Tuesday

The fact that I've been able to move so much this month (closing my watch rings every single day in September) should tell you this: we've not had much rain. Because when it rains, the bike stays in the garage. There is no pleasure in getting drenched on a bike trail. Or a hiking trail. Physical activity comes to a grinding halt.

Today, it rained. Indeed, during the night alone our bucket picked up about two inches of water. And the forecast tells us we should expect rain, on and off, for the next two days.

Of course, animal feeding proceeds as usual, though you really have to herd the cats to their feeding stations. They do not like leaving the safety of the porch. The porch is so dry! The world -- so wet.

(the hens don't like the rain either, but they love the wet soil for their foraging)

But in studying the radar maps carefully, I can see that "on and off" really does mean on and off. There may be windows of opportunity for us. A pause in the rain. A recess! 

I pin it to come at 8. Ed! It's now or never!

The bike trail is wet and puddles spray water relentlessly as we move through them. But you'd be surprised how quickly the water drains. And once we're off the trail that cuts through the wetlands, the puddles disappear. 

We ride in a pocket of clearing skies. There is a risk that the clouds will close in on us, but hey, there is some pleasure in living dangerously!  

I imagine I am in Scotland, where the skies always offer an ever changing mix of cloud cover: stratus, cumulus, cirrus, nimbus -- surely some of each, until the thick gray ones eventually take over and, just like in Scotland, the rains come down again. But not during our ride! We're spared.

Breakfast, no longer outside. It may be dry on the porch, but it's much more snug in the kitchen.

And muffin baking. 

And, during another break in the rain, spot weed pulling (do you see why the day fills so fast?).

And grandkid pick up at school.

We've established a routine and it's a good one! Time for everything -- books, play, lots of snacks. And every once in a while, Ed hands over his computer and the girl teaches the boy the intricacies of "the Cat Game."

In the evening, the clouds stay firmly in place. By the time I drive home from the kid drop off, it's almost dark. Are we that close to winter already??

Time to cook up some comfort food. Farro with tomatoes and cheese on top. Autumnal suppers are wonderful!

with love...

Monday

You know the saying "people hear what they want to hear?" Oh yeah! I'm sitting at the car repair shop. The Air Pressure Warning Light has been flashing for days. Ed checked the air pressure on all four tires -- it was fine. We're guessing one of the sensors is not working. Tell that to the guy checking in my car!

Your air pressure is off.

It's off because when you check it at home, you let out air, then you compensate, but it's not an exact science.

Well it's off. That's the problem.

No, that's not the problem. When we checked it, after the light went on, I promise you, it was perfect.

He cant hear it. The ears are picking up my words, the head is not processing their meaning.

This is not unusual. People tune out meaning all the time. I try a different set of words. That often works -- it unblocks whatever sticking point has prevented the head from doing its job. But today, perhaps because of the humidity, perhaps because I am an ancient woman who cannot be trusted to be in full command of her information -- we're stuck.

The story, however, has a happy ending. I drive home (after the mechanic did something to magically force the Air Pressure Warning Light to disappear) and I tell Ed the story. Together we delve into the car's information display system and we learn something new -- you can actually just ask the car what the air pressure is and it will tell you! For each wheel! No gauge required! In other words, Alpine Blue is programmed to talk to me -- whether the tummy hurts, the eyes water, the nose itches. (In the automative language of pressure, speed, and who knows what else.) I would not have learned that had I not gotten a mechanic who just would not take my spoken words seriously. 

In other words, in every frustrating situation, there lies an opportunity to learn something: about the world and yourself in it. About your car.

All this happened in the late morning. Earlier, Ed slept, I fed the animals and measured the amount of rain we got overnight -- maybe half an inch? It seemed more, by the sound of things, but the bucket tells no lies!

(autumn performers: nasturtium, until the first frost)

(dahlias, also until the first frost)

Ed is still asleep after my animal duty, so I go off on a solo bike ride. I have a packed day -- it's now or never.

And immediately after, Ed is awake and we eat breakfast.

