Tuesday

It's more as it should be: a mix of clouds and sun, a high of 53F (almost 12C).

But here, at the farmhouse, it's a bit nutty. When Ed comes upstairs (just before dawn), he leaves the door open and thus ushers in a cat into the bedroom. I am not a fan of cats in the bedroom, at least when I am still sleeping, or thinking I should be sleeping. I groan. He's repentant. Take you out to breakfast?

I don't think this was intentional, but I tell him he's inviting me out on a morning he knows (or should remember) I have a date out with a friend. How about going out to breakfast on my birthday instead? You do remember when that is, right?

Like I said, when it comes to birthdays, I lead him through the motions of a good, sweet observer, and he follows. I have long noted that he lacks initiative in celebratory matters, but he is delightfully compliant when I give him prompts and indeed, downright specifics of what should take place. I detail the plan for this year's celebrations. Sounds nice! -- he tells me, somewhat sheepishly, given that he is still feeling guilty about the noisy meowing bouncy cat inside.

The weather is cool but gloriously bright. Yes, some daffodils are down, but that makes for a fuller jar on the kitchen table!

And there's a lot of color left behind.

Moreover, many of the fruit trees are ready to bloom. So early this year!

All delightful! The best weeks of the season are right before us!

And then I have breakfast with a friend whom I see way too little. We used to have offices next to each other and that was such a perfect way of keeping close watch over the daily details of our lives. Since we both retired, we've been lost in our worlds of (for me) family, writing, travel, (and for her) books, plays, music. 

I resolve to do better at stepping out of my shell of activities! This morning's morning meetup at Madison Sourdough was just grand!

Back at the farmhouse, I take stock. There is so much that I could do in the garden before my surgery! I attack one item on the list today: mowing (nearly everything!) with the tractor-mower. 

On the one hand, I hate this task because the land is rugged and full of bouncy hills and I am always made to feel sick by the end of an hour of riding that piece of machinery. But on the other hand, it's a glorious way to survey the farmette lands in all their detail! This is when I see the emerging blooms in the new orchard!

And this is when I clear the large prairie-like fields out back where we planted the 60 nut and maple trees. And this is when I imagine all that will bloom in the meadows, too.

By the time I'm done, it's time to pick up Snowdrop. This is the day when I am tempted to just keep her outside for a while. To show her the blooms, to cavort with her in the freshly cut fields. But, it's the one day when we have to hustle to get ready. It's her busiest day -- ballet, then scouts. Nonetheless, I cannot resist. And she is such a willing partner in crime! Today, she is happy as a clam scaling trees! (I'm including some half a dozen pictures of her exploring the newly mowed path to the new orchard because she is such a good kid about letting me show off the farmette landscape here for you, always made better by a person, or an animal passing through it!)

Toward evening, I am home again and Ed and I are so carefree and unburdened, having both finished the tax load yesterday. Yep, I love all aspects of spring, but it is particularly satisfying to note that the finest days of this joyous season are just before us.

Leafing through my accumulated email, I find one from Maxy Awards. I had devoted exactly one day back in October to promoting my book, Like a Swallow: I sent it to a couple of places to be considered for an award (for best indie memoir for 2023). I clicked on their email tonight and eventually clicked on their link and I found this! In other words, Like a Swallow has been selected as a finalist. (Winners to be announced in May, but let's not be greedy!) And that makes me so happy.

with love...

Monday

On the upside, it wasn't a huge amount of snow!

But it did snow last night and the day stayed cold enough to melt most, but not all of it. Initially, the kids were thrilled to see it, though later, Snowdrop complained -- not enough to really play in it and plenty cold!

This cold snap (and another one expected next weekend) delays planting annuals, and the heavy snow really did knock down the daffodils.

Some will come back up again, but some will have to be cut down. But not today. I honestly can't quite focus on any of it today. I'm blocking the sudden return of winter!

Breakfast.

I did finish my taxes then, but just at the last minute. When I see that it's time to pick up Snowdrop, I dash out...

(mostly melting!)

... piece of toast, cup of coffee, purse and fat envelope with the state returns in hand, and of course you should not rush when you are almost 70 and holding all that stuff, because, well, what it you trip and fall? 

So now I have spilled coffee all over the tax returns and my phone too. Damn. I pick up Snowdrop and take her along for an errand to the post office, where I make sure this bulgy and wet envelope will be accepted. The clerk smiles and stamps it wit confidence. Back home, Ed is chuckling: I told you you should have filed the state returns also online! 

