strawberries, rather than fields, forever

Unscramble that heading, if you will! I admit it is a puzzler. But the fact is, I have a long list of things to accomplish on this day, some having to do with strawberries, and so I spend zero time in my flower fields. I've gone from total immersion to total abstention. For the day.

I do run out to the barn in the morning. It's smokey once again and this would appear to be a broken record, or at least a broken weather system, but lo! We go from unhealthy air quality in the morning to good in the afternoon! Patience will be been rewarded! 

But, here's the still slightly smoggy morning walk:

(This bed is heavy on yellows in late spring, when the yellow peonies are in full bloom, and then completely purple in the fall)

Our plan for this day was to (finally) catch Pancake -- the most recent feral that has adopted the farmette as his hangout. He'd been so skittish that we didn't dare try earlier, but we think he'd trust us to go into a carrier with food, and he really would benefit (as would the planet) from being neutered. Maybe he'd engage in fewer battles. Too, he could get some shots to protect him from the evils out there. 

Pancake, however, can read minds. He did not show up for his morning feeding. That is so unusual that one would almost worry that he got mauled somewhere by something, except he is a restless sort and most likely within a few days (or a few hours) he'll be back.

Pancake catching abandoned, I go out to Madison Sourdough to pick up a cake for dinner (and pastries for breakfast). It's lovely to be eating their fresh cinnamon rolls, but we do this inside. Cool and smokey out there. Warm and cozy in the kitchen.

And then we attack yesterday's strawberries. The best use of them is to cook up our own version of strawberry jam. We still have some jars of it from last year's efforts, but hey, if we add to it a few more, we should be set for life! Or at least for the next few years.

Jam done. So, is that it for the strawberries? No! I was really tempted by the strawberry cake recipe that popped into my mailbox from the Smitten Kitchen a few weeks ago. It uses up a whole pound of berries and it is exactly the type I like: great with coffee, in the morning or afternoon.

And then it's just a rush to get things organized for Sparrow's birthday dinner: the little guy turns seven today!

(sibs follow)

 

Oh, that boy! He is clever, sensitive, affectionate, and with a sharp, if sometimes befuddling sense of humor. And he loves Legos, so of course, this was an easy birthday to shop for.

I always ask the kids for their birthday cake preferences and he said he wanted all brown, which I understood to mean chocolate, but not deep and dark, with frosting of the buttercream type. A perfect request for Madison Sourdough.

Dinner first.

 

 

 

And then -- Happy Birthday, sweet Sparrow! 

As for my to-do list -- well, there's a lot carried over for the next day. We'll see how that goes!

with so much love... 

world oceans day

Did you know that today is Oceans Day? Set by the United Nations, each year on June 8th a theme is designated, one that celebrates the marvels of ocean life. This year's theme is "Wonder: sustaining what sustains us."

Some of you may wonder why I call this compilation of daily posts "Ocean." Some of you may remember: when I began writing here, now more than twenty years ago, I called this blog "The Other Side of the Ocean." It seemed fitting: I saw myself as frequently thinking about what I left behind, in my country of birth. And when visiting there, I surely felt myself to be firmly wedded to my American life. My perspective seems to shift, depending on which way I am looking. But the blog title got clumsy and, too, I thought it sounded a tad dramatic, so I shortened it to just Ocean and I thought this to be appropriate since you'll find here a jumble of ideas about events, trips, family, friends, farmette happenings, Ed and our life together. Any profound thought is buried in the stuff that comes to the surface. Like in an ocean, no?

Anyway, I know the world is not celebrating this Ocean, but I did smile when I read about all that is important about honoring the true oceans of the world, because so much that is written about the value of ocean communities can find resonance in our daily lives. It's humbling to know that in essence, we are but one planet, one community, one set of of guiding to principles: to preserve, love and respect life in all its beautiful forms, aquatic or otherwise.  

 

Once again, we wake up to hazy air, with an index that's hovering between Moderate and  Unhealthy For Sensitive Types. Despite that, I spend the entire day outside. Nearly twelve hours, without interruption. Why? Oh so many reasons! Let me list them:

1. Because of course I have to do my morning walk to the barn, to feed the animals.

2. Because Ed once again sweetly agrees to a breakfast on the porch.

It's an early one. We have a date with our CSA farmers. 