This all seems prosaic and banal, but to me, the day is anything but that. Sometime in the middle of the night, I decided to start in on book 2. I've dickered around with ideas for it for many months and I finally came to some point of clarity in the gray light of the very early morning. 

Why do it? Why write this second book? I'm not one who worries much about leaving behind printed material for posterity. I mean, if today's news is correct, mammals will be extinct on Earth in another 750 million years. Who cares if among the ashes of our collective lost lives there will be shreds of books written back in 2023! 

But I want the challenge of writing again and I want to see if I can pull it off -- it's a tough project and I dont have the help of an interesting background to move it along (Like a Swallow coasted on postwar Poland material). Still, I'm psyched!

I'm giving myself two years for it. If I'm not happy with what I've written after that, then it gets dumped into the trashcan, recycled into another life as maybe a row of birthday greeting cards or cardboard boxes in which to ship your favorite Amazon purchases.

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. Just her on Mondays. 

In an effort to support Tati Co (the coffee shop around the corner), we stop by on the way home and pick up an ice cream.

It is true that if I buy something at the cafe every day, I will deplete all my resources very quickly. I'll have to quit traveling and sell off all my possessions. Nonetheless, I told myself that I will be a customer as often as I can, for as long as their numbers are just starting to grow. So, today -- it's ice cream.

And then home.

In the evening, Ed and I were thinking a bike ride would be absolutely perfect. He wants it, I want it. Unfortunately, it is not to be. The skies cloud over, the rains come down. And they will continue. The drought will have been a spring and summer event. We may well be in for a wet fall.

Sunday

I'm sure an expert horticulturalist could explain to me why the weeds this year have been so pernicious. Much more of a problem than any other year of my entire gardening life. It can't just be that I didn't keep up with it all summer long. I'm often lackadaisical about it. A spot pull in the most prominent places, nothing more than that. But this year, the weeds won. Or at least they did until I began the laborious task last week of digging them out of all the flower fields, inch by inch, up and down, working my way around the roots of established perennials, and to the front, to the back, to the side, filling buckets past the heaping point, digging, bending, pausing for breath, then digging some more.

I dont know that I will finish the work this Fall. I have another gift of a beautiful day today (it was supposed to rain. It did not rain.), but we will surely get the predicted wet weather, and after that I'm away, and after that will come the cold spell, arriving just as all my spring bulbs are scheduled to arrive. (As always, I ambitiously ordered a heap of bulbs. I'm never sorry, come spring time, and always a bit overwhelmed come October -- the time of planting.)

There is still the problem of weeds that sprouted in the beds by the sheep shed. I cannot get a handle on those fields. Had I the money, I'd probably hire some consultant to tell me what can be done in a space that  has shade, old raspberry runners, and creeping Charlie like you wouldn't believe, in addition to the violets and all the rest of the usual suspects. I've planted spring bluebells. I've planted some blackeyed Susans. I've planted phloxes, salvias, irises, purple coneflowers, lilies, hostas, calaminthas, anemones, clematis vines and sedum creepers. Nothing works. By the end of the summer, the field is completely covered by creeping Charlie and a whole army of invasive weeds. In the other beds, the flowers still show their strength. In the sheep shed field -- not so much. If I dont weed those beds this year then I will feel terribly remorseful come spring. But the job there is so big that I'm just not sure I can get to it.

Such is the work at the farmette.

I do of course also feed the animals.

And just before noon, I break for breakfast with Ed.

We talk about how things swallow us whole and how I knew the garden would do this to me, and that I have no regrets -- apart from the enormity of the job, I think I've done well (enough) here. We both admit that looking forward (for example -- to what will grow here) is much more in our nature than looking back. [Just last week, a friend of Ed's told him he had a photo of their co-op group from college and post college days and that he'd give Ed a copy of it. Ed said no thanks. That may seem strange to you -- what's a photo after all, especially since Ed liked his co-op life. But I get it. Looking at that photo wont bring him as much joy as figuring out how to solve a tricky design problem in one of his machining projects.] 

In the early afternoon, I'm so worn out with the weeding that I hesitate to push us out on a bike ride. Still, the development coffee shop is doing a soft open today and I want to check it out/support it. So we bike over.