Meanwhile Snowdrop is in a great mood, because I let her play with my phone during our wait at the USPS and there is some good in that, because she always then manages to teach me a new trick with it -- this time showing me a string of videos of grandkids, clips I never knew I had because, you know, when you take photos, you forget that on a smart phone, these are actual live saved shot to your device.

(At the farmhouse, she introduces Ed to various aspects of the phone's photo storage capabilities. How she knows these things is a real puzzler, since the girl does not herself have a smart phone. I suppose kids just intuit technology even as we have to study it and learn from scratch.)

Evening: I try not to keep checking, over and over again, the weather for the next few days. I have eight of them before I become totally incapacitated. Will we climb out of the near freezing temperatures? Will I have time to plant annuals? It's going to be close!

Never a dull moment here, on our farmette lands...

Sunday

You know it's coming, you can't move forward without it, it's not unusual. All that is true. But you don't have to like it!

It's a cold and wet morning. A few storms rumbled through at night, but they left no mark on the landscape. The rain, however, stayed with us -- a steady rain that will make all plants and weeds grow rapidly. A steady rain that by evening will change to snow. 

We do get snow in April. Sometimes. Not every year. Perennials don't mind it in the early stages of the growing season, but they do not like the heaving temperatures. A fifty degree drop (like the one we had this weekend) is not good for them, though most will struggle through without great damage. The daffodils will topple under the brutal combination of wind and snow, so that's a shame, but we did have a lovely week of blooms so I'm not going to mind when I wake up tomorrow to see them buried under heavy wet stuff.

My morning walk isn't too bad. The rain does make everything that much more vibrant and fresh.

 

But of course, breakfast is back in the kitchen, where it shall remain now for several weeks.

I had put off finishing my taxes and doing my mom's until a rainy day and so there you have it -- my Sunday is set for me. I spend a boring set of hours filling out forms.

In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. 

It was a highlight of the day, most definitely. 

One more form to fill out (tomorrow, as the cold wet weather will continue to torture us one more day) and then I can get back to discovering the joys of spring. Earlier today, I saw Virginia bluebells blooming. And we have a woodpecker in the willow who has the strangest singing voice. Oh, and an ornamental plum (at least we think that's what it is) opened up its delicate white flowers this morning. So much to see and love out there, once this tricky period of rain, snow and taxes gets behind us.

April 15th: the race

Before I mention a word about this day, let me give some context to it: we are one month into spring. Every year, right about now, I begin to clear the flower fields and get them ready for this year's growing season. Toward the very end of April and in the early days of May, I plant the new perennials and I fill the tubs with annuals. Those are the big jobs -- there are plenty of little tasks to be done throughout the season, but these three -- clearing (and weeding), planting (and moving) perennials, planting annuals -- they fill my days completely. By mid May I am usually done and I slide then into maintenance mode: weed, maybe water, trim, deadhead, stalk. In terms of intensity then, the last week of April and the first two of May are the big gunners. I dig, huffing and puffing until my hands blister. 

But this year! Oh, this year! Nothing is as it was in years before. I scheduled my knee replacement in the last week of April (I had to -- I need to be up and running by the end of June). This means that I can do yard prep alright, but planting -- well, I imagined I would somehow hoist myself around and maybe with some magic, I'd put stuff in according to my normal schedule. This despite the warnings from the doc: do NOT scratch yourself or get dirty after surgery! Not allowed! But what's a gardener to do?  I can't NOT plant this year!

And then came this gift: a week of beautiful weather. It's as if nature was telling me -- we get it. You need to do all this before your surgery. We'll give you the sunshine, the warm temperatures. We know you'll do well by your gardens.

I already had some stuff delivered (too early, but hey, this year it turned out to be not THAT too early!) and I called my beloved daylily people (Oakes) and asked if there's any chance they could get my stuff over like... right now? 

Their box came today -- on the last day of good weather (storms and a huge cold front are on their way!). Basically, it means that I have a chance to get most everything into the ground before my new knee is plunked into my leg. But I have to work hard and dodge the weather systems! I think I can do it!

So that's the context for my day.

But as always, we start slowly. I admire the daffodils and feed the animals...

(the hyacinths are also blooming now...)

(this is Pancake -- the newest and seventh feral cat that has taken to calling the farmette "home")

(in just a few days, the landscape has been transformed!)

