first one

Well, it isn't much, but I hereby report the first farmette flower of the year! A Snowdrop. Wimpy, to be sure, but in its defiant stalk and creamy white petals I see hope!

(the snow melts, the growing continues...)

It's a rainy day, so the knee is stiff as a board (not quite sure science has proven a causal link there, but hey, I'm just reporting what's what). I have a late morning appointment that came from me having stayed in a hotel with a good mirror (which we do not have at home). In Chamonix: OMG, what's that mole all about? (Doc takes exactly ten seconds to say -- nothing to cause you worry.) All this means that breakfast is rushed.

And later, we hobble around attending to farmette stuff. Ed makes room in the mudroom for my nursery plants (it appears that if I give them indirect light and some water very rarely, they may survive until planting time).

I keep feeding Pancake, the seventh cat. Why is she eating so much? It has to be either worms -- yuk -- or kittens -- oh dear. In between, there is laundry and there are groceries -- fun stuff that you postpone for a rainy day.

One chore that cannot be finished is the limb cutting. Ed's saw, the one that you throw up to the high branches, is stuck, having sawed off 3/4 of the limb, but failing to finish the job. The limb now poses a mortal danger to anyone who passes underneath. He tells me -- I have two choices: get a drone to finish the job, or wait for a strong wind to bring the whole thing down. Me, I keep wanting to say -- wouldn't it have been easier to have asked those guys to chop this one down, so long as they were here doing another job last week? But this is such a silly question that I pocket it for another time when I want to make a point.

In the afternoon, a very rainy afternoon, Snowdrop is here. She loves the rain...

Nonetheless, she is feeling sulky.

I wish I had a leprechaun visiting tonight! 

Say what? A leprechaun? As in for St Patrick's Day?

Yeah, they mess up the house and put green die in your toilet...

A leprechaun does that?

Well, maybe parents... but maybe a leprechaun! Everyone will be talking about it tomorrow!

So you wish your leprechaun-parents would get up at night and mess up the house, and pour green stuff into the toilet, and you would wake up to the mess, and then they'd spend the morning putting things back in place? This is your dream?

Yeah...

Kids.

Because she has a lesson toward evening, I drive her back to her neighborhood and while there, I visit for a few mins with my daughter. Soon these visits will be outdoors, on the deck maybe, enjoying the last bits of sunshine. For now, we watch the rain come down. But the light is with us! How different this is from the weeks in December and January!

At home, it's soup time again. I have a bunch of collard greens from our winter farmers, which I absolutely have no idea how to serve in a tasty for the both of us way, so into the soup they go, along with the usual unions, peppers, beans. Anyone would tell you that a hambone would be a superb addition here, but that's not going to happen. We pass a pig farm each time we go to the county park. I have nothing but great sorrow for the way they live (in a small pen) and for the fate that awaits them. 

Evening. So beautiful now, with the melting snow, the wet cleansing that the rain brought to our lands. 

with love...

old habits

It's hard to recognize in yourself traits that are abhorrent to you. If you hate grumbling in others, you're not going to want to admit to ever grumbling yourself. If you think that people are wasteful eaters, then you wont see in yourself your own food fussiness.  We like to believe we can do better than our mortal foes. 

And yet, I had this thought as I fixed breakfast this morning: Ed is a fussy eater. I've lived with him for nearly 18 years and I never quite allowed myself to say this before. I mean, the guy will eat leftovers that I wouldn't touch anymore for their age and decrepitude. At the same time, he'll appreciate a plump mussel, a perfect croissant, a gently baked piece of fish. He's not fussy, I would reassure myself. He just has a good sense of seasonal foods and he hates waste.

I changed my mind on all that today, as I ticked off all the foods I've made that he has claimed to be not good enough for a rerun going forward. Cakes that are too sweet, or too buttery, cookies that are too chewy, veggies, all kinds of veggies, meats -- most meats. Eggs that are too wet, berries that are underripe or overripe, mangos that are too sour, breads that don't have enough seeds or have too many. 

Of course, I've adjusted my cooking to meet his palate. The stuff I make he loves, praises, and eats in large amounts. But I have come to realize that I do not like adding new stuff to the rotation, because I can't tell if it will hit him right and no one wants to spend time preparing something that will be reluctantly consumed. I'd rather just do the stuff I know he'll love. 