3. Which brings me to the next reason: because our CSA farmers at the last minute decided that a few of their strawberry rows have enough ripe berries to open them up to just a few pickers. I happened to be on my computer when they made the announcement. I snatched a spot for us.

This is simply awesome. I love their annual strawberry picking and I did think I would miss it this year because I'm leaving just as the berry season heats up. Which brings me to the next one:

4. Because I'm leaving on Wednesday and I'll be away for nearly two weeks. I chose this mid-June period for the trip deliberately-- usually there is a gardening lull then. But not this year! I got so ambitious and set my sights to such great heights of flower care that I doubt that I will have even a moment's pause this whole growing season. Nonetheless, the trip is set, and so I am hurrying to finish up my clean-up of all the fields. Today I tidy up yesterday's weeding and then I spread a million pitchfork-loads of wood chips -- for appearance, for weed suppression, and for long term soil improvement. It is of course a given that the weeds will slowly come back. But they wont take over the beds. Unless it rains a lot, but that's unlikely, which pushes me right to the fifth reason for being outside so long:

5. Because I looked at the weather forecast and it appears to be a mostly dry one for the next two weeks. At the last minute, I decided to hose down nearly all of the flower fields. That took several hours, but after all that weeding and wood chip work, I found watering with a hose to be truly calming. 

6. And one final one: a friend of mine is going to Poland in a few months and wanted advice -- what to see, where to stay, that type of thing. I didn't want to bother Ed who was alternating between reading and napping, so I Zoomed from the porch. Meaning outside!

I'll leave you with a photo of something very sweet and a little bit disconcerting. I owe this one to Ed, who spotted it and called me over; in our crab apple, on a relatively low branch, a bird had built a nest and she had obviously laid eggs because she was not going to leave, even though she saw us hovering not too far. Why disconcerting? Well, lets hope the cats don't find her. (They used to climb trees in their younger days, but that's mostly a thing of the past.)

(And one of our girls who also decided that the crab apple is a fine place to take a short nap.)

 

Am I tired? Incredibly so! Sunday dinner had been moved until tomorrow, nonetheless, it's been a very full day! Just don't ask me if I am at all ready for my trip because the answer is no -- not at all.

with love... 

memory

I would say Ed is not a sentimental guy. He doesn't tear up at recollections of trips taken, dinners eaten, projects completed. He has one random photo of us -- taken during a visit in Germany to a machinist who supplied parts for one of his projects. The photo is stuck on a bulletin board in the sheep shed. It's a random, low quality image and I'm not sure what moved him to lean it against the board, but at least there is that, right next to some yellowing certificate that he got for going down in a parachute many years before my time.

And I'm not a jealous person. I had a husband once, he had an on again, off again girl friend and now here we are. If either he or I were not happy together and preferred other relationships, I'd be sad, sure, but not jealous. I just don't see the point in that set of emotions. I don't want what someone else has. That's their life, not mine. 

I write this because of a very funny conversation Ed and I had at breakfast. Here's how it came about:

It's one of those lovely days again, but with the same caveat: still smokey, with poor air quality. It's not as bad as it was three days ago, but for Ed -- it's borderline yukky. Me, I go outside, walk to the barn, and take stock...

(one of my favorite peonies)

(I love how close Tuxie is to Shed Unfriendly...)

It's not too awful out there. Not great, but not utterly miserable. I wouldn't run a marathon, but I can certainly do some yard work. Still, we keep the windows closed in the farmhouse.

But for breakfast we take our food outside. Ed knows how much I love our porch meals. It will just be for a short period.  But of course, once we get comfortable, we linger.

And again we talk about farmette projects. He has some replacement persimmons trees to plant (which he will do wearing a mask against the pollution). I laugh at him: by the time these little twigs sprout persimmons, we'll be long gone!

In fact, I say to him, your whole nut tree project (we planted, though predominantly with Ed's digging efforts, a good sixty nut, maple, paw paw, persommons and fir trees) -- has a very slow growing rate. The once twigs are now slightly bigger twigs.

Ed agrees. To add strength to my argument I remind him -- by comparison, look how huge the trees now are in the new orchard!

He answers -- yes, but she (insert name of on again off again girlfriend) and I planted those quite a while back.

Say what??? Who planted the new orchard??? 

Well, the big cherries and apples -- she and I...

Are you kidding me? You do not remember that you and I planted the entire new orchard together? 

We did?

