Thursday

The better the weather, the more intense my gardening work. I'd say that work reaches the level of "frantic" right now. The weather is that spectacular! And I'm running out of time.

I'm weeding still -- this time, in addition to working some more on the Big Headache (aka Big Bed), I also hit the bed around the black walnut that the Madison Gas and Electric people took down (the tree grew right in the middle of my secret path bed). And, too, I'm moving Lost Lilies. You dont know about Lost Lilies? Those are the ones I planted a while back and then all sorts of stuff grew around them (phloxes, monardas, rudbeckias mainly) and they got lost somewhere in that thicket. I still check up on them all July long, but I'm the only one who knows where they are. These girls are totally invisible to the outside world. So, I'm slowly moving some of them out. Like maybe six per year. (Yes, there are that many!) To better spaces. May they thrive.

But first, of course, there is that morning routine...

(Out back: our melon field is filling up with ripe ...melons!)

And that morning breakfast. 

You know what's really amazing and totally incomprehensible to a person who grew up in postwar Poland? That yesterday at breakfast, Ed and I talked about getting a tiny toaster oven and with a couple of clicks of a finger, there arrived last night a box with just that, so that this morning, I took out two frozen croissants, out them on a tiny tray, and in five minutes -- perfection!

This right now is my cooking station for just about everything I cook on a daily basis:

Ed would add to it our mini microwave and I do also have a pot for making tea water. Amazing how small changes can simplify your life!

Okay, then comes the frantic work and sure enough, I look at my watch and I see that it's time to pick up the kids.

Thursday is our local market day. I'm thinking it may be the last one I take the kids to. I'll miss the next two and the last one in October is likely to have poor weather, only because we've had nothing but great markket weather this fall, and all good things must come to an end. So we rejoice extra hard at the loveliness of it all. (As always, Ed joins us at the market.)

(He picks doughnut, she pick cookie)

(how about these?)

(drawn to the artsy stuff)

(not too old...)

(cheese curds and one last time -- corn)

(to the farmhouse...)

Play at home, drop off kids, bike with Ed.

I've been so busy, that biking has fallen off for me, which is a shame because Fall is great for bike rides. No matter: tonight we bike.

 

 

And sure enough, that wave of sleepiness washes over me pretty quickly! And still, we linger on the couch, because, well, a couch evening is about as special as it gets. Calm, with a movie and a few squares of chocolate. Happy.

Wednesday

Beautiful blue skies, shiny and clear window panes on the porch ceiling, golden meadow grasses, purple asters, and the ever persistent white gladioli. That's what awaits me this morning.

Oh, and dont forget about the white Bresse girls.

What's there not too love??

We almost take our breakfast outside, but even in the later hours of the morning, the air is cool, the warmth of the kitchen beckons.

We discuss ovens. The switch to Induction is too complicated and requires too much destruction and reconstruction at the farmhouse. And so we're on a path of compromise: we work with one induction plate and I am lobbying to acquire a mini toaster oven so that we need not use the gas stove for every reheat that I do (croissants come to mind!). 

In the end Ed agrees to get a cheap one if I agree to get rid of one other appliance. Easy peasy: out goes the toaster. Whoever even toasts things anymore! 

Our gas-less cooking future is looking rosy!

 

Now, about those flower fields. I go out to weed the Big Bed. As you have probably figured out, the Big Bed is... big. And prone to weeds. This last characteristic can be applied to all flower fields, but the Big Bed manages to hide the weeds when they're small and before you know it, I have myself a Big Bed of big weeds. I've been spot cleaning it for weeks now, but that means the edges look decent, while the interior sucks. I attack that interior today, which takes forever and at the end of the morning I'm only about half done. The nagging question for me is this: should I even bother? At this late stage, the weeds that will seed a new generation of weeds will have done this by now; I can't take that back. But the weeds themselves -- are some perennials?  Some are, but there are lots that are a mystery box for me. DO I really need to dig them all out? Wont it be easier to clean the beds in spring?

It's one of the many many questions that I have about flower growing that in my nearly fifty years of gardening I've never answered for myself: what to do when. And of course, it's not only a matter of what's good for the garden. There is, too, what's better for me. In spring, I have enthusiasm for gardening. In autumn -- it feels more like a chore. On the other hand, in spring, I have a huge to-do list. In autumn, my list grows small. 

So I weed. To give myself a head start on spring clearing.

 

My second task for today is to prepare the pots for wintering over inside. Which ones? And how best to get them ready for indoor life? You can winter over most anything, but some flowers do best if you give them a quiet and cool winter, say in the basement, with minimal care then, and intense care come early spring. Do I really want to fuss with that? And as every year, I throw out my Big Idea: why don't we construct a greenhouse? I could winter over most everything then!

