range. He's bubbling over with stories (insofar as Ed bubbles), but he's saving them for the return to the farmette, which will happen sometime this week.

Here, it's blustery alright. There are tornado warnings just to the south of us. We haven't the mega storms, but we sure picked up a lot of rain. Things are looking pretty November-ish!

As I was picking up some produce from the Farmers Unite program (you order on line directly from each farmer and you pick up all your produce from a nearby site), I let myself imagine the boat bouncing around 10 footers out at see and I thought how lucky the crew was to have Ed on board. From what I heard, they had no experience in navigation and not much with sailing either. Ed, on the other hand, has had an abundance of experience, though frankly, I do think that sailing comes naturally to him. His dad cultivated the love of being out on the water and I have to say, it's a love that's pretty deep within him now. Ed is famous for always reminding me that everyone has their genius and I am quite sure that many people have more than one genius. In the case of Ed, you would have to include sailing in his own storehouse of brilliance. The guy laughs hardest when he recalls sailing adventures. He is wired to manage the trickiest navigation, the most perplexing meteorological event, the craziest breakage or tangle onboard.

I suppose one's genius may shift over time. You stop sailing, you lose your knack. It reminds me of my daughters who were both math whiz kids in high school. Yet neither of them chose professions that included math and I am sure that ship has sailed for them now (to stick with nautical analogies). Watching the grandkids, I have to smile because it is so easy to impute genius even at this age. Snowdrop is such a word-focused girl! (She is forever questioning my word choices! Yesterday: gaga, why did you say toasty warm? What does toasty add? For her, things don't fall, they cascade. And so on.) Such a story writer too (always her favorite  hour in school), that you're sure she'll be an author person someday. Sparrow, on the other hand, will come up to you and say -- did you know that 4 plus 6 plus 1 plus 14 is 25 and that two of those is 50? I mean, that kid goes to sleep thinking up math problems. Well now. Watch her bypass writing and go into spaceship engineering (this is what she says she wants to do in life -- launch rockets) and him become a dreamy poet. So many things go into developing a skill or passion or genius! Who knows what rises to the top and what stays buried within!

In the afternoon I take a dinner over to the young family. We were to all eat together yesterday, at the farmhouse, but then two out of five developed worrisome upper respiratory infections (worrisome to me, less so to the young set) so I opt instead to cook dinner and take it there today. We can have an outdoor meeting!  I step out with my pot of crunchy chicken. My, but it's windy and wet out there!

What starts out as a drizzle, turns into a cold wet shower. Well that's a bummer! But hey, they are prepared!

They need the outing. Being housebound in this type of weather is never great for energetic little guys. We brave the wet and the wind and make our way to the playground. For a very brief romp on the equipment.

I have to say, Sandpiper loves being outside with his whole little soul. Perhaps this will be his genius or at least passion -- outdoor adventuring! Ed in the making.

I linger in their home as they warm up...

.... with popcorn and some building activity that Sparrow got in the mail and that the whole family helps assemble. They'll reheat dinner later. Me, I need to return to the animals who need to be fed and, in the case of the chickens, locked up before dusk.

Of course I'm going to have soup for dinner! Of course! Only cats, quit climbing all over me! I know you miss Ed. He'll be back soon. He'll give you all the rubs and snuggles you want. Just be patient already!

With love...

trees, eyes and croissants

We are finally going to start in on November weather this weekend, beginning with gusty storms and pounding rain this afternoon.  Indeed, I get out of bed in November darkness. In part it's the early hour -- pre-sunrise, as usual, but, too, the clouds make for a steely gray landscape out there. 

I have no choice but to get going. I have a post-surgical eye appointment very early. I decide to wait with breakfast. Rushing to eat in a darkened kitchen seems so not right!

My eye doc takes great pride in her cataract surgeries and in my case she has reason to be proud. By giving the two eyes different distance lenses, she managed to accomplish the goal of permitting me to see far and see reasonably near as well. (One eye for each function!) Sometimes I need readers, but, too, I can go a whole day not needing anything at all. So yes, she should be proud.

On the other hand, when I tell her about my accident in France (my eye still has the telltale black and blue markings of an injury), she surprises me. I explain how I had been treated in the ER room and no one wanted to charge me anything for it and she just couldn't grasp the logic of this. They treated you without requiring payment? How could that be? -- was her repeated theme.

I remembered how the French ER doc knew all about our health care system and how it functioned in its payment chaos and dysfunction. It strikes me as funny that a French doc knows about that dysfunction but an American doc has little clue about what appears to be an actually functioning system, where a patient gets care and never sees nor worries about the strange and confusing bills that come at us afterwards. (I say this with a sample of one doc from each country, so please know this is not a general statement about them or us.) Ah well -- my doc did fantastic work on my eyes. Why should she involve herself in the details of payment, right?

After the morning appointment I felt fresh croissants would be a wonderful reward for a delayed breakfast.  I drive over to the bakery. Two temptations today:

It is now nearly 10 and I know that by 11 we are to have the rains come down on us. If I want to keep up the daily walking trend, I need to do it now, or else limit myself to pacing the farmhouse. So I turn the car toward our county park and somewhat blindly (you know how dilated eyes feel!) I walk the paths of my favorite trail.

And only then do I sit down to breakfast. It's lunch hour and my daughter calls and so you can say I am having breakfast not alone at all, but with her!

