First Day of School

All five grandkids start the new school year today. That's a big wow for me! One starts fourth grade, two start first grade, and the youngest two return to their preschools, though each will be on the young side of their classroom composition. So, big steps forward for all!

For me as well. Ed is still waiting for a favorable wind to bring him into his final sailing port, so I wake up to an empty house. It's cold and it's dark when I get out of bed. Yes, the sun does crack the horizon by the time I go to the barn to release and feed the chickens...

... but the feel of autumn is unmistakable. 

(a mist covers the prairie just beyond the farmette lands)

I need to be at my older girl's house a few minutes after seven and I dont want to get stuck in traffic, so I am on the road way before that. Tradition has it that I take the First Day photo of her three kids. It's silly, of course. She's a good photographer. But I love these routines that give a good push to a new beginning. (Witness: big deal about breakfast, every single day.) I very much love always being there at the start of the new school year.  (And if I could be in two places at once, I'd be in Chicago too. With permission, I'm posting as well the "first school day" pic of the Chicago girls.)

(Snowdrop)

(Sparrow)

(Sandpiper)

(Juniper and Primrose)

And it is joy. Sure, one child is a tad nervous about the reentry into the social quagmire that is the classroom, and another is tearful when left by parents in a totally new setting, but this is all insignificant. All five kids are happy campers. Or rather schoolers.

Which, of course, puts us old people in great moods as the new school year begins.

I drop off the older kids, I do grocery shopping, I drive over to the bakery. All this before my first cup of coffee!

(always fun to see what designs appear on the breads)

 

My breakfast (finally!) is with music and my computer. So yes, a long one. On the porch, but I'm bundled in a sweatshirt. The cool air stays with us all the morning hours.

 

 

I could get ambitious, but something of that labor-free weekend stays with me and so I go slowly with my tasks for the day. I clean up cat messes, I weed a little, I scrub a bathroom, I attend to my unhappy mother. And finally, I settle in with my second cup of coffee and a book. To get that feeling of peace that I always want to have with me as I set out to pick up the two older kids at the end of their school day.

We come to the farmette of course. Familiar and sweet.

 

I'm not surprised to hear that all five kids had great first school days. It's like a spring garden -- there so much hope, so much enthusiasm for the project ahead, that it's easy to get sucked into all that positivity. Old friends stay loyal, new friends are responsive, teachers are smiling, the work load is small.

Such a good first day... For all the kids out there who went off to school for the first time today: may your enthusiasm never waver, and your friendships grow strong.

Happy year ahead!

Labor Day Weekend

This Labor Day weekend will always stay in my memory -- for the labor-free days, for the absence of Ed, off somewhere in a boat, and for the incredible weather -- probably the best Labor Day weather we have ever had. Sunny, with temps in the low 70sF (so about 22C). Perfection!

Still, Labor Day itself does stand for something inevitable, unstoppable and for most of us -- regrettable. The end of summer. 

When my kids were little, I both looked forward to the start of their school year and dreaded it. I hated the early morning rush and the homework crunch. But I loved their re-engagement with learning. With school friends. With life outside the home. Now, the end of summer has a different meaning. I'm focused on the warmth of the day, the status of the flower fields, and yes, thoughts about next summer: how will it present itself? How should I plan for it?

(Morning walk)

(Breakfast)

I dont linger too long over breakfast. I want to bike over to Stoneman's, for the first ears of corn that they'll put out on this last day of their season.

All six of the Stoneman kids (actually grandkids, cousins to each other) are there helping today. (If you want to see their active engagement in the corn picking and selling project, just look at the Stoneman FaceBook page. The grandma was in charge of social media posts this year and she did a phenomenal job putting up daily photos of the kids "at work.")