Ed doesn't want a greenhouse and in truth, I'm not keen on expanding my gardening into the cold season. I need my farmer's rest season! Still, when I look at all that color that will vanish with the first frost, it's tempting to reconsider. 

 

 

Gardening dilemmas! They are such a good topic for a restless mind! You weigh one idea, throw it away, try another. In the end, most ideas come and then vanish. To return at another time, another year perhaps. 

 

And of course, by this time I must hurry to pick up the kids. One of them had a tough day at school. Some meanness occurred, tears were shed. We talk about it.

It's always tough to both comfort and toughen up a child who faces unpleasantness at school. Of course, at some point, bullying can be so severe that adult intervention is the only way to manage it. But the reality is that there will always be kids who are just plain obnoxious and you want your grandkid to manage at least some of that on his/her own. 

Since overall the school year is going well for both, by the time we approach Tati's Cafe, both kids are in great moods. Sparrow, as usual, hits the dominoes.

Snowdrop asks for something special which her friends have tried and I've never heard of -- a Boba drink. She picks one with brown sugar bobas. So far as I can figure out, it's another way to push a sweet beverage on us. I've not been missing much! (Luckily she likes the bubbles. Not so much the beverage.)

Farmhouse.

Books and games, then they're gone and Ed's biking and it's just me. My quiet moment. Eh, overrated. I wait to reheat the soup, to turn on a movie. Ed'll be home soon.

Tuesday

I took on tidying up that side-of-the-driveway flower bed and I aim to finish it! It's a must do. By the time the bulbs arrive, I want spaces cleared, beds ready. Well, maybe that's a bit ambitious. But that's the target for the next few good weather days.

But first, morning animal chores and a walk through a very autumnal garden.

And then a delightful pause once more for breakfast with my friend. Over at Lakeside Cafe, where the bakery treats are very low key, almost nonexistent, but the atmosphere is so very pleasant.

(It's hard to find a place that has all three going for it: ambiance, good baked goods, good coffee. Once things move indoors, the space and oftentimes the noise level become an issue. Ah well. We go for ambiance today!)

And now comes my intensive gardening work, all to the sound of chain saws working away. The tree cutters are doing their roadside once-every-handful-of-years maintenance, trimming trees that grow close to the electrical wires. Ed hates this butchering of his beloved trees and hides under a quilt inside all day. Me, I'm glad for the sunlight that will get through the dense foliage of some of our tree canopy. The trees will survive this surgical necessity. And anything that grows at their base will thrive. Win win, in my opinion.

(Well, two trees were completely taken down. So, more sun light on this bed, but the sight of piled up logs makes for a very unhappy Ed!)

Okay, the flower field by the driveway is cleaned up and chipped, ready for the bulb influx. Drab and dreary now, but I'm hoping for color come spring and summer!

 

And this is how it gets to be time to pick up the kids. Well, once again just one kid. This one. 

 

 

 

(The other has an appointment.) She brings home a password handed to the kids in school for a computer game (because what we really want for our kids is more screen time!). Ed helps her set it up. Fine, a few minutes wont hurt and she is so happy with it!

 

 

 

Too, we finish a book, which feels deeply satisfying: there's so much good stuff out there to read together and each time we find a gem it stays with you, in much the same way that some adult books stay with you for a long long time (while others are instantly forgettable, so that when I come across them in my Kindle, marked as "read," I think -- really? I read that? I wonder what it was about ...).

 

Evening. Soup making time! Ed is home, I am home, Fall is with us. Soup time for sure.

With love...

Monday energy

 This day would have proceeded along a different track had it been gray, wet, or cold. But it's none of those things. Yes, it's cooler -- shorts are out now until maybe May (I speak for myself -- Ed wears them year-round). But the sun is out and I am motivated! (Possible the vaccination fatigue has receded. Or, maybe I am like a yo-yo that can never stay in one spot, with one trend, a single idea ("reading in the fall!") for long.

A morning walk feels radiant!

Breakfast -- well, inside. And oatmeal! Something I bring out only in the cooler seasons.

I take a quick walk, alone because Ed is tied up with his machining discussions. And then I attack, really attack the side flower bed by the driveway. I am determined to keep it neat and pretty this coming growing season. It's one of the more modest flower fields because I planted it early on in my life at the farmette, and I was rather random -- some uninteresting lilies went in (yes, there are plenty of those around), some bearded irises (they are a challenge and they topple and they have a very short blooming season), some spiderwort. By midsummer there are weeds everywhere and I always wonder -- why do I treat this bed so poorly, given that it is the most visible one to anyone who comes up the driveway? I'm not replanting most of it, but I did put in some new lilies a few weeks ago and today I dug up many bucketfuls of weeds. Tomorrow I'll chip it and later on I'll put in some spring bulbs.

