reeling

I learned how to drive in New York City, at the age of 18. I had a book of matches and scribbled on it was the name of a Driver's Ed company. I called them, they put me behind the wheel of a car and directed me to East River Drive. Terrifying! But, I took in the lesson of defensive driving and it served me well. I'm 71, I have crisscrossed the country many times, indeed, I've crisscrossed Europe many times, with its demonic Italian drivers and wrong side of the road British drivers, and German speeders, and congested cities. And I surely drive a lot now. Though I am human and have made blunders (oops! sorry car in blind spot!), I never once had an accident. Defensive driving means you anticipate other people's mistakes and distractions. But the thing is, there are some car movements you cannot anticipate and yesterday's crash was one of them. Once I was cleared to make a left turn, my eyes should be on the road ahead and not on weird car movement from the bus lane.

And still, perhaps because the kids were in the car (and Sparrow did bump his head), yesterday's crash rattled me. So much so that I had some wakeful times at night thinking through it, trying to understand how I could implement even more defensive strategies in the future.

By 6 in the morning I was done with pretending to sleep. And that's a good thing, because this morning is crazy busy. 

 

 

 

By 6:30, I am at the downtown farmers market. What a grand time to be there! Street parking is free until 8, the crowds are so thin that you can actually walk without bumping into another human being. And the selection is tops! I used to shop at this time for L'Etoile restaurant when I was their "forager." The best of the best, on full counters at every stall.

I circle the square, starting with my flower grower. Where have you been?? -- she asks me. Well she might wonder. I'd grown slack last year and I hadn't been picking up flowers this year yet. But now we are in business again! (She loads me with an extra bouquet of tulips, for free -- Happy Mother's Day, she tells me.)

I pick up some pastries at Far Breton...

 

 

 

... lettuces at Snug Haven, asparagus at one unfamiliar stall, but it could have been from any number of them. It's the hot market item this week.

Home again, I feed the animals... 

 

 

... and fix breakfast for the two of us. With lots of tulips at the table. (Kitchen, because it's a cool morning.)

And now I have to go pick up Snowdrop at the Young Shakespeare Players auditions. I'm a tad early, so I stop off at nearby Bloom's Bakery, where I run into my daughter, who had just dropped off Snowdrop. We live in a small town! With some very good bakeries!

Okay, Snowdrop is done.

I pack her into the car and we drive to the park where there will be a bridging ceremony. If you've done scouting, you'll know how this works: kids move from one level to the next with some pomp. Snowdrop bridged from Brownies to Junior Girl Scouts. 

Parents are there to watch, but her parents are totally occupied this morning. One is presiding over some university graduation ceremonies, the other is dashing between Sparrow's dance performance and the airport to pick up a friend who is coming for a visit. So it's me and the Girl Scouts and their parents. Good! As the girls play after the ceremony...

... I can let off steam about the car crash. It makes for a good story!

I'm supposed to take Snowdrop home then (a babysitter is minding Sandpiper. Complicated? You betcha!), but the girl begged for a Culver's fish fry lunch (her pescetarian status is going strong!), so we drove up, picked up her food, and came back to the farmhouse for some calm Atlantic cod and book time.

She is back home now, kids are enjoying the gorgeous day I hope, because really, it is one lovely day!

And I could do with a nap, but who naps when it is so very beautiful outside. Ed and I go for a walk in our local park. Shoes off, barefooted. I finally let out a very big exhale.

(the prairie is coming alive!)

 

 

(wild lupine)

Okay! Back at the farmette -- ready to weed! And to return to a calmer day.

brilliant, with a bang!

Such a day! All sunshine and May colors. Light green, lime green, dainty yellow green. A few flowers.

 

But could it be that they are overshadowed by the entirety? By the brilliant entirety?

 

(Tuxie, the sheep shed cat is hiding out in the flower field. Still not used to our visiting Polish engineer.)

Ed asks -- you want to go to Finca Cafe for breakfast?

I do!

He has some papers to notarize at a next door bank. And though the fruit is ready for our at home breakfast, I put it off for later.

It seems the perfect moment for us to celebrate May, togetherness, those light green colors. He wants to take the motorcycle. That's a tad cold for me, but I am agreeable. We're both so agreeable! I huddle behind him for the short ride.