There's an article in the NYTimes explaining how the summer's end brings with it a sadness that needs to be acknowledged, in the same way that it's best to acknowledge the passing of a pet or an important person in your life. Spend time allowing yourself to be sad. Don't just leap into the next phase of your life without looking back. As you know, I'm not one who loves to look back and I'm also not one who likes to wallow in mopiness. My reticence I'm sure is born of two things: I feel I wasted a good part of my adolescence festering in the sadness of unrequited love. I wish I had learned then to dig myself out of that hole. And secondly -- I've watched my mother drown herself in misery over every event in her life that did not meet her expectations, and I've watched her get stuck in that sinkhole, without ever developing the ability to move on. I suppose in my eternal quest not to go down that lane, I've moved too much away from exploring sadness.

Maybe too much, but not totally! As I drove up to Stoneman's -- that familiar road that leads up to their corn barn, with the cows to the left and the home of one of the young families to the right, I sighed big time. And as one of the kids intuitively helped me pack the 13 ears of corn into my bike basket, and others leapt to help as well, I recognized that end of summer feeling, where something you take for granted in July is now about to close down for the year. The door to my summer, their summer, our summer was being shut right there, at Stoneman's farm. One small scene of kids packing up my corn, made me cry.

In the afternoon I did do a little spot weeding, just in case I decide to put my energies into the garden again next spring. 

And then I Zoomed with my two Law school friends, because it had been a while since the three of us chatted together. I'd been piggybacking on various "others" accounts to have lengthy conversations (Free Zoom allows for only 40 minutes -- never enough!), but today I took the plunge and purchased my own Zoom account for the year. I need Zoom in my life. I need to stay connected. Period.

 

\

 

Quiet evening with a book (my friends recommended several: will I have time to finish any of them, given that my labor-free weekend is coming to an end?  Of course I will! It'll just take that much longer).

 

For supper, I make the Lithuanian cold beet soup that Poles have embraced as their own. I like it quite a lot. My Polish friends like it. I dont know a single American who would share that love. I think you have to be born within the (fluid to be sure) Lithuanian or Polish borders to think that cold beet soup is a summer must. Sort of like fireworks are to an American on the Fourth of July. So I end my summer with it.

Here's what went into mine (missing in the photo: lemon juice, kefir, yogurt, and the egg):

Here's the final product.

I have an ear of Stoneman's corn on the side. Last time I can eat corn picked that very morning!

It's been a really full, really good summer, here at the farmette! So are we ready for September sniffles, an October deep freeze, November dreariness, December short days, January Arctic blasts, the interminable February winter slog, and unexpected March ice storms?? 

with love...

Labor Day Weekend

This spring (was it for Mother's Day? My birthday maybe?), a daughter presented me with a gift certificate to a beautiful local spa where you can get a really good massage. She knows I love massages and can rarely get myself to spend the money on one. (The place is called Kneaded Relief -- you gotta love that play on words!) 

Here's a funny detail: exactly nineteen years ago, I was in the thick of my divorce. My ex was moving to Chicago and was anxious to set up his home there, and so when it came time to sell our house and clear it out of our accumulated belongings, he helped pack for a few days, but then he went back to Chicago and I was charged with offloading stuff and putting the rest into storage. It was a huge job and the only way I got through it was because two kind friends in the neighborhood helped me organize garage sales to move some of the bigger pieces out. But the small stuff, set for storage, and the final clean-out before the new owners of the house would move in -- that was left to me.

I wanted the new family to love the house. It had been the place where our daughters basically grew up. They had loved it with all their little hearts and I wanted that good vibe to be passed on. So in addition to emptying it of our stuff, I really cleaned the place well. It sparkled! When the new owners did the final walk through, the carpets were freshly vacuumed, the bathrooms were like new, the kitchen had not a bit of grease, not a crumb in sight. 

The new owners were so impressed and so grateful that together with their real estate agent, they sprung for a gift certificate, which they presented to me at the closing. It was for a massage at Kneaded Relief.

I put this away in my file of Important Papers and I let it sit there. My days were flooded with work, and with a move, and with, well, meeting Ed!