And it is lovely: spacious, airy, with good background music and a friendly vibe. And one very comfy chair.

There's not much food yet and I'm terribly disappointed that Madison Sourdough turned them down with their baked goods, but still, I like the place. I tell Ed that when he goes sailing (if he goes sailing), I will spend every morning there, watching people come and go.

After a cup of coffee (and some free snacks!), we get back on our bikes. It's funny that biking on Alpine Blue is soothing rather than tiring. The work in the flower fields doesn't do much for my smart watch rings, but it totally depletes me. A bike ride, especially on the flat-ish paths we choose for today, restores me.

In the evening the young family comes for dinner.

And later, much later, as I tidy up the hurricane that comes with child-play, I think about how kids are like meadows -- forever changing and experimenting with new strategies to gain a foothold in this complicated world. (Meadows never merely repeat the same display of flowers and grasses. One year you'll see an abundance of poppies, the next year it's all about sweet william. And so on...) As a parent or grandparent, you think you've figured out a dynamic, only to have it changed the next month, or week, or even day. In other words -- they force you to stay engaged and watchful. And to never assume! Well, except that they need you to be their best friend and protector. Always.

with love...

Saturday

Happy Fall to all you northerners (and happy spring to you down there, in the south)!

Oh, that smell of autumn... No other season brings with it such a pungent air. A smell of wet leaves and spent plant life. Of forest bark and mushrooms. Of nasturtium, dahlia, and sunflower heads -- the ones that are still blooming and the ones that are not. Step outside on a summer morning and inhale. We are so small, nature's reign is so vast...

(bike ride snapshot)

Ed is up before me. This happens maybe once a season and today is that rare day. When I come down (almost always around 7), he has already fed the animals. I order bakery items online and then we get on our bikes.

To market!

I cant say that we buy much. Carrots. Flowers. Some pesto for my daughter. We have plenty of corn and the farmette is still churning out lots of melons, watermelons and tomatoes. So we pick up the essentials...

... then bike to Madison Sourdough, for today's breakfast treat (an almond croissant), for a loaf of sourdough bread, and for croissants for the kids for the week.

Roundtrip, it's a two hour ride for us. With pauses and purchases. The day is perfectly warm (meaning not too warm). And that fragrance! Your olfactory sensory neurons are working in overdrive!

Breakfast on this first autumn day is on the porch. Heaven...

Of course, I weed. I have to get those beds cleared the next few days, or else I'm not the garden person I set out to be here, at the farmette. 

I weed hard. Many buckets -- thousands? millions? Dig, shake free of soil, dump. Over and over and over again. It's shocking how well the weeds grew given our drought this summer.

I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR last night -- about the runner Clarence DeMar from New Hampshire, who won the Boston Marathon in the early 20th century (the story is here). Over and over again. He was the first to demonstrate that extreme exercise can indeed be good for you and not wear out your body. The caveat -- it comes with side effects. Though I never trained for, or ran a marathon, I know those side effects well -- I got them for the first time when I was in my late 30s and took a saw to the thick limbs of a maple tree in the back yard. My PT person from this spring would say that I exceeded my therapeutic window! 

Today, I think I may have just hit the outer edges of that therapeutic window again. In other words, I worked hard and this after my smart watch rings had already closed from the long bike ride. 

Wait, is this what you call a restful weekend??

I think so. When I work, my mind floats from one idea to the next, processing old information, incorporating new stuff. Even as my hands and back work to the max, my head stays nimbly centered and whatever is going on inside there is calming. Exasperations with the world and some people in it mellow. Peace is restored.

But oh, does the body feel the toil of those long hours in the yard!

If we had a bathtub in the farmhouse this is the one time when I would use it, though I suppose there's a risk I'd doze off in the sheer comfort of floating in warm water.

In the alternative, I fix dinner and Ed and I turn on the next in a series of PBS shows we can watch -- Professor T. Sure, there are the dead bodies, but remarkably, each episode concludes with justice prevailing -- a good message for the end of an incredibly full (of weeds) day.

with love...