And then I ask Ed if he wants to go with me for this year's first Farmers Market. I have to smile -- every year, the April markets are an exercise in resilience. Farmers stand in chilly, oftentimes wet weather, customers walk briskly and buy little. This year? Oh my!

Short sleeve temperatures for sure! Huge crowds! I mean, it feels like summer!

Ed, who doesn't typically go to the market with me, is willing to come out of farmhouse hibernation today. After we do the loop around the Capitol, I think he understands why I never come back empty handed. First of all, my long time farmer friends are all there! Natalie, from her greenhouses remembering that my birthday is very soon, Bill from the spinach CSA handing over a gift pack of spinach, Mary the Bee Charmer telling me she just pulled her honey from the hive yesterday (and oh, do I need honey!!), Kyle from Roots Down asking if we came on Ed's famously ancient motorcycle. Then, too, Ed can't resist taking home a jar of picked mushrooms, and a jug of maple syrup for his morning oatmeal, and of course, his beloved cheese curds. 

(Roots Down)

(Snug Haven spinach)

(cheese curds)

(Natalie's flower baskets)

We walk away full of good stuff and good feelings.

And only when we come back do we sit down to breakfast. Treats from Madison Sourdough, because it was on the way. Sort of. And the daffodils? I did clip some weaker ones from the yard, but then I also spent $2 on a supplemental bunch from the market. Why? Because I cannot stand depleting my garden in any way! Ed doesn't have it in him to cut down trees, I don't have it in me to cut down flowers!

But by 10:30 we are done with markets, treats and breakfast and I plunge into the project of getting all the lilies in before the storms come this afternoon.

I. Work. Hard.

And I'm done! Miraculously, my perennial planting is winding down on April 15th! April 15th! 

It's late afternoon and I do take a pause (and drink mountains of cooled hibiscus berry tea -- the perfect thirst quencher!). But I do not stop. By early evening, the rain still has not come this way and I go out to the meadows to spot pull some grasses, to make room for seeds (those will have to go in after the last frost date, so not for a few weeks). Ed is still sawing up fallen trees and it strikes me that we could use another one of those big logs for yet another strawberry basket (I'm getting some more fraises de bois in a few days). We haul it over and position it by the picnic table. And now we really are done for the day.

I feel a great sense of continuity. Age is irrelevant -- I've done this (spring clearing and planting) for more than forty years now, and the growing fields have demanded so much of me, and I have given as much as I can each year, bending down at the waist, legs separated, digging, pulling until it's all ready to grow strong and flourish and flower. 

I forgive Mother Nature for coming back with snow this Monday (so long as it melts quickly!). You can't be greedy: April is not typically this splendid. That I had a week of it is a miracle indeed. I am so incredibly grateful.

with love...

April 14th

And it continues.

We are famous for telling the kids -- "there's an upside and a downside to most things in life," and I do recognize that it will be hard to face frost, or even snow next week after being spoiled with heavenly weather this whole week. Too, everything has been growing rapidly and that means weeds have been exploding and I already have the feeling that I'm not keeping up -- a feeling that is usually reserved for early August! This morning, for example, I was going to do some spot crabgrass removal in the meadows, but I never even got to any of the meadows, because on the way, I picked weeds from the Big Bed, and then dumped several wheelbarrows of chips in naked spots, and by the time I finished working there, I was spent and it was past the lunch hour.

So yes, intense outdoor work began early this year.

Nonetheless, the upsides remain triumphant (as they often are if you have the mindset to look for them). The glory of all those daffodils is there for all to see (well, just me, Ed and Snowdrop today)! I am enchanted!

Breakfast, once more on the porch, though probably not for long, as we will soon be returning to chilly April mornings.

And then comes the work. Grueling, exhilarating. 

The afternoon is where things get really messy.

I see that it's time for me to pick up Snowdrop. And I see, too, that I forgotten to clear the table after breakfast. There is, for example, that jar of honey. I grab it, along with the vase of tulips, and the bottle of kefir and I guess it's a little too much and my hanging on to the honey jar by the lid is not such a great plan, because as I walk up the slitted steps (from the porch to the kitchen), the jar slips out from under the lid and crashes into a million tiny glass shreds, and the honey -- for there was honey in it! -- is dripping down through the steps, toward the basement window and up the stairs too, into the kitchen. Vessels of glass float in a sea of honey. Ants, on their annual prowl for spring nesting sites, are doing dances of joy. I can only say three words -- oh no! Ed!!!!