Moreover,  I have done the same with the grandkids -- I pander to them by repeating the menus on Sunday, because I'd rather prepare favorites than try out new recipes and watch them work their forks reluctantly around their plates. I leave experimentation to the parents!  But all this has consequences for me: I have, in my own estimation, become a boring cook. (Today, I baked the beloved by all blueberry muffins... Have I made my point?!)

The rewards of repeat cooking are great. Snowdrop wrote me a letter (class project: write a letter) telling me how much she loves my cooking. Ed will gobble up our "favorites" as if he hadn't eaten for years. Perfectly crunchy cookies disappear with the speed of lightening. His favorite chili, made with his garden tomatoes is always treated like stuff for royalty.  So why would anyone risk messing with adored perfection?

Because it's boring. 

Of course, Ed would (and did over the breakfast today) protest to high heaven: I am not a fussy eater! Sure I have preferences! What's wrong with that??

Nothing, unless there are too many items in the "not to my taste" column.

From the standpoint of the cook -- it's not hard to lose one's culinary creativity. Much easier to fall into rote methods of food preparation, repeating recipes that you could do with eyes closed. My fish dishes have the same sauce served at the side because Ed loves that sauce above all other sauces. Still, I think at this point, I'd trade ease for enthusiasm for the new. A flip through a cook book and a suggestion -- make this dish! Or, let's try that one!

As I thought about how to cook going forward, I wondered if Ed's generation, raised on packaged, prepared foods, over-salted and over-sweetened, developed a craving for a sterile, dry kind of food. And a distaste for most vegetables because the caning industry really did kill a love of fresh and honest. By contrast, in Poland, fussy eating was of another world. Prepared foods were unknown. The diet was bland, but we all really did eat everything. 

Since Ed was put on notice by me about his fussiness, he has tried to reverse the image that he himself hates -- of a person who rejects perfectly acceptable foods. He dug into the leftover (overcooked) Brussel sprouts as proof of his open-mindedness! Still, as we get older, it becomes harder to shift gears. He's 72. I doubt he'll ever gobble up zucchini ("tasteless"), gnocchi ("too doughy"), or pureed soups ("I don't like the mouthfeel"). He'll overcook his hardboiled eggs (they stay in the hot water forever! Like, overnight!), but will tell me repeatedly that mushrooms are best not raw ("awful") and not browned, but somewhere in between. I considered it a victory when he changed his mind about salad dressing ("I like yours after all. Can we go back to that?"). And on the upside, repeating favorites does make for easier cooking -- dinner always takes an hour to prepare. At most 90 minutes. With my eyes closed.

Later in the morning, Ed is out with his high branch saw. You throw it up and then use a rope to saw off a branch. I leave him to his throws...

... and go for a walk in the neighborhood. 

(farmette lands, from the back)

I run into a couple of people who live in the new development and since I know they are on a list that shares development information, I ask them if they've heard anything about the commercial space that is being constructed on the site. 

We know there will be a wine and bourbon place. Like the one in the next door town (Oregon). 

Well now... Not quite the coffee shop that would have been my first choice, but maybe this has possibilities! An evening walk, a glass of wine at an outdoor table, a chat with your neighbors... I could be talked into that! 

And in the afternoon Snowdrop is here. She insists on helping Ed develop a google profile image.

I'm next.

Satisfied, she comes back to her books. But she is tempted by something else -- I told her I'd been swinging on the monkey bars in the neighborhood playground.

I want to go! 

And she is competitive! With her almost 70 year old grandmother. If I hung for 10 seconds, she wants to beat me. By a lot. (And, not surprisingly, she does.) She challenges me to several other climbs and swings but I tell her that I only compete against myself. This is hard for an 8 year old to understand, but I've said it before  -- you are your own challenge. "Do better" does not mean do better than others. And still she asks me -- you sure you don't want to climb up the climbing board or swing on the wheel?

I do not.

