felling branches and fields of bounty

There is a lot here, at the farmette that (in my opinion) should be pulled out, mowed down or chopped off. With rainy seasons, such as we had this year, things grow madly, willfully, usually in ways that interfere with the growth of something else.

With all that exploding growth, there is also surrender: limbs that rarely see sunlight eventually give up the ship and grow brittle. I can't get Ed to be enthusiastic about chopping off live branches, but he's quite willing to hack away at the brittle stuff and today, we put the new pole chain saw to good use. And if occasionally we took down a live branch, why so be it! As I said, there is much that I wish we would prune back.

Perhaps I haven't told you this -- but there will be a wedding at the farmette next June. Much of my work on the property is with an image of that before me. And why not! It's like cleaning the house for a party -- you may do it with that in mind, but the side benefit is that you have a clean house!

So, some part of the day is spent on working the power pole saw.






...with Isis watching.






Other parts -- on the porch. Not breakfast though. It was raining and I was in a hurry to get to yoga. Maybe you're wondering -- why does it matter? Rain doesn't reach the porch, does it?  Well now, ours is a porch that you enter from the outside. Leave the house, step to the porch. So rain gives you pause.






In other news -- the cucumbers are growing to ridiculous sizes. Usually Ed gets to them before they're over the top. This one he missed. Until today.






Flowers. Can't leave the day without at least a nod to the star performers of this summer.






Finally, I do want to mention that we played an okay game of tennis. And for Ocean readers, I offer a photo taken from the backseat of Ed's motorcycle. Looking toward Farmer Lee's fields of bounty. On our way to the pine scented courts...






...and coming back.





These fields are just across the road from us. I live in a place that is like a great big beautiful painting.

one foot forward, the other one back

An unusual day. First of all, it started earlier than any sane person would wish it to start. (Thanks, Isis.) On the upside -- I had a long to do list for today, so I welcomed the extra hours.

There was garden watering and clean up. I was to have visitors later in the day and though I am certain they would not have noticed a parched garden (over the perky garden that you get a few hours after a good watering) and they certainly would not have noticed that the spent blooms weren't trimmed on the daylilies or the coreopsis, I would have noticed. I wanted a good garden for them and so I spent a handful of prebreakfast hours attending to it.






Breakfast was a sigh of relief: house is clean, garden is in order.






And the usual handful of strawberries is picked. (Thanks, Ed.)






Then came the baking part. If someone is to pay a visit in the afternoon, you should bake, no? I made these guys.






What are they? Well, if you believe that the fruit I bought was a version of an apricot (the sign said as much), then you would call them apricot cakes. For the doubters among us -- plum cakes would be a possibility. Easy, not too sweet, putting that burst of summer on your table.






And by then it was time to greet them: my little girl and her fiancee, along with their good friends from Chicago.

To say that we had a wonderful many hours on the porch is such an understatement...






I don't think much about how I miss my kids when they are off doing their thing. I'm happy that they're leading productive independent lives and that they have partners who keep them grounded and happy. But I am terribly aware of how much I really do miss them at the moment when they depart. Like my grandma, who stood in the doorway of her country home and looked sadly after us as we drove away, so too, I have this wistful longing to hang on to them as they pull out of the driveway. And so later in the evening, after Ed and I ate the reheated mushroom soup, I was especially grateful that I got coaxed by him into a game of tennis.

It was a good distraction.

That was the foot forward (noting the post title). And the foot back? Well, I do want to answer a few questions from commenters to the previous post. Most bloggers do that in the comments section, but I do not presume that anyone would want to check back there. I am humbled that someone would read forward. I don't want anyone to feel obliged to step back. 

So permit me to post a few answers here, in the main text. (I'll limit it to things that may be of more general interest.)

First, the issue of camera: I get this question fairly frequently -- which one do I use? Everyone loves their camera and true to form, I love mine. Mostly, I use the Sony NEX 6 (before this year I had the older version NEX camera and loved it equally much). It's not an SLR, but in my opinion, for the type of stuff most of us do -- it's superb. And by the way, if you ever want details on anyone's blog photo, all you need to do is click on it and then scroll down -- details will be listed there. And if you want even more details, click on "additional information" further down and you'll see more than you ever wanted to know about what settings were used, etc etc.