The certificate survived all my subsequent moves -- first to an apartment in downtown Madison, then to a condo, and finally to the farmhouse. (And here's another fun fact: the storage unit that I set up with all the stuff that I could not sell but also could not toss, because it included mementos that were really not mine but my daughters' and my ex-husband's, only last week was finally emptied out, with the stuff finally moved to their various homes. Owners of storage units make a living off of others' broken and busy lives.)

Today, on this first day of September, I dug out my old gift card and my new certificate (marveling at how the one from 2005 was for a massage valued at $90 -- impossibly low by today's prices) and set out for a spa treatment. Actually it would have to be a super treatment of some sort because if you joined the two cards, I would have been flush with Kneaded Relief funds.

First, though, animal care and a garden walk.

And breakfast. One hour long today. I had to cut it short!

And then I biked over to Kneaded Relief.

Of course, as I had suspected, they would not honor the old card. There, in bold print, it said -- valid for a year. Not surprisingly, 19 years was a bit over the top. Nevertheless, I still had my gift from this year and so I let Mezi work some magic on my tired old-ish body, as I let myself drift into the lala land that floods me as I lie limp in the aromatic fields of wild rose and lavender.

You have to understand how momentous this whole morning was for me. A flood of memories, one leapfrogging over the next. And images of my girls -- so grown up now! One had just taken her two older kids to a Shakespeare performance at American Players Theater, the other is spending time with her husband and kids in Door County, where, coincidentally Ed is expected to sail into, right as we speak. Life is so full of coincidences!

Mezi was so good that I hesitate to use her name here, lest you locals will all book with her, rendering her unavailable to me for future massages. Still, I must share the good stuff so there you have it -- from my point of view, she was fabulous. (I do not require nor like strong kneading, but I do know a good tension relief massage when I see one.)

I biked back slowly, in a state of total bliss.

And as I biked I thought about how there are fewer and fewer pleasures left that are deemed totally healthy. Oh sure, exercise -- but not too much at my age, lest you wreck your knees or whack your back out! Wine, which I have loved in the evenings, now is thought to be the devil incarnate. Scented candles? You inhale particles. Flying away for a vacation -- destroys the planet. Soon they'll be ripping away my milky coffee in the morning and telling me to drink water. But maybe a nice, modest kneading will remain on the plus side of the health continuum? Friends of ours get one once a week and they swear by it. Maybe once every month or two is not a vice? One can hope.

Though I remain labor free today and tomorrow, I do have the young family over for dinner. That's okay. I could use some human contact in my weekend of free time. I cook a simple dinner, they come...

We eat on the porch...

And after everything is put away, I retreat to the couch, with a book.  Feet up, with that lasting mellowness that stays with you after someone has worked you over to a state of limp relief. 

One more day of this labor-free lifestyle! Though I should admit -- I'm not perfect at it. This afternoon, for example, I vacuumed the whole house, and cleaned out the refrigerator and pantry. Some habits are just too hard to break.

Labor Day Weekend

I am getting the hang of not laboring! I'll throw out one example: it's 1p.m., and I am just finishing breakfast on the porch.

It's a stunning day. Cool in the morning, sunny and pleasantly warm going forward. I get up a whole hour later than yesterday. (See what I mean?) It's market day and I plan to take in the Downtown market at a snail's pace. I feed the animals, snip some 40 spent lilies...

(remembering Sissinghurst...)

... and I head out. 

Early fall markets are all about color and abundance and I see both. Since I'm there easily before 9, it's not too crowded -- a pleasant stroll, even if you're not intending to buy much. And I am not intending to buy much.

Ha.

Wouldn't you be tempted?

I pick up carrots, arugula, beets, mixed mushrooms, dill micro-greens, radishes, cheese curds, door county peaches, and flowers. I think I showed great restraint!

From there to Madison Sourdough. I'm back to croissant love. 

And now breakfast on the porch. Extending over a couple of hours. Really truly.

Birds heard at the farmette: Field Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, and European Starling. Hummingbird sighted just now. The point is, it's a gaggle of sounds, and a feast of color, and a sampling of delights. I could get used to this.

In the afternoon, I bike over to Stoneman's farm. 