In the evening I make salmon cakes. There is absolutely nothing else worth making out of ground salmon and I do have batches of ground salmon in the freezer. There isn't much you can ruin in this. Add breadcrumbs, add onion, add and egg if you want. Yawn. With steamed asparagus. Double yawn. But so yummy nonetheless!

going around in circles

Circles... Figuring out the ratio of the circumference to the diameter... In other words, Pi, or our modern holiday for this day -- 3/14, which only makes sense in America, as only here do we list the month before the day. (March 14th in Europe is 14/3.) I've been getting emails from one of our favorite bakeries how they'll be out of pies quickly today because, you know, it's Pi Day! 

Me, I'm not thinking about Pi or pies, I'm thinking about the fact that I really delayed this year in ordering seeds for planting. Somehow I had in my head that we plant tomatoes on April 1st. And that we still had plenty of leftover seeds from previous years. None of this is true. I checked on Ocean and found out to my horror that we actually planted on the second day of spring, meaning on March 21st. Then I remembered that we ran out of tomato seeds last year. And that I dumped all my annuals into the meadows, leaving none to plant this spring. And that we are about to expand our meadow to surround the new peach orchard. Gulp. I'm in need of not pie, but seeds.

I've worked with many seed companies in the past and still I do not have a favorite one. Browsing today, I settled on Johnny's Selected Seeds. I put all my eggs into this basket (sort of like putting all your money in one unknown bank...) and ordered seeds. Annuals. Nasturtium, cosmos, sweet williams, sunflowers. Meadow mixes. Tomatoes, of course. Cherry, early ones, disease resistant, San Marzano, Brnadywine. Organic where possible. Watermelon. Peas. I will plant it all!

But wait, if the seeds come soon (rush shipping required) and we want to plant them, say, on the first day of spring, where will we get the dirt, given that our compost pile is frozen and buried under snow? No problem! -- says Ed. I click the "place order" button. If all goes well, we will have our hands full (of seeds) this weekend!

It's a sunny but cold day. Signs of spring? All the cats are outside All the birds are avoiding all the cats outside.

My morning routines are usually straightforward: collect missed eggs, feed chickens, check on water, feed cats -- some in the sheep shed, some at home. But now we have the addition of Pancake. She (I'm guessing here -- we really have no idea what the gender is) came at night. Ed fed her. She came again to the porch this morning. I fed her. The cats stare at her, but they let her come and go without confrontation. Why this tolerance for an outsider? I'm again guessing here, but I honestly think she is pregnant. She eats voraciously, all the time, and she is growing sizable in her underbelly. Ed wants us to catch her and take her in to be spayed (if she is not pregnant) but I think we need to hang back until it warms up. For now, we keep giving her food, distracting the other cats while she eats.

Breakfast, for us.

In the early afternoon, Ed attempts to walk with me. I mean, it's gorgeous outside -- irresistible! It's slow going for him, but he makes the loop and seems only slightly disabled afterwards. 

(today's quick look at cranes...)

And since it is Tuesday, Snowdrop has ballet after school, so we go through that routine.

(Here she is, notably without a hoodie tied around her waist!)

(And here she is, right after she heard a report that her parents had a good parent/teacher conference; she brushed over the academic praise though and asked anxiously -- yes, but did my teacher say that I was kind?)

All this brings us quickly to evening time. Ed and I are awash with eggs and so supper is easy -- eggs, some Brussel sprouts and a salad. Ed claims I overcooked the sprouts. He is correct, even though I think someone who cooks none of the meals should not mind uncrisp veggies. 

Yes, it's our light hearted Pi Day, and yes, I like even made up holidays, but there will be no pie for supper. In the end, garden planning trumped pie baking. And perhaps that's a good thing: Ed's as fussy about pies as he is about the tenderness of veggies.

(Deer, getting ready to eat anything that I plant...)

Monday

Good morning, early spring!

At the farmhouse kitchen table, I do my annual switch of placemats: from wintry scenes to flowers under our breakfast plates.

What a lovely season we are approaching!

Okay, so there is one aspect of spring that I dislike immensely. I, along with perhaps 99% of Americans (the 1% of outliers being either employed in the business of preparing other people's taxes, or being so wealthy that they just dont care about any of it) -- we all hate April 15th, the date you have to file your tax returns. The relief after this chore is behind you knows no bounds, tempered only by the agony of having to fork over more than you think you owed (perhaps 50% fall into this category). Despite what TurboTax and other online tax prep software want you to believe, the surprise is rarely in your favor. 