Then -- the flowers. No, not wildflowers and not from seeds. Or at least mostly not from seeds. To achieve a "cottage garden" look you have to think what has a dense habit and what you can do to fill in the gaps.  I use nasturtium and cosmos to fill in gaps, but otherwise, all the flowerbeds are classic perennial borders, done in a deliberately cluttered fashion, because truly I like it that way.

And finally -- my last summer jaunt? Well, it begins next Sunday and it's by myself and it has to have many hours on various modes of public transportation so that I can keep up with my work readings!



The sun moved to the west of the porch, the dishes were cleared, the company long gone. Our own supper finished, a game of tennis well played. We come back to the farmhouse, to that peaceful time where there's not much left to the day -- at least not for us, not now. The light streams in, the shadows are long.





Such a fine day it was. A really fine day.

last chance

When summer moves into its final weeks, I get the same feeling of urgency that I do when I am about to go to the airport to catch a flight home after a vacation. That feeling of wanting to pack it all in before the Cinderella hour. Of wondering whether I forgot about something -- whether I should go around one more time. And buy one more gift or souvenir. And eat one last sweet, drink one final sip of wine.

Maybe it's the same for you? The need to swing through the summer motions before August passes. The need to get away one last time -- that final immersion, before school starts, before the snow falls and the ground freezes beneath your feet. Get away. Now. Last chance!

When people hear me talk of restlessness, they assume I do not much care for home. Nothing could be less true. I love the farmette with the passion one reserves for the most time consuming and challenging projects in life. Were I not working hard now on my classes for the Fall (and were we less blighted by mosquitoes), I would spend far too many waking hours improving the property or cleaning the farmhouse. I care about both deeply even as I am like the parent of a toddler who wants the occasional break from childcare. And then another break. And another -- hating being away from the kid, loving being away, hating it, loving it, missing her, hurrying back to her, then looking forward to the next little escapade, and the next flight, and the next return.

Between thinking about the one last little trip and working madly at school stuff, I'd say the day was pretty full -- most of it, of course, spent on the porch.

And so again I leave you with little else here, on Ocean. Breakfast, garden, tennis, dinner -- these were the notable pleasures of the day. Let's run through them again, this time with photos and annotations.

An early morning examination of the flower beds.






Checking to see if the newly placed bronze figurines are fitting into their environment. They are.






Appreciating the very early streams of pale sunshine coming in from the east. We've had a whole string of beautiful days. And this magnificent weather continues today.






And now finally breakfast. On the porch.






Then it's work. And planning that final little jaunt. And more work, all on the porch. There is a break in there for weekly grocery shopping, but otherwise, I'm there, behind stacks of paper.

When evening comes, Ed drags me out for a spirited game of tennis among the pines. Isis waits for us on the picnic table. Here he is -- happy that we are finally back.






And now it's time for supper and I have to say, from now until the frost hits hard, there wont be a meal that doesn't include tomatoes. Our crop wont be as substantial as it was last year (we really stunted the growth of some by putting them in so early). But we do have a steady stream of 'em and so today's soup will inevitably be heavy on the tomatoes, even though it is, in fact, a full blown mushroom soup.






While chopping, cooking and generally fussing over the right spices and mushroom combinations, I glance outside and notice the last rays of the setting sun. Pretty in the morning, pretty in the evening too. And more of it will be with us tomorrow. And isn't that just such a good thing!

short and clean

To preserve a good balance (after days of wordiness), I'm keeping it nice and short today. The hefty thoughts and musings of the past few days have been replaced with simple bullet points:

Breakfast.






Flowers. (To the commenter who want to plant for the fall, I say yes, there are asters, but do not forget about the H flowers! Helianthus, Helenium and Amsonia Hubrichtii -- the last one doesn't bloom in the fall but has a nice colorful leaf base then. And of course, I have my work horse annuals -- nasturtium, which just keep on giving until the first big frost.)