Three hours of outdoor work. On the one hand -- I'm spent. On the other hand, as always after a spell of intense garden digging -- I'm relieved that I can still do it.

Just Snowdrop today after school...

The girl is growing so fast! This isn't one of those hyperbolic truisms that a grandparent might say. She really is shooting up there. At nearly 55 inches now, she is very quickly approaching adult height levels. Of course, she is in fourth grade. Kids, girls especially, have their growth spurt just at that age. I look at her and I think -- wow, not a little one anymore.

It's ballet eve for her. Just as we are heading out to her studio, Ed calls out asking if she wants to help him pick some pears. She loves these farmette jobs!

The pears in my opinion are just okay, but there's something uniquely special about fruits you picked yourself. Especially with a fruit picker!

In the evening, I take her to her studio and go on to grocery shop, while Ed goes out for one last dinner with the Polish engineer. It means the farmhouse is extra quiet once again when I return. Now's the time to take out my kindle! And I do. My Fall reading moment is now...

Sunday, Fall cometh...

It rained, it stormed, I slept anyway.

You probably think I'm incapable of having a slow moving day, that something within me -- a restless gene maybe, an surplus of adrenaline, pushes me to weird and unnecessary excesses each and every day. Today will prove you wrong!

My morning walk is damp, smelling of wet leaves and muddied pathways. The bucket shows more than an inch of rainwater. Nice!

(last of the lilies)

("why is it so wet out here?")

And then what do I do?  I pour myself a bowl of granola, and make that steamy milky coffee that I love, and I get working on a jigsaw puzzle.

There was a moment when my doing a jigsaw puzzle drove Ed nuts, because I'd spread it out over the table for days on end. It was during the Christmas season and there was the usual stuff that accompanies that holiday, all strewn around the house. The tree, the unopened Amazon boxes, all of it. The puzzle (a holiday one no less) was the last straw. He said something to the effect of "let me know when you're done with all this" and retreated to the sheep shed to stew. 

Since that time, he has relaxed somewhat about the holidays. And I know to keep things in another room so there aren't piles right under his nose. And, too, not to start in on jigsaw puzzles at this time of the year. But, he has been away for the weekend and so I had opened up a puzzle, and of course, because I killed myself doing farmette chores yesterday, I did not get beyond the construction of the perimeter. And then Ed calls late last night and tells me -- guess what, I'm coming home around noon tomorrow. And so I forget about everything else and sit down to do the puzzle.

 

The cat is not helping. At all.

As Ed comes in, I'm about half done, but it's only a 500 piece one and so I tell him -- I promise to have it done and out of here by evening.

 He grins and dives right in to help, only to admonish me -- hey, you're cheating! 

How so??

You're looking at the picture!

Is this not allowed? 

You bet it's not!

 

 

We get it done by 2. It would have been earlier, had I not felt compelled to put down the image and work without that "insider information."

From that point onward? Couch time all the way! I have now ten books queued up for reading (I went on a kindle binge) and I am so in love with the idea of an autumn with books that it will be hard to get me to do much of anything else. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much. 

In the evening we watch a sailing movie. He talked me into it. Sailing, albeit of the armchair kind at the moment, is very much on his mind. What can I say, we love our everyday life here, at the farmette, but our ideas of what makes for a good vacation? Could not be more different. You know how the country is thought to be divided right now? Well, that division is nothing compared to the travel chasm between the two of us. I love that guy, but as far as trip ideas go -- he thinks mine are excruciatingly boring and I think his are nuts, especially for me, at my age, and with my sensibilities. Wildly different!

Still, it's so very nice to have him home again. 

with so much love...

 

Saturday

Morning walk photos are getting to be a challenge. After a season of radiant flowers, the drying flower fields seem limp and brittle. I am facing the six month long quest (from October through the end of March) for interesting farmette images: what's out there for you to see, for me to admire? You really have to look hard and sometimes nothing seems good enough.