Friday

I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm ready for a weekend. It's been a packed set of days -- so much so that I haven't danced my ballet dances for three days! And the weeds? Not a lot of progress there since The Attack of the Virginia Stickseed. 

This morning, too, is busy. Animal care first (and yes, we do miss Peach, which is strange since she was just a chicken, a meek one, rarely venturing out of the barn in her advanced age). 

(Hey, lilies, you do know that this is the very last day of summer?) 

(the crab apple in early fall is just as beautiful as it is in early spring...)

Immediately after, we bike to the pharmacy to get our Covid vaccinations. It's a lovely ride...

...but getting the shots was not easy. Pharmacies are struggling to meet the initial demand. The supplies are very low. We almost got sent home with only the super duper senior flu shots to show for it, but at the last minute there was a miracle and boom! We are Covid vaccinated.

Each and every time that we have gotten the vaccine or booster, I'm overwhelmed with relief. How can one not be, especially since rates of infection, hospitalization, etc are going up. You gotta love science for all that it does to make our lives better! (And you gotta not love the way our health care delivery works: not for us the simplicity of health care for all, where you never see a bill, never get told, as Ed got told that the paper work, draconian and never ending for the poor pharmacists, is stalled, so that he has to pay for both the Covid and flu shots out of pocket until it is processed through the "system.")

Breakfast -- small, because it's so close to lunch that it hardly deserves its own special moment. With a cat who loves to join us ON the table, and Ed, who luckily is not up there with him.

A quick job of spot weeding and now it's time to pick up the kids.

Typically, Friday afternoon starts a period of lessons for them: he gets violin and she gets ballet. They then roll into Saturday morning where she gets violin and he gets ballet (and Sandpiper gets multisports, which he adores) and then she gets Code Ninjas (a coding class which she loves). This, of course requires juggling and when one peg falters, the structure falls down. Today, the violin teacher called in sick so I had to take Sparrow along for the ride to ballet. After that, one parent did this, another did that and eventually I believe they all wound up in whatever place they needed to be. Which is a good thing because the parents are celebrating their anniversary tonight and a sitter is keeping they young ones occupied. The parents surely need their moment of evening pleasure!

Me, I make my way home. I snuck in my own ballet in the early afternoon and I surely clocked in a solid bike ride today. I'm ready to put my feet up and watch a movie with Ed. Know any lighthearted ones where not too many people get killed or have their lives ruined by unsuccessful relationships? No? I guess we'll just watch farmer Pete on YouTube, minding his cattle and pigs and turkeys. Very low key. Just what I need! 

the presence and absence of...

Fine, so it turns out I have my limits. (Ed would have chimed in -- oh yeah!) You know that children's book about Madeline? "...She was not afraid of mice, she loved winter snow and ice?" Like Madeline, I'm not particularly afraid of mice. They move fast and so if I am on a hunt, I am anxious to move even faster. Call me agitated. But bring in other wild animals onto our living room carpet and I run for help. Not only am I convinced that they will view me as a coconspirator and they will sink their sharp teeth into my flesh should I come near, but, too, I'm sure they'll run and hide and I will never get them out!

In other words, when I hear that telltale cat yowl signaling a catch, brought into the house through the open patio door (such a warm night!), I go down with apprehension. Sure enough, I find a huge chipmunk being tossed around by Dance and so I do the only thing that's left for me to do under the circumstances: Ed!

Those little critters know how to play dead. I'm not sure what it gets them. It's not as if the cat is going to look at them and say -- oh, you're dead, why that's no fun! -- and leave them alone. No. They become a football, a game, and the only help for them is in the form of that human who'll come by and, disgusted with the whole thing, pick them up in some fashion and take them outside. 

This was my early morning. 

Immediately after feeding the impatient animals...

(Unie)

(nameless Bresse girl)

... I took out my bike and went for a ride. Randomly. Up and down rural roads. 