...With a closeup of Henry the frog (sorry, he just looks like a Henry).






Market (followed by tennis, but there is no need for you to see a photo of a mediocre game, so just market, with tomatoes the size of melons).






Farmer Lee's fields of flowers on the bike ride home.






And supper. With home grown meaty tomatoes of our own.






And for the entire day, I ought to add these running themes:

Working on the porch.

Chasing mosquitoes that we inadvertently let into the porch.

Studying possible discount flights to see if I should take off somewhere before the semester begins in September.

And there you have it. Short, simple and clean.

adding detail

My commenters on yesterday's post caused me to laugh heartily and humbly and they prompted me to keep that conversation going for just a while longer (so if you did not read yesterday's post, it would make sense to do that before continuing here).

First, how do you carry a six foot cardboard box on a motorcycle? Well now, under the right arm of both passengers. At a slight slant. Though I did shout to Ed halfway through the ride -- could you make sure the tape is firmly keeping it shut at the end? I have a very vivid imagination about all that may go wrong when he and I are doing something ridiculous at a fast speed.


Then, onto pickles: Ed's idea is that you can pickle cucumbers (in garlic and dill flavored saltwater) in ziplock baggies -- the ones with a vacuum seal, from which he squeezes out the carbon dioxide on a regular basis (He is forever squeezing his pickle bags, which looks funny if you don't fully understand what he's up to.)





One of our chores yesterday was to get more pickling salt and I was already reaching my shopping saturation point at the home improvement store, Menards. I ask, hoping against hope that we would not have to go to yet another store -- maybe they have pickling salt here?

Those of you living in big cities will never need pickling salt and indeed, you most likely wont even find pickling salt on your local grocer's shelves, but in Wisconsin, where so many from central Europe came and settled with their pickle love,  brining cucumbers is big and it seems that even a home improvement store will carry pickling salt (it can't have iodine or additives).

We find the salt at Menards, where the helpful clerk admits that he, too, pickles stuff all the time (and he has plenty of time, as he just completed his PhD in Japanese history and has no job to pick up on those sets of skills). In his grandfather's German pickling clay pot. He and Ed discuss the pros and cons of allowing some of the non-beneficial bacteria to remain, for a while, in the pickle jar, so to speak. For flavor. (Ed's system of anaerobic lacto-fermentation with zip lock bags doesn't allow for that. For more on that method you could look here, at picklemetoo.com or  pickl-it.com, though Ed will tell you that using baggies saves on the cost of buying the jars at those places. But then, Ed's not a purist -- a purist would not put plastic near any food.)


A third amplification on yesterday's post and an answer to the question -- what are you two up to now with the farmhouse? Well now, we're aiming to rip out the ceiling over the porch, to replace it with either glass or polycarbonate twin-wall. (I use the affectionate "we," but with the admission that 95% of the work will be done by Ed.) We want more light in the kitchen and even more light on the porch (and since it's a northern exposure, there isn't the danger of excessive heat there).


Another amplification comes in the matter of the Polish Consulate: as usual, my valiant sister will do for me in Poland what it seems no bureaucrat here can imagine is possible. It could be that I have one more trip to Chicago before me, but just one. After that, I shake my hands free of the whole lot of them.


And one last explanation -- this one purely for the locals among you -- in the matter of Liliana's, our nearby more upscale restaurant: even at the Tuesday special (four-course dinner at $25), we thought it was pricey for what we ate. The jambalaya came with two shrimp. Good shrimp they were, very tasty, flavorful too, but solitary figures up there on the plates of rice before us (there was, for the sausage lover -- more of that in the mix). The wine flight was cheap, but in my view, a cheat: tiny glasses of indifferent stuff. It made you feel important -- here you were, pairing your wine, like the pros. Forget it. By the glass gives you a nicer glass and a better wine.


Is there nothing that I can write here that belongs to this day? Oh, yes there is! Even as, after breakfast...