(en route)

I need to stock up on corn for the winter and we are on their last three days of corn harvest. 

 

 

Most corn people will tell you to cook/steam the corn briefly before you freeze it (shucked, of course). I have never done that. Shuck and freeze raw corn has given me excellent kernels for soups, and chilis, and all those other preparations that could stand for a cupful of corn. However, I have this free weekend. I know blanching corn before freezing preserves the flavor and nutrients to a greater degree. So that you can make salads and salsas and dishes where texture matters. (Not that I will ever use corn this way, but still...) So I prepare a few bagfuls of the blanched kind. And I will do more on Monday -- the very last day of Stoneman's for the year.

Oh, could it be that summer is ending? Are we even ready for that? 

Late summer evenings are gorgeous, despite the fading gardens, the tired landscapes. In the amber light they dont look so tired anymore.

 

Two days of the weekend behind me, two ahead. I hope your Labor Day weekend is equally labor-free. We need these pauses in our lives. A detox of sorts, an emptying of the mind. It's lovely to get mine now, at the end of summer, when the sun is still warm, and the birds sing their heads off, and a breakfast on the porch can last sooo long...

Labor Day Weekend

Well it is that for me: a weekend of rest. Feels weird. For one thing, I am incapable of "sleeping in," so I have an extra long day of rest because I am up so very early.

 

We had some storms at night. I'm glad. It's been so beastly dry. Had it not rained, I would have felt compelled to go over and water Steffi's lawn, but with a good inch of a steady rainfall, I feel that ought to do for now. We also have some felled branches on the farmette lands, from the winds that came through this way. I'll leave that clean up to Ed! 

And speaking of the sailor himself, I finally heard from him early this morning. He didn't have internet or cell service, but now he's zipping along sprightly so I expect the trip will not be terribly long in the end. Wait, I best not jinx it!

*     *     *

I haven't much interest in weeding today, but I do snip some spent phlox. It looks unattractive otherwise and, too, if I let it drop to the ground, it throws down seeds everywhere, and the flower fields become one big phlox meadow. I dont want one big phlox meadow. And of course, I still go after the spent lilies. There aren't many, but there are some and I have to hand it to them -- they'll be blooming into the first days of September. Remarkable, considering how warm this summer has been.

 

 

Breakfast. On the porch. Leftover treats from Mindy's. Very yummy.

*     *     *

There are some tasks that require my careful attention, whether it's Labor Day weekend or any other day of the year. The animals. My mother.

A word about her because it's been a while since I did an update here. She's declining in mood. From not so good, to really not so good, and actually pretty close to terrible right now. I again had a long conversation with the head nurse (and we are having a team meeting in a couple of weeks -- something that happens on a quarterly basis in the place where she lives) and we are pretty much in agreement -- my mother blames the staff for her troubles and refuses to cooperate with them because she is convinced that they are all ill-tempered beasts. The nurse explained that this is not unusual for people in the end stages of dementia. The loss of control does that to you. You become a different person. In my mother's case though, it's a little different because although she can be forgetful about daily stuff, she shows no sign of real dementia. Her attitude (finding trouble with whoever, for whatever reason) is one that she brought into the game. Don't I know it! So, we're all struggling to make the best of it, but my daily conversations with her have now deteriorated into long periods of listening to her spin herself into a real tizzy of gloom. She no longer looks for information from me, she certainly refuses to touch the computer, she asks questions that always have just a one word answer because this all she wants. "Fine." Coupled with "I'm sorry you are having a terrible day." Sometimes she'll fantasize about the past, inventing stories of how it was. That's okay by me. I prefer that fiction to an endless "this place is hell."

*     *     *

A weekend without structure is grand, but I do manage to fill at least this day with small tasks and a lot of them are done online, meaning in a sitting position. That's not good! By late afternoon I push myself out the door for a bike ride. Just a short one. To move and unstiffen my knees! 