I dig out the relevant posts on Ocean. April, 2012. We'd already been together seven years and I had agreed to move into the farmhouse with him in 2011. A year later, we planted all those fruit trees. Apples, pears, cherries.

I love ribbing him about his memories of our time together. (They're scant.) Ed lives very much in the present, though he has a fantastic memory for sailing trips he had taken. But otherwise, things are a jumble. I am glad that he has his share of experiences and good memories, but let's just keep them a tiny bit more straight: new orchard -- designed, selected, planted by us. Shush!

Sheepishly, he studies the Ocean pictures. Um, you are so right....  

Well yeah!  

 

Once again I take on weeding today and it fills up most of the morning and afternoon. It's not the usual cleaning of my Fields of Focus (meaning the flower fields that you typically see on Ocean and the ones I tend to with almost maternal care). Today I attack a flower field that is so peripheral (and therefore so neglected) that it doesn't even have a name (like Big Bed or Lily Field (by the porch) or Sunny Field or Roadside Field or Sheep Shed Field). It's stuck between the Big Bed and the Sheep Shed Field and over the years I've ignored it and let the weeds have done their thing. Occasionally I pull out a few weeds that threaten to devour a planted perennial. Mostly though I ignore it, even though I pass it every morning on my way to the barn. 

Why this total neglect? Well, it's a tough field to work with. We have never greatly improved the soil there and when a drought strikes, it cakes and cracks and does all those things that shouldn't happen in a flower bed. I can pull the hose to it, but just barely. I've put in some plants over the years and they do okay, but again, I can't be proud of the way it looks and I have so much work to do elsewhere that I mostly just let this and the Sheep Shed field do their own thing.

But today I got motivated. I do not know why. I've said this before -- I don't know what drives me to do one thing but not another out in the flower fields. At this point in spring I do not set goals. It's all about maintenance and support. I go where I think I can do the most good I suppose. 

Here's a partial view of  it after I'm done. Maybe it will actually be pretty this year!

Afterwards, I'm spent. I sit back, I read a little, evening approaches. Ed, too is wiped. (Here he is, after a haircut and beard trim from his own personal hair stylist!)

And then something pulls me outside again. I get this idea that I should weed the Sheep Shed Field as well. I will then have cleaned up every field under my care. All twelve of them.

I get to it. 

And by dusk I am mostly done. Sure, I have some corners that could stand to be cleaned up still, and, too, I think it would be cool to throw down some chips on the cleared beds. Projects for another day. Right now, everything looks just so good! 

 

 

It takes several years for new perennials to establish themselves. I'd say that for the first time since I started working here (in 2011, when I moved in), nearly all the plants are at their full growth.  Sure, every year, some flowers need to be moved or replaced. But 95% survive and stay,  and grow and bloom. I have this deep satisfaction of having done my work to bring it all to this moment. 

I'll leave you with a photo of a fragment of the Roadside Bed, and of the Parking Lot Bed. Just because today is the day to recognize those lesser fields -- the ones that rarely get the attention they need.

It's been a great spring for growing farmette flowers!

With love... 

summer magic

I'll start with a bit of potty talk: We have, here at the farmhouse, the best view of the Big Bed, my largest flower field, from the bathroom window upstairs. All you have to do is sit on the toilet and you almost never want to get off. It's that good! 

And so today, engaging in my usual morning routines, I looked out... and saw a huge possum ambling over toward the barn. It was early, the chickens were still locked in the coop, but the door would be springing open for them in a couple of minutes (it's on automatic release). And there would be the possum waiting for them as they stumble out. These animals aren't fast, aren't especially smart (as compared to, say us, or a racoon), but they know how to score a win with a cornered chicken. 

Ed!

I think I woke him up. In any case, I sent him running toward the barn. (I was otherwise occupied.) Of course, by the time he got there, the possum was long gone. They don't stick around for humans. But I do have to wonder if we would have lost some hens today had I not lingered on the toilet... 

 

The air quality today is "moderate." Still not great. Ed has asthmatic symptoms (this is guess work -- he's not one to go to the doc) and even keeping windows open is irritating him, so we're slated to have another mostly indoor day. And because he is feeling the cumulative effect of a string of bad days, I don't push for a porch breakfast. We eat in the kitchen, in a meadow of blooms -- peonies from my gardens (far right), a bouquet from Natalie (center), and one from our CSA farmers.