...a chunk of time is spent on the porch -- we've moved our computers here and so now it is but an extension of our work, our play, our time reading together.

Interrupted by glances at the pickles...






...and at farmette land -- the peaches on the old tree are doing well!






...and the flower beds, with a sudden realization that, as always, I have planted for mostly May - July blooms, neglecting  the late summer and early fall, thinking that by then, my focus would be on other worlds.






Yet here I am, in August, wanting to prolong the flowering season just a few months more and so I cajole and nudge Ed to come with me for one last seasonal visit to the Flower Factory, where we pick up just a few pots of flowers that will, in the future, keep things perky and bright even beyond Labor Day.






In the late afternoon, we do a pickle tasting. First batch, after four days in brine.





Verdict?

The cucumbers are pickling nicely. But the taste's too salty! Quickly Ed scours the Internet for advice. Every pickling source had given the same brining formula -- one cup salt, one gallon water. Ignore that! Develop your own sacred formula and may we suggest -- start with less salt!

A pickler's job is never done...


And here's a comment that I myself have, in response to nothing in particular: in the middle of the night, as Isis again began his nocturnal frolic -- back and forth, back and forth, inside and out -- in that space of time, where I am not asleep but not fully awake either, I think about how the very next Ocean post should be about the perfect understanding that I have right now that I live in a moment of beautiful tranquility. And that it wont last, because tranquility is not the defining feature of life for anyone on this planet. But nonetheless, I have it now. No one in my near family is ill or without work, around me the flowers are bursting their silly heads off, indeed -- if you'll ask me about tranquility a decade from now, should I be lucky enough to be here and still writing, I quite likely will talk about this moment now, in August of 2013, and I will smile at the beautiful recollection.

the written word

We are eating dinner out -- the first such date since... well, since Europe. And we both bring something to read. A gift to each other -- bring something you've been wanting to read for this gorgeous evening out on a terrace, for a special meal at a place we never go to -- the local Liliana -- a Creole place that is just a tad over what we usually would spend on a meal out. But, it's been a while and they have a Tuesday special and today's Tuesday special is jambalaya and so here we are, reading happily and throwing out the occasional comment on what we've read.

I have with me a library book that's soon due and as usual, I've read almost none of it. So I give it a good effort and conclude at the end of the evening that it's well written but not interesting. It's an autobiography and I think there is not much that I love better than a well written autobiography, but there is something wrong with this one and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Blandness of the entirety even as each recounted episode may be judged to be unusual.

And I think about this  -- the act of writing for an audience and I compare it to the act of teaching a class because in both worlds you strive to capture the heart of the listener/reader and I know all too well that just being a good writer, or being in command of your subject matter in the classroom isn't enough.

So I almost want not to write anything at all on Ocean tonight. I am that demoralized by this unsuccessful (in my opinion) book -- because if this famous writer cannot pull it off, then who are we, us lesser mortals to even try.

But then I remember that this day had such tiny but beautiful twists to it and I want to pay these due respect, bland as this all may seem now to the dutiful Ocean reader.

Breakfast, outside. To get us started.





And a look at this morning's flowers.






Then yoga for me, which is not much of a twist (except in the physical sense), but it does allow me to pass by prairies and cornfields and since I showed off the prairie here the last time, I can show off the tall corn growing to the west of us now.






And so long as I am showing off Things That Grow, why not once again take you back to our veggie garden, where Ed is picking pickling cukes and tomatoes in the basket.






And then I work. On the porch.





Where in this do I see even a potential for a good story? Well wait. The day's not over yet.

Here comes the delightful stuff. Paul's cafe. The library. Tennis among the firs.







And to Freight Harbor (tool shop) where we purchase a pole power saw.  For those tree branches at the farmette that are just too hard to get down with a regular pole saw. [When I am old and infirm, I will most likely miss these trips with Ed most -- tool shopping, viewing construction materials. Because it's always cool to participate in someone else's world -- one that places no demands on you, none whatsoever.]