If I seem cranky, it's because I had the same reaction to my vaccination that I experienced after the very first one: a spiky fever and sore everything. That pretty much describes my night. In addition, some machine in the basement started to beep intermittently and I had no idea which one nor what I should do about it. The farmhouse is full of stuff like that: machines and gadgets that only Ed could possibly deal with. This particular annoying beeper would go into silent mode the minute I entered the basement. A few hours later, it would start again. Cats watched me hobble up and down, shivering from the fever, frustrated with my own incompetence. Is it the humidifier? The flooding monitor? Couldn't be that -- there's no water anywhere. Back to bed, huddle under ten blankets, wait until dawn.

By sunrise, those vaccination side effects had mostly receded and the beeping had stopped. So yes, I'm fine, great, fantastic. Just awfully tired.

Breakfast, alone. This could well be my last one on the porch. The cool-down will start tomorrow. I take my time today.

The cats are in their fall hunting mode. They regularly bring in mice, sometimes alive, sometimes dead, sometimes already half processed through the digestive system. This morning I heard a rickety sound on the porch and found a huge frog again. Mice I do not rescue. Frogs? Yes. And as I usher the beautiful big guy into a box then out the door, I think about how farm-like this place feels right now. The animals. The fields of grasses, the orchards. True, there are no sheep, cows, goats, crops for the market. But there is nothing city-like or suburban about this place. It feels like a page right out of the Farmers Almanac. 

The morning moves quickly. I didn't go to the downtown market today and still, by the time I clear the breakfast dishes it's 11. And I have a whole bunch of mowing and weeding to do. So much for reading a book and doing nothing. 

I start in on the chores from the top: I want to clean up the glass porch roof. I used to do this several times a year but now I'm down to just once -- now.  Typically I take this on with Ed nearby, in case I slip off the roof and break my neck, but the cold, possibly wet weather is coming and I do not want to put it off any longer. 

Getting the hose up there is challenging enough. Scrubbing down the panes with a bristle broom? A workout!

And as you can see -- I did not break my neck because here I am writing to tell you about it.

From the roof to the fields. I get on the tractor mower and go after the overgrown farmette lands, concentrating first on the meadows. If you read about meadows and prairies, you'll get a lot of worthless, or at least mixed and inconsistent advice on how to manage these so that they produce flowers and grasses rather than weeds and thistles in future seasons. Yes, ideally, from the point of view of flower stimulation, I would have poisoned the earth, eliminated most of the shallow rooted weeds and started a fresh. But that's not us. Too much work, too many chemicals and frankly, too many weeds left behind. Instead, I sow seeds, I mow in the fall, and I pull out the most visible obnoxious weeds. A futile effort, to be sure, because so much gets left behind, but it's good enough! 

And let me just say that mowing down meadows as well as some of the land that we otherwise leave to grow whatever horror takes root, is just about my least favorite farmette chore. The land is rough and uneven and the tractor mower bounces crazily in every direction and you know how much I dislike things that bounce, spin or otherwise make my stomach heave. This time, after mowing down the meadows, I attacked just a wee portion of the land to the west of the barn, taking down ragweed that had grown to a size seen only in sci fi movies. Those plants were more than six feet tall! I plunged in with crossed fingers, getting stuck only once (and who is going to bail me out if I cannot manipulate the machine and get it home before the rains come down?).

Afterwards, I note that the vaccination is still putting me in the land of the "very fatigued." The farmette chores, added to it, put me in the land of the "very very fatigued." I sit down on the couch to rest and promptly fall asleep.

This is when the storms come. Out of nowhere! We were to have a hot and sunny day and boom! Thunder strikes and it's all wet and suddenly quite cool.

Dinner is going to be around the kitchen table. Why is this even significant? When Ed isn't here, dinner is often on my lap! But we're having Sunday family dinner today -- the young couple has other plans for tomorrow. Kitchen table it is.

And it is honestly, exceptionally delightful to have them here, given that Ed's away and it's too quiet in the farmhouse! 

Well, it was too quiet! The kids play, the grownups sit back, chat, exhale. Eventually I go out to put away the chickens for the night. Yes, all three are interested in helping me, though only one is bold enough to actually try holding a flapping chicken. Those birds are strong!

Oh, and eat. We do of course eat!

However did I think that today would have been a good day to sit back, with a book and a cold drink? It would have been such a waste. Much better to put off a restful day for when the rains come down hard. Maybe tomorrow? Never know...

Friday

Well, it rained. Not quite an inch, but heck, I'll take even that modest amount. It's been a challenging growing season -- constant rains in spring, leading to a proliferation of weeds the likes of which we'd never seen before and then, in the second half of the summer -- a drought. No rain at all. Here's how that works: the weeds grow with the help of all that mositure, pushing and shoving their way to the top and then, when the rains stop, they suck up the much needed water reserves from your flowers, trees, grasses. So yes, I'm glad I spent the early summer months making an effort to stay on top of the weed situation, but in August I let things go and as a result the flower beds are dry as a rock that had been sunning itself out in the dessert far too long.