I do go out afterwards to do spot weeding. The rain gave a boost to baby weeds. They are not such babies anymore.

This is also my first look at what's growing out there now.

 

(another Butter and Sugar Iris) 

(the next wave of Clematis flowers)

((I picked a strawberry that no animal found -- and put it on my strawberry place mat)

And soon after the noon hour, I head out to the kids' school. Way before pick up time. At about 1pm, they are holding a small celebration of the fourth graders' graduation -- from elementary school to middle school. Snowdrop starts her middle school career next year.

Grade by grade, they pour out onto the playground and form a huge circle. Here's Sparrow with his first grade classmates and teacher:

 

In the first part of the celebration, the High School seniors who attended this elementary school show up and give the little kids high fives.

And then it's the fourth graders' turn. These are the young graduates. With Snowdrop in their midst.

I had teased her yesterday: will there be long speeches? Singing and dancing? She explained -- we walk in a circle. You're supposed to clap and cry and do all that stuff you do at graduations!

I did not cry. I have five grandkids and many graduations before me. Still, Snowdrop is a very tall girl. She wears a shoe size just one under mine. She looks older than her age. It did hit me that all these kids are really growing up very fast. She may as well be going off to college next fall. She looks like she is ready for it.

 

(the graduate, with proud parents)

(and a loyal brother, who got up as she passed by his class and gave her a huge hug!)

Evening. For the young family, it's movie night and I know they are watching what was my favorite movie when I was exactly, almost to the day, Snowdrop's age -- Summer Magic, with my then favorite actress, Haley Mills. It's a musical and I loved it so much that I saved up to buy an album of its songs. That's the year I learned that if you don't buy something that has the label "original soundtrack" on it, you're likely to get a cheap knock off (no wonder it cost only $2.99!) -- in my case, a piano rendition of all the songs. No vocals at all. But, it had all the lyrics written out on the cover and I sang those songs with that piano accompaniment over and over and over again. What's more, one of them, which had the mesmerizing words "All I want to do, When the day is through, Is linger here, On the front, Porch with you...." became the song of choice for me as a grandmother, when I put any of the kids to bed in the evenings, or for a nap, or -- in Sparrow's case, on a trans-Atlantic flight in the aisle when I was trying to settle him (unsuccessfully) when he was just one. "As the hours fly, When the moon drifts by, How sweet the air, As we stare, at the sky..." How well I know the love of sitting out on a porch! 

And to prove it's (almost) summer, I give you a big fat beautiful day lily. One of thousands that will bloom in our flower fields this year. 

 

With so much love...

caution to the wind

The air quality is still not as we'd like it to be: it's unhealthy for sensitive souls, which certainly should include the vast majority of of the population, don't you think? Nonetheless, it's better than it was yesterday. We can even look up and see a faintly blue sky. I walk to the barn in the morning with sunshine streaming.

("about time you came out to feed us this morning!")

 

 

(an iris in hiding)

 

 

(morning visitor)

 

 

(Big Bed)

 

 

(Big Bed yet again)

 

 

I hate not spending the day outdoors. Spot weeding, perhaps cleaning out the bed by the shed, fixing fallen stems... So much joy out there and yet there is this haze...

Wiser people would barricade themselves once again, but Ed and I are only sometimes wise. He asks -- you want to eat breakfast outside, don't you?

Yes I do!

 

And in our usual way, we pick up a job spontaneously -- one minute we're sitting at the table, reflecting about the horrors in countries at war, the next, Ed picks up the cushions of the white Adirondack and starts cleaning them of cat hairs. And as long as he is taking care of that, I join in with a sweep and a wipe of porch surfaces. And the air is warm and we are happy.

In between cleaning and wiping I tell him about some of the articles I read this morning -- most of them terribly depressing, but one that is quite the opposite. It's about a couple who bought a second home in Litchfield Connecticut (gifted article here). I absolutely love this line of stories in the NYTimes -- where people are looking for a home at a certain price point, narrow it down to three candidates,  and then you have to pick the one you'd go with, after which you click and find out which one they chose. (I especially like it when the price range is way under a million. There's something off-putting in stories about buying decisions made by very wealthy people.)  This particular couple has quite age span (the older one is 78) and yet here they are, buying a home to "eventually" move into once the younger one (at 48 now) retires from his NYC job. Can you imagine the optimism required for that kind of a turn in life? Planning for happiness rather than for old age infirmities! I loved reading about that!