Now, the beauty of this trip is that we are on Ed's motorbike. On a summer evening, a motorbike ride can be quite exhilarating. But on a highway, with a six foot pole saw? A challenge!

We go, too, to Menard's to examine materials we will be using for that forthcoming small construction project at the farmhouse. (More on this later.)

And finally we are at Liliana's for dinner and now is the time for us to sit back and enjoy reading together.






So, in the end, I couldn't keep the words out of here. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. They distract you from the faults of the other medium. Because honestly, the photos without the words would be not much at all and the words without photos would be bland indeed.

But I do feel, on this evening perhaps more than on most others, the pain of submitting something that is less than well crafted. A narrative that maybe will attest to the difficulties of daily blogging -- especially when posting takes place very late in the evening.

The optimist in me will say -- to a better writing episode tomorrow.

rethinking life

I don't think I am at all unique in sorting things out for myself in a grand way on a fairly regular basis. I mean, not much has to happen for me to go backwards in time and forwards in time and conclude that adjustments are in order.

Perhaps the trigger was a call from some medical person about some rather good medical news (or at least an absence of not good news). Or maybe it was that I met (through a former student now friend and blogger) a person over coffee who brought forth thoughts of a Polish past (her ancestors are from Poland) and a traveling future (she, too, likes to travel and though she is older, she is perhaps a smidgen more adventurous than I have been in recent times). Or maybe it's that when I am surrounded by stacks of books that need my full attention, my thoughts roam.

Rethinking life includes reaching back, beyond my own birth. Here's a photo that I like.  It's of my grandparents, my mom, her brother a handful of years after they pulled up roots and moved to the States (only to return to Poland some years later -- but that's so much a different story).







Rethinking life includes, for me, a good long gaze over the changing landscape around me. You can tell that these fields, worked by Farmer Lee, are in full August mode.






It is a day that constantly threatened rain and indeed, during breakfast (on the porch), the world seemed misty gray and quite wet.






Rethinking life doesn't require inventing anything new for yourself. It doesn't call for a good attitude or a bright smile (though I hope I have both, always). It's more about trying to interpret things in a different light. If I thought one way about something, maybe I should think differently about it?

Anyway, according to deathclock.com (thanks, NYTimes), I have between 19 and 21 years of life left (depending on whether I call myself "normal" or an "optimist" and I do rather think I'm the latter), so, plenty of time to rethink my life again and again.


In the meantime, some aspects to the day remain rooted in their sameness. Breakfast, yes, I noted that already. And a weekly (postponed from yesterday) dinner with daughter and her husband.





And an evening on the couch, writing an Ocean post.

Sunday

We live on a fairly quiet rural road. Though close to Madison, we aren't a through-way to any particular spot and so the traffic -- what there is of it -- is of the go to work, go home type.

Except Sundays.

The road deadends at Lake Waubesa and during the summer, we get the weekend boats -- going to, coming back. All day long.






I can't complain. People like their boats and their lakes and it's hard to feel grumpy at this confluence of pleasures: a day off, superb weather, a waterfront that beckons.

However, today has an added twist -- our neighbor (we really have only one visible neighbor -- to the west of us) is celebrating. Maybe a birthday. There is a sign out front: honk for Dave! And so they do. All those happy people with their boats, sharing the joy: beep! And again. Beep beep. And again.





Country living has its interesting permutations.


On the upside, there is the porch breakfast.






Those strawberries in the bowl? -- Not from the garden. It's not that we do no have any strawberries in our patch this year, it's just that the crop isn't very large. Today, for example, we shared a strawberry. (Here, you take half!)





And speaking of fruit patches, today I finally careened with the tractor-mower over the worst parts of the extended raspberry bed. The machine went right through, jamming only twice. Right now, things look worse than they did before. The jungle of berry canes and weeds has turned into a jungle with weird bald spots. But, there will always be a period of nothing before there is a rebirth of something and so I am somewhat satisfied with having this bit of farmette work behind me.

Work: yes, the rest of the day was about work. School work. Which, these days, is amidst flowers.






And that's a good thing.