I can't leave him with this mess, can I? I offer a few minutes of help, picking up the biggest pieces of glass, cutting myself niftily in the process and that is my penance, because now I really do have to dash to Snowdrop's school while Ed is left with disassembling the steps, taking out the rocks by the basement window and washing it all, in an effort to remove the glass, the honey, plus all the debris that accumulates in hidden spaces underneath steps.

When I come back, Snowdrop plays outside... 

(and works too! the strawberries need watering!)

...while I attempt to put the finishing touches on the Great Clean Up Operation, though it's mostly done now. The ants walked away, disappointed.

And you'd think I let Ed retire to his work of machine designing and chopping up of fallen trees, but no. In my evening hurry, I once again mistakenly erase all the photos from the day from my camera -- something I do, oh, every six or eight months and here, too, I have to let out those three words -- oh no! Ed!!

I will say this much: I don't always call him for help. For example, when Dance brought in a mouse this morning and left it dead and on the living room carpet, I could well have picked it up and tossed it out myself. But when that same cat (she is on a roll today!) brought in a half destroyed (but still living!) chipmunk and left that, too, on our living room carpet, I had to ask -- what do we do with a half-dead chipmunk??

Too, I have to add that I was called into service as well: Ed asked me to help him saw off a high limb that is dangerously leaning on the barn roof. That was not easy! Still, the mishaps were the worst. Such a pain. And they are really awful when you are the culprit, the dumb one and you have to bother someone else to help you patch things up again. 

But, all this doesn't take away from the day which is astonishingly beautiful. Sticky, tricky and bumbling, and very humbling, but gorgeous to the end. Not too many photos though. Retrieving them from an erased card is a bother and by the end of the day, we were both really spent!

April 13th

And it continues. Near record highs, and more importantly -- a whiff of gorgeous, spring air, generating a profound feeling of awe and gratitude! We are cycling through early spring bounty very quickly! Here, let me show you: 

The crocuses are a thing of the past. The daffodils take center stage. I am so glad I planted the big bulbs last fall. They make for sturdy large flowers. It seemed like such a chore then, but oh, am I glad I did the work!

And though each bloom is majestic and worthy of a photo, what I appreciate is the entirety. This is hard to photograph, because so often the backdrop consists of small wonders: buds on the crab apple turning green overnight, the Siberian scrill giving all yellows -- the house, the daffodils --  that Giverny partnership of canary and cornflower. Against a blue sky no less.

It's all so stunning! (I put on a pair of yellow shorts and I wear a t-shirt with lemons and some blue writing on it. I match the landscape!)

Breakfast? I do a quick reentry into the farmhouse to bake a rhubarb cake. I need to use up last year's rhubarb -- this year's is coming in strong!

And after the morning meal, I get to work. With everything growing so quickly, the weed battle intensifies.  Too, I dig out saplings of boxelders and crabs, and I move some old stuff around to make room for the lilies which should come early next week.

It is a deeply satisfying April 13th. 

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. I see she has chosen her Athenian sundress for this day. Well, that's weather appropriate!

Inside, after a bit of play (a return to the ponies!)...

... we read. The story is so engrossing (and terribly sad in this volume) that I am tempted to cheat and read ahead once she leaves -- perhaps to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night, just for that feel good moment when a novel resolves its deepest conflicts and that promise of something better fills you with hope that there's light at the end of any tunnel.

Shhh! Dont tell her that I was even tempted!

And in the evening, I pause at my daughter's house to go over the week's events and to map out the days going forward. We sit outside, as if it were a summer evening. So perfectly warm and beautiful and without the summer mosquitoes!

At home again, I'm sleepy, Ed's sleepy. But we've found the latest season of Grand Designs and having watched the previous several dozen seasons (oh yes, there are many!), you could say this show is one that has sentimental value for us. And it's always such a mellow story! Like in Ocean, the text never veers off course from a good outcome. Oh, sure, there are mishaps and tribulations. But at the end of the day, perseverance triumphs and beauty (in the eye of the beholder, of course) prevails. 

Your everyday may not always end triumphantly, but I would guess that most of us have something to cheer and celebrate on most days. For those of us living in south central Wisconsin right now, all it takes is a stroll outside, maybe through a forest, or along a garden path. 

With love...