I cant decide if I have made life more miserable for myself by abandoning online services such as Turbo Tax and doing it all myself. I feel that as a lawyer, I should be able to navigate the forms on my own without having to spend several hundred on aids and services. And I always believe that my own tax situation could not be easier! Until I remember that I made a withdrawal from my IRA to fund a trip and then all hell breaks loose as I try to navigate that little glitch in my otherwise fairly straightforward accounting. And last year? I sold my Warsaw apartment. Boom! More complexity. And this year we bought short term bonds because we are getting old and long term investments suddenly seem inopportune. Not a lot, mind you, but now there are more figures to plug into some supplemental form or other. Even more complexity. 

People say that it's all about the math of it -- that the average person needs help because they haven't the math skills to do a good job of it, but that's just nonsense. All you need in terms of math skills is a dexterous finger that can type in sums into a calculator. Straight addition. Not in the least bit hard. The horror comes from not knowing what forms to fill out for what purpose and what adjustments to make and and and... well you know the procedure -- it's hell! Or at the very least it's a sizable bite out of your free time. 

I realized this weekend that I should get started on my taxes (and my mother's, because even a super senior's forms need work) because spring break is coming up and after that's over, it's a mere hop skip to April 15th. So I took out my notepad and started in on the calculations and none of it looked good, nor did I appreciate how shrunken my IRA looked (all those trips!). I was heading to total doom and gloom.

Of course, it's not just about the forms and figures. It's also about reviewing the choices you made and options that remain going forward. All my friends who are at or above 70 are thinking about travel in very different ways now. All raise the question -- how long will we be able to continue? How long will our stiffened bodies and dwindling energies tolerate a long haul trip? And just how much should a prudent middle class person put away for senior needs? This is all a bundle of unknowns. April 15th brings no answers, only sums of moneys spent, levied against pensions and social security, trickling in, keeping you solvent (hopefully), as you march through this complicated process of accounting for your life in the previous year.

Luckily, cheering me on, I have Ed, who thinks the whole IRS reporting thing is a time waste, but so long as you have to face it, you may as well challenge yourself to come up with some credible strategy to do it well. So with my peanut gallery egging me on, I forge ahead. And then I throw it all down, patting myself on the back for making a good effort to get started, and turn to welcoming my granddaughter, who gets dropped off a bit earlier today because once again, for reasons known only to the educational gods out there, schools are closed for the day.

Because the girl has more time at the farmhouse, her play extends beyond just our usual reading. Yes, there are the scuffles with Ed...

But, too, she's there while I deal with groceries...

And she is there to revisit the art room...

And she's there to take on some jigsaw puzzles that I was going to scrap for their underuse. Suddenly, she is interested!

(this is before I spilled coffee over the loose pieces...)

In doing puzzles, we fall into a back and forth that is similar to what we might have in the car. She'll tell me -- without challenge, you can never get better. And -- if you're not afraid, you can't ever be brave. I'm thinking -- she's been reading some good stuff, or listening to some inspiring people lately, but no, when questioned, she says -- oh I just made that up.

And eventually she leaves, and again I marvel that it is so light when I start in on creating something out of leftover crunchy chicken for supper. Yes, early spring is special and singularly full of good signs of grand stuff everywhere, April 15th to the contrary, not withstanding.

Sunday

Another wet, heavy snow falls overnight and once more the landscape is transformed.

How can you not love a spring snow storm!

(our cats have a different perspective on this)

Ed is once again trying to move around using both legs (!) and he plows us out nicely as I tend to the animals and admire the splendid snow cover.

Breakfast is totally cosy. As it should be. Leftover croissants, reheated.

Now comes the big debate: should we ski? Ed's a no on this one. Not today, which effectively means not for the next 10 months and then only if we are lucky. Me -- I waffle. It's above freezing, so the snow will be clumpy, the trails will be ungroomed, the glide will be crunchy -- like getting peanuts in your peanut butter when you were wanting a jar of the smooth stuff. But in the end I go for it (passing, as every day now, cranes). 