 

Immediately after our spot cleaning project, Ed goes on to find movies about people who buy/sell their homes (for example -- Mr Blandings Builds a Dream House, which we both have seen or 5 Flights Up, which neither of us has watched). I tell him this is not the time to watch movie trailers. I have things to do! Soon it will be time to pick up the kids!  He replies -- I do too! You have a nice structured existence where everything is preordained, I have to struggle with things. Ha! Ed never has to struggle with things. At least not in his attitude or mental state. A challenge for him is a good thing. And he will never rush to do it or get to it. There is an organic flow to his days that's actually admirable.

  

I pick up two happy kids. They have only three more days of school left! And today was a bit of a lark for the girl -- games and splash pad fun in the park. 

With such a small number of days left, we struggle to figure out what after-school treats are in the offerings. Ice Cream? The farmers market? Which one? Sparrow is desperate for ice cream. Snowdrop, having had ice cream at the park, wants to market. 

And so we do both.

(it's strawberry season at Natalie's!)

 

(Look who is by the market yet again! the young one is growing so fast...)

 

 

And in the evening, I pick up my first veggie box from our CSA veggie farmers, and a flower bundle from our CSA flower farmers. How incredible it is to live so close to the people who grow our foods and adorn our kitchen table!

And yes, we do watch one of Ed's movie picks. And it is lovely. As is our evening together.

with love.. 

 

stuck inside

You think of rain as clearing the air. And we had a nice, steady rain last night. 

It did not clear the air.

In fact, we woke to hazy skies and an air quality alert. The Canadian smoke came right back down and with a vengeance, aiming a narrow plum of particles straight at Madison. Hey, Canada! We are not the enemy here! We like you as our northern-independent-country-neighbor!

With air pollution at a "dangerous" level, our time outside is limited. Sure, I feed the animals, check the rainfall amount (nice!) and place a support cage for the fallen peonies (rain does topple some flowers).

("hmmm... should I eat these strawberries now or wait for them to get ripe?")

And then I hunker down inside. With breakfast in the kitchen. 

(I keep most flowers in the gardens where they grow, but when a flower falls down -- I bring it in. My peonies are huge this year!)

And a lot of couch time afterwards. I finish a beloved mystery novel (another Tana French one, set in Ireland) and start in on the next in the series -- not so much because I need to read yet another tangle of dreadful events, but because I have this weird longing to straighten out the bond that was wrecked between two principal characters in the first book. In other words, I'm hoping for a reconciliation! 

And this has me thinking -- why would I crave for this in a novel? In something that is total fiction? Why do happier endings appeal to me, given that I know they have no real value except to tidy up a story line imagined by the author? Is it because the news of the day is rarely cheerful and we all look for good resolutions to life's problems elsewhere, even if it resides in fictional narratives? 

I suppose happy or at least satisfying endings are like a glass of wine before dinner: they create a buzz of contentment that lasts for a short while. I don't mind using artificial devices to shake away the distress of the day's news. And if increasingly it cannot be wine, I'll take a satisfactory ending to a story line! 

 

In the afternoon, I talk to my friend Bee in Warsaw and since it has been a while, we give ourselves a good chunk of time for this. It's perfect really, because the air quality remains miserably low here in south central Wisconsin, and so I'm stuck inside. Nor do I have the kids today, as they are off getting haircuts. Or at least one of them is -- the one who absolutely hates shorter hair. I'm happy to hand off the chore of taking them for a trim to a parent who can withstand the pressure to "not cut off too much!"  

Just before I turn to dinner prep, Ed suggests a walk. The air quality has improved a little -- it's now "only" "unhealthy for sensitive groups." Being in our 70s plunks us right into that category, but we figure with masks, we should be fine.

And it is really good to be walking again. With so much work on farmette lands, we've hardly walked at all. And of course, the prairie fields in our local park are starting to look really lovely: wild indigo stalks shoot up their white flowered stems, golden alexanders send yellow ribbons across gently green expanses of prairie.

 

And the birdsong! I'm hearing birds I've never heard of! Warbling Vireo, Northern Flicker? And so many more. 

 

Evening: Ed wont ride his bike in smokey air so no Wednesday evening ride for him today. I make soup, we get comfortable and watch a couple of episodes from a comedy series. It always feels so good to laugh, loudly, unapologetically.

with love...