And as I ride my wonderful electric Alpine Blue, I extend the ride, and then I extend it some more, steering myself toward our beloved county park and from there, I again pick up our farmette road, but with a pause, because look who we have here, at the side, munching away at the corn! Two babes and a mommy urging them to get out of the spotlight!

And further down, a third babe!

How can you not love a bike ride along these country roads!

*     *     *

One fourth of the long week-end behind me! Wait, is tomorrow Saturday? Without structure, I can hardly tell. Let's see if I can rouse myself to do something more adventurous. Maybe. 

with love...

Thursday

At 3 pm this afternoon, I sit down with a cup of coffee and leftover bits of a coffee cake from Mindy's in Chicago. I am home. I consider it my first moment of total exhale since... oh, I don't know when! Looking back on the past months, my head spins. From a winter of travel, to spring planting, to June travel, to July lily care, to the Poland trip in August, all culminating in Grandma Camp that officially ended today. Ed is still away sailing, the house is quiet. The chickens survived the lock-down (forced upon them for two days by my absence, in which they pooped up their water, their coop, basically everything), the cats? It remains to be seen. I've spotted three out of six since I've been back. Happily, Dance, my hands down favorite, not even close, and I dont care if that's not fair, is among them.

I have on the table a magazine that I picked up on one of my flights. I dont even remember which flight. It was free and it was about travel and it looked interesting and I haven't had time to look at it. My to do list before each of these trips, gardening sagas, and camp days just kept growing. Now it is all checked off, or at least  no longer relevant. 

All is quiet. 

It's not that I thrive on quiet. For me, too much quiet is stressful! It means I haven't engaged with the world in a way that is important to me. It means I'm ailing, or unplugged, or in transition, or that I've given up. Still, I do greatly appreciate a period of quiet (I have three or four days of it in store) following months of being extra busy. I need it to think through all that just happened and what I have learned from it and how I should focus my attentions going forward. I need to review. I need to write.

But let me go back to the morning, which was lovely, and still in Chicago. It was a morning with my girls there (the dad had gone to work early, my daughter took the day off, my granddaughters were on vacation from school still).

(Juniper is very happy to have Primrose back!)

 

 

Just a couple of hours, but what wonderful hours they were!

We walked over to Mindy's -- a beloved bakery that really does have outstanding breakfast treats.

Equipped with those, and with coffee...

 (one girl catches up on the financial outlook as I wait for my latte, the other couldn't care less about market prospects...)

... we hurry back home...

(come run with me!) 

(okay!)

... and indulge!

And then the girls go off with their mom and I drive home. 

As usual, the drive from Chicago to the farmette is sentimental and sweet in that it's always full of exquisite memories. Stepping into the lives of the young family in the big city allows me to see their everyday unfold and it is always a beautiful experience. Both my daughters navigate work and family life deftly, with total commitment and infinite patience. I just marvel at how much they must do each day and how they manage to maintain a smile through it all. Sure, I was once that busy, but I always felt that I was under-serving one job in favor of putting my energies into the other. When the girls were little, I was too often distracted at work. My mother helped a little with minding them when I was at the Law School, but it wasn't a perfect arrangement and so I cut out of school and work as much as I could to take over. (And then she left altogether to go to California, so we made do with my part time schedule and a rotation of summer sitters.) My daughters, on the other hand, don't shortchange their work, and they most certainly do not shortchange their families. Not even a little, at the corners. And they even manage to have occasional evenings of fun with their spouses. It is an amazing balancing act and it leaves me with such a sense of happy pride. 

This is what I think about on the drive home. 

I make good time today: no Chicago traffic and so I am in town a little after noon. I stop for groceries and then I speed back to the farmette to take stock of the animals. The garden will receive some attention tomorrow. Not today. I am happy that I took the time to straighten the farmhouse before leaving. The kids were so good at playing on their own that last morning, that everything is basically put away and I can do this -- sit back and exhale. And do a Zoom call with Bee. And answer emails that have been piling up. 

And after dinner (which is a salad and a leftover pizza slice!) I pick up the magazine. 

(only the flowers picked by the three Grandma campers remain...)

 

with so much love...