We used to come to Finca a lot, when they had good bakery items. These days they only bake sweet cheese quesadillas. They're okay, but still -- maybe next time we should go back to Paul's? Or the local Tati? The sky is the limit!

While he pops out to attend to his signatures, I study Shakespeare's the Tempest. Snowdrop is trying out for the Young Shakespeare Players ("YSP") summer production of it. How can we not be nostalgic? Once upon a time her mom played Alonso in YSP's the Tempest.  Snowdrop wants to read for Alonso as well.

If thou be’st Prospero,
Give us particulars of thy preservation;
How thou hast met us here, who three hours since
Were wrack’d upon this shore; where I have lost--
How sharp the point of this remembrance is!--
My dear son Ferdinand.

The auditions are tomorrow. YSP is an inclusive organization. You audition for a part you'd like, but you are guaranteed something, no matter how poor your performance. Most kids do very, very well in their roles. Only a few struggle with memorization (they have 2.5 months to learn it all). Ages? They work as a team, spanning elementary, middle and high school grade levels. My older daughter did it for four years in a row (my younger one -- three years), starting age 9 (my younger girl -- starting age 7). And now here we are. Repeating history with the Tempest.

Home again. A "second breakfast," on the porch.

The rest of the morning? Weeding, mowing a few tight corners with the hand mower. And chatting with our guest from Poland who is looking for a place to stay this summer, along with his wife and their newborn. Well, soon to be newborn. 

And here's a return to something I'd abandoned due to the garden work: Ed and I go for our bike loop. I dont think I've biked since... March! Such a different landscape now!

The kids are here after school of course.

But our routines are off a bit. Snowdrop is practicing her lines for tomorrow's audition. 

 

 

 

And of course, there is the usual Friday lesson run. A bit nostalgic there as well, because though Sparrow still has a few violin lessons to go this year, Snowdrop is finishing up ballet today. It's family observation time.  The jury is out on whether she will return to ballet in the Fall. She likes it, but is that a marker of anything? Is there a class that she doesn't like? Okay, she snubbed soccer. Nonetheless, she has competing interests and ballet may have to recede for a while (forever?). So I'm nostalgic about watching this last dance class of hers.

But I never get to see it. I dont get to go to ballet, Sparrow doesn't get to go to his violin lesson either.

I'm driving up a busy road to deposit the little guy with dad and violin at his class. Almost there now. I need to make a left turn onto a side street. The cars coming from the opposite direction stop to let me through. I wave in appreciation. I'm nearly done with my turn and a car pulls into the parking lane and zips forward, crashing into me. How did he not see me? Why was he passing in the parking lane on the right? Unanswerable questions. (Unfortunately, the driver did not speak English. But he did talk up a storm to the police, who used Google translate to get some coherent story. I think his version was that he was in the proper driving lane. In any case, there were witnesses who called the police (thank you, civic minded people!!!) so I should not have problems. Ed asked -- did you get witness names of the cars that stopped for you? I did not. I was too busy calming screaming kids. The noise had been deafening.

In the end, parents came, took both kids, I stayed and waited for the police to file their report, then drove home. Ed tested the car for drivability (I have a more official check on it on Monday). The dents speak for themselves. His advice -- dont fix them! Scratched cars are more fun to drive! I had to smile at that.

 

Evening. Different, too, from the usual. We have our young Polish engineer over for a Thai supper. I'm not the cook, so the prep is limited to putting out plates and drinks. Our guest is delightful and positive and super pleasant to have with us for this short while.

So ends a full day, a brilliant day, an exasperating day! Tomorrow? Possibly fuller, possibly more brilliant! Less exasperating, please!

with love...

rainy day work

And we have another wet day today. Good for the garden. (Also good for the weeds.) Good for staying indoors. (Even though I planned on doing my seasonal moving of farmette lands which are sporting, in some places, nearly waist high grasses right now.) 

I walk to the barn quickly, barely pausing to take note of how the old faves are doing.

Now is the time for transition flowers to appear. They're the late spring bloomers and they help keep you sane before the summer bounty comes alive. There are the allium globes -- a predictable and reliable May and June flower...