(passing another field of Scottish Highland cattle)

I somehow steered my way eventually to the new development's soon-to-open cafe. The owners happened to be there and we chatted about the menu. I gave them excellent suggestions (I say "excellent" because it's what I would love to see there!) and I am happy to say that they were very receptive. It's true that the cafe is a lure. The developer has yet to build many blocks of new homes and townhouses and the locals want a coffee shop. Can the neighborhood sustain an eatery? That remains to be seen. Right now it's there to make the development an attractive place for prospective buyers. That's okay -- Ed and I figure we have at least two years to enjoy the cafe before an ultimate reckoning about its future. Since they're priming the place with great coffee and Madison's best pastries, I am sure to be there on a regular basis. For two years, or however long it lasts.

Breakfast, during which we review the day thus far!

And then I drive over to the storage unit which houses boxes of junk since my move out of the suburban home my ex-husband and I shared for many years. I did not feel empowered to throw the stuff out 18 years ago, because much of it had to do with the childhood years of my daughters. Their school papers. Their clothes. Some of their toys. Their books. Added to that -- some boxes of home stuff that couldn't possibly be sold in a garage sale -- worthless art pieces. Worthless to most anyone, probably to the girls as well, but I wasn't sure.

The goal today was simply to make certain that the key still fit and that no rodents had gotten inside. Mice would have a field day with all that stuff, munching and peeing their way through it as if it was their own private abode.

The verdict -- no mice (phew!), lots of dust, boxes still standing. Everything fading in the way that it does after decades of disuse.

I know that the past has significance to all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not. But how we choose to remember it is another matter. Many of us like keepsakes. Some of us like to sift through old family papers. A friend of mine just this week is rereading all the letters her mom wrote her when she went away to college (that would have been more than fifty years ago). Me, I have one lengthy letter a parent wrote about me, pages and pages of analysis. That's enough.

You could say that when I wrote my memoir (Like a Swallow -- pick it up at your library or bookstore or online!) I let go of my childhood. But what about my married life, when I was such an actively involved parent to two little girls? 

I've always said that the only thing worth keeping is the stack of photo albums I put together (one for each year), compiling our history, their history in this visual presentation. When my husband and I split up, I let him take those albums, because we were friends then (we still are, but now with roadblocks, not necessarily of our making) and I thought it would show good will. I had access to the albums anytime I wanted to see them. That lasted for two years. I haven't seen the albums since.

Remarkably, I haven't been bothered by that. I know the albums are there, in his home. It's not as if they'd gone up in flames. If I made an effort I could probably work out some arrangement whereby I could haul them over here. 

But I haven't done it.

The memoir notwithstanding, indeed, Ocean notwithstanding, I don't really enjoy sifting through the past. Writing about it -- perhaps that. But physically holding on to some pieces of it? That's not me. 

Nonetheless, when I was in the storage unit, I found a huge box of photo rejects. The ones that never made it to the albums (with good reason! most of them are terrible!). I didn't really go through all its contents. But I picked up random envelopes (remember those envelopes we'd get at photo development places? With negatives in one pocket, photos in another?). And I glanced through some of them. With a smile.

What stood out for me was how close my daughters were in their later childhood and adolescence. And how much they were already building the blocks of their adult personalities. I see it in their eyes, in their poses. 

I took a scant handful of random pics, reminding myself that someday I can get a look at those albums again, though not now, not this year. Just someday.

(from our one family trip to Poland; these days I am the shortest of the three and we no longer all wear the same shoes!)

In the afternoon I pick up the grandkids.

And in the evening, a very gentle rain comes down. I reheat the chili, Ed goes down to the barn to lock up the hens. He comes back and tells me that Peach has died.

She was our oldest girl of the current flock. (We got her off of Craigslist in 2017 and she was already laying eggs then.) She belonged to a period where we named our hens and worried about pecking orders. She survived raccoon and opossum coop raids, hawk attacks, severe winters and amorous advances by over zealous roosters. Good old Peach! We buried her to the music of Moonlight Serenade, in much the same way we buried other animals here -- with some sadness, but a deep belief that her life (their lives) was, were, happy. She squawked for food until the last day of her life and demanded to be carried on colder days. But she was never grumpy, always a little shy, always our old Peach.

with love...