Well, there's some life left in some flowers. And many of them appreciated the overnight shower.

(a sweet pea climbing a crab apple...)

(another sunny and warm day...)

Breakfast, on the porch, with Ed! Can you believe it, we are actually eating a meal together on the porch again! 

Okay, he's not eating, but at least he's keeping me company. His schedule is right now completely wacko and even my long history with him does not equip me to understand when exactly he might want to reach for his granola or last night's salad. But at least he keeps me company!

Which is a good thing because this afternoon he heads up north to help his friend clean up and winterize his boat. This can take several hours or a couple of days. Given his strange maladies this week, I'm glad he has something out of the ordinary to distract him. At the farmhouse, he is still either reading or sleeping. Worn out from medicines and terribly unnerved by the constant focus on taking care of himself. 

Me, I have the remnants of mom care for the first half of the day. Oh, and a Covid vaccination, even though it's just short of three months since I've had my famous July 4th surprise (Covid!). 

As for mom care -- well, there are her finances that need cleaning up. She pretty much had exhausted her resources, which was lucky for her since it gave her the eligibility for care at one of Madison's best Retirement Communities (Oakwood), with Medicaid picking up most of the tab. There isn't, therefore, that much to "clean up," but you still need to do it: make sure Social Security doesn't send a check (because they will ask for it back!), make sure her credit card bill (for newspaper delivery) is paid, make sure the nursing care payments are stopped, make sure, make sure, make sure. 

And then I have to pick up her ashes. Nothing about the funeral parlor is pleasant (what a surprise). It feels cheap and overpriced all at the same time. They give me a copy of her fingerprint and it, too, is at once enlarged and not really large enough to reveal some interesting pattern. It's just plain weird. The forced solemnity feels artificial to me and the woman who helped me before is there now, darting in and out with more and more papers to sing all the way until the final one where she tells me I still owe her $102, even though I prepaid for everything. You don't argue over your mom's ashes, so I hand her my credit card and wait again for more papers to sign. The container of ashes is heavy, but then I knew it would be. Ed and I did the calculation -- it's 3.5 times the person's weight and she clocked in at 160 at her death (she had a voracious appetite all the way until the end when she went blind and stopped eating). So, somewhere between 5 and 6 pounds. 

As I stand there, I think about all the things she liked in life. When you live to be 100, that list can be very long. Here's what I came up with, just in the time I stood there waiting to sign away everything: 

Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, my ex, my daughter's friend who occasionally stopped by and listened to her stories when she lived in Berkeley, Ed who taught her computer stuff, and George, the guy in assisted living whom she claimed as a friend. He was from UW and she liked university people. Hathaway, who had been married to a professor and who, amazingly, survived her. Hathaway is 102. Chocolate covered almonds, chrysanthemums, Nivea cream. Tooth brushes (each time I moved her, I saw and disposed of a dozen or more used toothbrushes in the bathroom). The color magenta. Sun-bathing. Valium. Mozart. Earthing -- something you plug in and lie on and it connects you to the earth in some fashion that I dont fully understand. She swore by it. Letter writing to CEOs. I just found one she wrote recently to Mr. Bezos explaining her ideas on how to employ a certain class of people over another class. She wrote a lot of letters proposing her own fixes to societal problems, addressing her letters to important people all over the world. She liked water aerobics. Shirley Temple movies and I Love Lucy episodes. Politics. Gossip. Encounters with famous people in her U.N. days. She also liked pearls, and very bright red lipstick, sewing, reading, and the New York Times. Soup for lunch and dinner, and Kitkats throughout the day.

When I was still adding to this list in my head, the woman with the trail of papers gave me the final one to sign and after that I left.

At home, Ed left in a flurry of movement, forgetting half the things he should take. Clearly the guy doesn't travel often. I tidied up and then went to get the kids.

They were, um... lively!

In the evening, I plucked a few weeds, fighting off guilt for not being thorough. And I fed and put away the animals -- typically an Ed chore, but not this week, and not this weekend. 

Covid vaccinations make me tired. Or maybe the weeding zapped my strength, or the kids' cavorts. Cat messes to clean up, dishes to wash. groceries to put away. My, it's been a full week! Tomorrow is the last day of summer and coincidentally, it will wrap up our incredibly warm, dry spell. Maybe I should celebrate the end of the season with a long walk. Or, in the alternative, with a book outside. Feet up, cool drink in hand. Sounds good, don't you think?