 

 

 

... and then there is the less predictable Spanish Bluebell. I introduced a mix of colors last October and the first ones to pop open are the white ones.

And the lilac? Still bending its wet branches, still fragrant and beautiful. For another day or two.

We eat breakfast inside. Cozy. Oatmeal. It seems right for a rainy day but I tell you, it doesn't compare to a croissant! I'm too old to be so totally focused on the healthier of the two! Tomorrow, it's back to croissants.

Rainy day tasks. All indoors. Most on the couch. Many phone calls attendant to my mother's schedule and care. Ed's old college friends stop by, but I stay to the side of that encounter. Too much to do. Always too much to do!

But here's a nice surprise -- the rain passes, the kids come out of school to a clearing sky. 

Can we stop at Culver's for french fries? They always ask. Always.

I said once a week and we've already done two trips this week! (Once you break your resolve, it's downhill all the way.)

We'll make a deal! (This from Snowdrop, the supreme deal maker.) We wont ask for Culver's fries or ice cream again if on the last week of school we can have one or the other, every day!

Hmmmm.

Deal!

 

 

At the farmhouse, we read, but with many interruptions. The phone rings every few minutes, all relating to care adjustments for my mother. It is what it is. The kids are patient, eventually giving up on the reading in favor of play as I finish up with the calls.

In the evening, I get up on the tractor-mower and I mow. It's not great to cut fields of long grass and weeds when they're damp from the rains, but nor do I want to use a good weather day for what I think of as a yukky job. Dinner -- reheated chili -- is very, very late.

Tomorrow, it'll be me and the post-rain weeds. In good weather. I promise, it will be lovely! It always is.

cycle of flowers

It's like a bike ride through seasonal change. A long bike ride. Every few days we come to a new destination. The starting point? Crocus land. Soon after -- daffodils, with side spins to the villages of helleborus and hyacinth. We passed many Syberian squill. Blue with cold and envy as towering tulips overshadowed them. And speaking of blue, remember our pause along Virginia Bluebell lane? 

Then came the big ones: the orchard blooms, followed by the megalopolis herself -- the crab apple. We weren't quite out of her territory before we reached the lilacs.

 

 

We're still with the lilacs now, but it wont be for long. I see allium heads everywhere and peonies on the horizon. And yes, the occasional iris has cropped up along the way. And today, I saw the early Clematis: white, gorgeous, huge.

We leave one behind only to face the abundance of another. And so it continues, until the last aster fades in October, the white flowers of Calamintha have said goodbye to the once hovering bees, the tall spider lily has won the race with the almost as tall phlox.

Yes, there is a wistfulness in gardening. You have to say a lot of goodbyes. It will be hard, for example, to wake up to the last full lilac presentation. Maybe it's today, maybe it's on the weekend. You can't tell for sure. Yet you're always looking forward to the next pause with the next flower species. Perhaps this is the best part of perennial gardening: you strive to live in the moment, but you know damn well that there's excitement ahead too. Goodbye asparagus, hello strawberries! (Actually we have just entered asparagus season. A big yay to one of my very favorite vegetables which, like corn, tastes best when it's freshly harvested.)

It was a very early morning for me. A dental appointment. Nothing consequential. We mostly chatted about knee replacements (my dentist just had his second one). Still, it meant that I had to do the morning walk very early. The good of it -- the garden is magnificent in the morning light!

Breakfast is late, but on the porch. Beautiful and indulgent. When Ed says -- let's go take a look at the vegetable patch, I retort -- please, let's just sit here for a while. It's so rare that I am not in a rush!

We then do go out to look at the veggie fields. Once upon a time I tried planting a fuller vegetable garden here, but the soil was so darn awful that it was, I felt, a waste of time. Yes, tomatoes do well, with added compost, but the lettuces (so hard to save from visiting animals), the radishes, the carrots? Forget it. Still, this year Ed convinced me to try again. The soil is much improved after years of chipping and covering with fabric. The weeds aren't gone, but they're on the retreat. He's already planted the baby artichokes and melons and cukes. He showed me spaces between strips of fabric for my lettuce and carrot seeds.