And now it's a sprint to finish tidying before I'm off to pick up Snowdrop. Unusual to have her here on Fridays. I typically save this day for catch up stuff with Ed, but there is no Ed, and I don't care about catch up stuff, and she wanted to make up for lost time last week, and so here she is.

But what a drive it is! Torrents of rain. Hail. Thunder. You name it, we got it! Still, such storms pass quickly and by the time we are at the farmette, there's just a light rainfall. Not strong enough to keep her from climbing her tree. (And by the way, she is starting to have very definite opinions on what kind of photo I should take and post on Ocean. You're going to see a lot of tree climbing. I obey instructions!)

Meanwhile, out at sea, the sailors have stopped posting daily updates and so we can only guess that everyone is alive and pushing through the last 24 hours on the waters of the Atlantic. By tomorrow they will almost certainly hit the shores of the islands. Unfortunately, I see rain in the forecast for the Caribbean for the next week, perhaps longer. Ah well. It will be warm rain. I'm sure it wont keep Ed from swimming in the salty seas.

Dinner tonight? Oh, this is a no-brainer. My veggie soup! With grated parmesan. So fitting for this wet and stormy day!

With love...

and one last one...

First of all, I want to join the long line of food writers who have have felt compelled to post beautiful tributes to Julie Powell, who died, possibly of Covid complications, at the ridiculously young age of 49. In case you don't know her, Julie was the one who started blogging in 2002 about her year of cooking from Julia Child's path breaking book -- Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Eventually Nora Ephron made a movie about this and Julie went from being a city clerk in New York to being very well known, certainly among those (like me!) who read quite a bit of internet stuff on cooking and love movies about kitchen troubles!

Bruni in the NYTimes writes that Julie changed the world of food writing. I'd like to think she did even more than that. Her blogging began at a time when blogging was thought to be really weird. Heck, I started a year and a half later (in January 2004) and it was still regarded as really weird. You had to really have the strength of conviction, the I don't-care-what-you-think-of-me attitude to go on. I remember those years. My daughters stood by me. My American friends did too. And of course Ed. Others? Opinions varied and I heard them all. 

I'm sure this was the case for Julie as well and as she continued to write after her initial success with Julie/Julia, she stuck with her own vision of what deserved to be published and read by many. She never adorned her writing or vulgarized it to gain a readership. As a person who has been writing Ocean posts daily, I know all the temptations out there. And so I completely admire those who resist them and write from the heart. Julie wrote from the heart.

*.    *     *

We have before us one last day of late August weather. Stunningly beautiful, if you can ignore the oddity of hitting 72F (beyond 22C) here in Wisconsin on November 3rd. 

As I tidy up the farmhouse, I look out at the rising sun and the brilliant colors on the crab outside our bathroom window. We have always thought that this is the best view in the house!

*.   *.   *

Since I've been back from my most recent trip, I have been tempted every single morning to drive the twelve minutes to the bakery for breakfast croissants. I've resisted. I need to adjust to being back. To eating oatmeal. To this, to that. Today I ran out of excuses and I happily drove to pick up three croissants. I thought they'd last for three mornings (they reheat well in the oven!), but I ate one today and Snowdrop devoured the second. 

The plan for breakfast was to eat a leisurely meal, with my kindle at the side. Instead, I eat with Dance at the side. 

In the meantime, my regular breakfast companion is still out at sea. To me, he seems once again to have slowed down and is making weird (from my reading of the maps) twists and zigzags. I can only guess they're trying to pick up better winds. Watching the charts reminds me a little of watching an update load on your computer: the end is in sight, but it seems like the last stretch takes way longer than the first 75%. 

From the navigation maps, I can tell that he is now closer to the island than to the US mainland. Which of course doesn't tell you much except that if he wants to get to shore quickly, well, he's got to keep heading south.

*.    *     *

I do still have farmette tasks to do. The fallen leaves need to be mowed for mulch and the flower fields need to be trimmed for winter. Too, I have some seeds to sow in the meadows. I'm not sure if this is the best time to sow perennial flower seeds, but I know that it is one possible time and so I take advantage of the chickens enjoying an hour digging in the newly updated compost pile and go out to the meadows to do my work there

Despite the beautiful weather, I almost do not go out for a walk. There's just so much to do! But in the end I tell myself that if I stop now, I will not resume the rigor of daily brisk sprints.  So I walk. In the new development. I know, right?

*.    *     *

As usual when I pick up Snowdrop after school, I ask her about the highlights of her day. She always loves her recesses (this is when she connects with her best friend who happens to have landed in a different class) and today is no different.

But I liked the second recess better than the first.

What happened during the first?

Oh, three boys were chasing us on the playground.

What do they do when they catch you?

They don't catch us.

You're faster?

No, boys are faster, gaga. But girls are smarter.

I feel I ought to defend smart boys so I suggest that perhaps there are smart ones on either side of the gender divide. She considers this. Not in my class. 

Fair enough. I do not know the players here so I best say no more!

At the farmette, she plays a little...

... but most of our time is spent reading. She has a bit of a cold and I sense that anything low key is best for her. 

*.    *     *

Evening. I'm late coming home to put away the chickens. The cats are meowing their heads off, feeling themselves to be neglected far too long. Relax, all of you! I'm here!

I reheat Sunday's dinner once again. Tomorrow I'll reheat the soup. I'd forgotten how cooking for one means that there will be leftovers. Lots of them. I offer no protest. 

With love...