I do a fast run alone. (When he skis with me, Ed tends to be poky.) And I like it, though it feels a little out of whack to be skiing in this weather. I know last year we did a run even in April after an unexpected late snowfall, but without that cold bite on your face, you feel a bit off kilter. Still, it's a beautiful snowfall and I'm glad I had this last chance to be out in the thick of it.

In the evening the young family is here for supper. 

It's been a while since anyone has done any art around here. Sparrow decided to go for it and this sparked Sandpiper's curiosity.

Of course, he had to join in! 

...while their sister munched on roasted beets.

Dinner.

What's remarkable and wonderful is that a streak of sunlight comes through and hits the kids faces, even though it is 6:30. The last time that happened was... in October!

Yes, I'm one of those people who is happy as can be with Daylight Savings Time. And with the coming of spring.

Saturday

Oh, my non-grumpy, never hysterical, even tempered Ed! Always living up to his image of himself -- steady, unbothered, unruffled. But in this calm person, I can recognize twitches of exasperation. Like, maybe once every year or two. You have to know him really really well to even spot it. There is no raised voice, there is no stream of commentary. He merely locks himself up in his thoughts and you're better off letting him stay in that space until he works out whatever issue is nagging at him. I had seen this during the pre-Christmas season of 2021, when too many Amazon boxes arrived in one day. Twitch, silence, retreat. A day later he was himself again (which isn't a heck of a lot different!). And now I see it again, as he attempts to come to a good solution for a relatively new farmhouse problem: a leak in the shower, which announced itself on our wet kitchen ceiling. And has grown bigger at a rather alarming speed. Which means it's a real problem.

Ed has no confidence in construction experts. He'll take a guy advertising his building/dry-walling/tree cutting/roofing etc services on Craigslist over a so called professional any day. Why, I asked him. I can stand over the Craigslist guy and watch him do his job. And now here we are with a pipe joint that has probably failed, confirming for him that if you hand it to a pro (the bathroom fixtures were installed by a professional plumber) it is likely to fail. What's churning in his mind is the notion that he should have done it himself. And indeed, now that we need to tear the ceiling in the kitchen down to get at the shower piping, he is going to do it himself. But first comes this period of quiet contemplation.

Last night, after we watched our dose of TV, I let him stew on the couch. By this morning he was fine. Even as the big wet spot on the kitchen ceiling grows every time anyone takes a shower.

I had little time to pay attention to any of this actually, because immediately after feeding the animals (who is afraid of whom? oh, the cats are wary of the chickens!) ...

... at the moment of their opening, I drive to get the very excellent cinnamon croissants and baguette from Madison Sourdough (from this abundant lot!)

... and then I hurry over to the kids' dance school (Storybook Ballet) to watch Sparrow's class!

I think it is a surprise to all of us that he takes to this class so easily, considering his resistance to going to any classes anywhere anytime. 

Watching him is a treat: such a happy kid! So delighted in this week's costuming (some Raggedy Ann and Andy story)!

At the time of his dance class, Snowdrop has her violin lesson, but afterwards, her father brings the girl and her youngest brother over to the dance studio, so that in fact, I get to see all three kids.

Tumbling. Sandpiper loves this kind of play. Sparrow is more cautious. Snowdrop will tumble with any brother who'll let her roll around with him.

(Sandpiper -- hey, how about me??)

And then the mom and the three kids go off (actually just upstairs, above the dance school) to do their weekly grocery shopping. I have to hand it to my daughter -- shopping with the lively threesome is ... lively!

Only then do I come home to breakfast with Ed. And Dance.

Sometime in the afternoon, the two of us head out to the park. We take our ski equipment, but neither of us is enthusiastic about skiing. The snow is wet and shallow by now. So we walk. 

Not for long.

Ed's knee gives out. It takes us forever to walk the quarter of a mile back to the car. Should he have it examined? Of course! -- says me. Let's wait and see if it "pops back in" -- says him.

Much of the evening is spent on me pulling his leg -- somehow he feels that helps. Oh, and, too on me wondering what to do with the dozen strawberry plants that arrived today. No Dance, not for you.

I do animal duty tonight. Ed's immobilized for now. Cats are wondering why the change in routines.

(Unfriendly-Snowflake, the half sister to Dance)

A bit of an unusual day, don't you think? But sweetly ending on the couch. A movie, chocolates, a glass of wine (for me). Total pleasure!