I'm not convinced that any of it will thrive. We don't have fencing. We don't have raised beds. We don't have great soil (it's better, but it's not great). It's a distance from the farmhouse so I don't have an eye on its progress, its watering needs. 

And yet.

Gardening, as I have said before, is for the optimists among us. The planting wont be even and neat and compact and pretty, but I can give it a try -- in the crooked rows between pieces of fabric. I mean, why not. Three carrot varieties, a radish, a romaine and two radicchios.

Because we did get rain yesterday, the weeds are again trying to push through in the flower fields, so I try to stay on top of that as well. All that belongs to my morning and early afternoon.

 

Afterwards, I have to attend to my mother, who is being moved from the hospital where she was being treated for some muscle pain, to the rehab center where the hope is she will regain some of her strength so that she can return to her Assisted Living unit. I have no more to add to this (for now). It's a process and it's something I need to work on because, well, that's the way it is. My mother is not a happy camper in the best of times and she is certainly not one at the moment and though I have no illusion that she will magically take on happy camper traits in the week ahead, the goal for her has to be to reach the same state that she was in before she pulled a muscle.

Because of this, I had to bow out of helping with the kids this afternoon. The parents took over while I concentrated on the job of signing papers and fetching stuff she wanted from her apartment.

 

Evening. I make my way to the grocery store. I'm trying to keep this down to once a week and it's sort of working. It's a perfect thing to do after taking care of things over at the Rehab Center. I find the aisles of my grocery store to be happy places. Cheerfully full of fresh produce, flowers even. 

And then home. Ed is biking, so the normally quiet farmette lands are extra quiet. [We have noticed that because the new development lots are small, no one uses power mowers. In the suburbs, their roar is a weekend constant. Here, we never hear them. Well, except for our one neighbor. He's old school. That's fine. He tries to keep his space tidy and has great patience with the likes of us, who rarely mow and do not use weed control chemicals or fertilizers on our grasses.]

Evenings are beautiful here, especially now, before we start fretting about mosquitoes. I stay on the porch for a long while and just listen. To the birds (so many! This is what my app tells me -- in the space of two minutes, the following visited our farmette lands: the American Robin, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Balckbird, Tree Swallow, American Crow, House Sparrow, Chimney Swift, Song Sparrow, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Chipping Sparrow, Common Grackle, Brown-headed Cowbird, Black-capped Chickadee, Cedar Waxwing, European Starling, and the House Wren). And in between all that music, there is that beautiful silence. Because birds do that to you -- they quiet all that's within your head.

Dusk. Ed's back. Can I get you some watermelon?

with love...

rainy day

Thank goodness it rained. Watering crisis averted! All plants received some water. Perhaps not enough, but still, it gave them a thirst quenching lift.

My walk to the barn is stormy! I'm not one to head out when there is lightening, but the hens needed to be freed and fed and I needed a fresh bundle of lilies-of-the-valley for the breakfast table. And, too, I love looking at the lilac in full bloom, when it is drooping with rain!

It's a different side of a garden -- the wet one that hides secrets from the casual passerby. 

 

 

 

In a strange way, it reminds me of the first movie I went to see in New York when I moved there to be an au pair and to finish college -- the Garden of the Finzi-Continis.  It was the first time that I thought of a garden as a place that shelters, that keeps from view both the outside world to those within, and those within from the outside world. I had learned much about World War II in my last year of high school in Poland, but my focus had been a Polish one. The movie was almost like a start to my stepping out of that paradigm and into a broader one. Suddenly other stories, complicated ones, coming from complicated countries became important. In the movie, the story is of an Italian aristocratic Jewish family, as Fascism grips their country. It's a haunting movie that stays with me even now as I listen to the birds in the quietness of our own farmette garden and I look at the drooping flowers of the lilac bush.

Breakfast, at the kitchen table. With freshly picked lilies.

Rain. The plants needed water and I needed time away from the garden. My mom requires extra attention at the moment. She is in a downward spiral mood-wise and that does her no good. Indeed it's fair to say that it does no one any good. Figuring out how to deal with this takes time. At present she is not capable of making decisions for herself. That then falls on me.

Too, I return to lend a hand over at Steffi's House. This one:

My friend's project requires going forward with some choices and I'm good at that! I meet a bunch of people there for a consultation about windows. It turns out that this is one of the big decisions that you have to make when you buy a new house -- what will cover the windows? All sixteen of them here? My advice is simple: stick to neutral and keep the price down. The house already will eat up a chunk of money. Go easy on it!

And, too, I needed to catch up with my friend in Warsaw. I thought I could squeeze in a few morning minutes for a Zoom call but of course that's just impossible. I love our conversations too much to limit them to a few minutes.

Before very long it's time to pick up the kids. We never got the whopping winds nor the tornadoes that spun through the states to the south of us and for that I am very grateful, but oh my did the rains come down when the kids left the school! 

It was all very localized. By the time we got back to the farmette, the rains had stopped. Indeed, the downpour never touched our land. We had rain, but no downpour. What a difference a few miles makes!

(Today, he wants to listen to the war story with his sister...)

Stormy wet days are like that: you dont want to move too far away from where the others are hanging out.

 

And there you have it -- my rainy day. My beautifully wet rainy May day. 

a lilac Monday

What's the date today? Can you draw a cube? Face, velvet, church, daisy, red. What five words did I just say? Count back from 100, by seven. Repeat the following numbers. And now those five words again.

There, I've just given you some hints on how to ace the cognitive decline test. Because I did ace it and though I'm 71 and not 80, I can claim competence at sufficient levels to have me run for president, but for the fact that I don't much care for the job and am not qualified for it by virtue of having been born in Poland, among other things.

I agreed to the test while I was at a doc's office for something else. They say that they're trying to catch early dementia and Alzheimer's in people my age. It did lead me to wonder if I really want to ruin the rest of my decade by finding signs of possible decline. Would you want to know? Would I have felt compelled to tell you had I come in below 100%? Would you still read Ocean if you know its author was slipping?

All good questions! Going to doctors at my age is almost like going to music lessons -- there's no end in sight because they always think of other things they can test, which then leads you to consult with someone else, because my acing of the cognitive decline test to the contrary, at my age, you typically can expect to come in with subpar results somewhere along the line, and unraveling stuff is a forever thing. Ed doesn't engage the medical profession in this way and of course, the broader question then is -- why do I? It takes up time and today, I felt especially prickly about having to break up my morning because the day is just so beautiful! Here, follow along on my morning walk. It's the hour of the lilac, that's for sure!

(looking out the kitchen window...)

(the last tulip days...)

(allium coming into bloom: note the purple flower heads on long stems)

(the unbelievably awesome lilac, rewarding us for the three year pruning work we did on it)

(the early irises)

(but let's get back to the lilac!)

Breakfast, also with lilacs, on the porch.

We have another lilac -- a later blooming one, right behind the trash bins. It hasn't been doing well for years now and today I decided to do something about it and I guess I'm happy to have worked on it, but on the other hand, in digging around, I found a lot of rot in the trunk and root system. A metaphor for sure! Are we better off knowing that the lilac actually has a limited life span before it? On the flip side, I did dig out the rot and left behind some half healthy roots and branches and we put compost and chips on it and it's looking okay and maybe we will have saved it... Oh, the dilemmas forced upon us by nature!

More weed digging and pulling followed, but honestly, not too much because we are on the dry side of things. Weeds slow down when the rains stop. I'm hoping we're not headed for another drought this year! Watering plants can take even more time than digging up weeds. 

And soon it's time to pick up Snowdrop.

("the tulips smell great too!")

The entire afternoon is spent reading chapter after chapter of The Night War (the new novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley). It's a World War II story, but, too, it's a story about overcoming adversity and channeling your inner strength to get through tough times. Helping kids develop resilience has to be one of the more important things we can do. Perhaps listening to stories about children suddenly confronting harrowing wars and tough life choices can help in this. [Or it can lead to nightmares! Hard to say how much of this is too much. Snowdrop brought up Anne Frank on our evening car ride. Clearly this stuff is on her mind.]

I leave you with an evening lilac photo. Because this moment really does belong to that ephemeral, scented purple bloom.  

 

with love...