long day

That's Tuesday for me. Long. And so therefore, the post after it has to be short.

A friend stopped by during breakfast -- a repeat of celebratory pancakes and a repeat of my delight in seeing so much brightness everywhere I look.






How can there be this many ways to view light?





And after breakfast? Well, work. With the occasional mad pace through the garden, as Ed continues to put finishing touches on the roof edging.






Back inside for me. Work! Keep at it -- work! Forget the gorgeous day. Get inside!






To campus then, for a few hours in the classroom and after -- wow, is the sun setting already? As usual, I ride rosie home the quiet way -- by the lesser lake...






By the time I am on the country roads, the sun is almost gone. Just a sliver left -- over the now dry fields of soy.






Home. The joy of returning home. Is it that way for you too? That final stretch of road before you turn into your drive way, does it make your heart swell? I could write a fat tome about the pleasure of being home. And so it is one of the peculiarities of nature, my nature, that I should devote so much energy and spare resources on being away from it! Next time I write (late Thursday), I wont be home at all. As always, stay with me as I reconfigure my posting schedule. Travel disrupts routines. And that, for me, is a good thing.

just can't get enough...

...of that light. Like the waters of the ocean, the counter top picks up the blue of the sky. The floor -- the green of the trees outside.






Different. Life is different when there is light all around you. (This is at breakfast. My guy gets pancakes today. Celebrate!)






Inside and out. (Do you remember how dark the porch space looked from this vantage point?)

In the meantime, the sun shines bright and the blooms are sweet and mellow and nothing, nothing seems too hard or complicated.

But work continues to lay its heavy claw on all hours of the day. From sunrise, to sunset I'm stuck at the table with my books spread in all directions. Living on the farmette is at once so tough in these months of brutal work (I want to be outside!) and so gratifying: I take two minute pauses repeatedly and I don't have to walk far to find the most stunning little vignettes of seasonal beauty.






Ed resumes work on the roof, reattaching the flashing where the glass panels meet the wooden farmhouse frame.

And so we move into a beautiful evening and as promised, we have a dinner out. Mussels and fries and a frisee salad. And a glass of rosé. At the bar counter, where we can watch the flow of traffic at each side.






Perhaps the best part about living in the country is witnessing a day's beginning and a day's end. As we drive the last quarter mile home, the thinnest sliver of the moon and a first bright star (is it Sirius? or a planet?) shine brightly to the west.





We pull into the driveway. Isis is out to greet us. The air is cool, robust. In a week or two, it'll be time to bring in the plants that spend the winter indoors. Orchids, geraniums, a few herbs, maybe a nasturtium -- they've had their six months of the carefree life. Now is the time to think of packing up your roots and heading indoors.

Sunday

Here's a downside of suddenly having terrific light in your kitchen: you can now see every inch of counter top, every bit of the dish rack, every smudge on every surface before you.

And so despite the fact that the farmhouse is one big construction zone right now -- with buckets of tools and strips of wood leaning by the windows -- I start the day with a thorough house cleaning.

But after breakfast...





...we are at it again.

This is the second most nerve racking day for me. (The first day of placing the panels topped the list because we were uncertain then how everything would unfold.)

It is the day when we have to heave up and place the biggest and heaviest of all the glass panels. It is so fat and wide that it can't easily be passed through the window. At 85 pounds, it is so heavy that I'm not sure I can lift it high enough to do the bend at the stairwell. It is so fragile and expensive and important that I really think the day would be a lot pleasanter if we could just fast forward it to the moment when that damn thing is in place and I can sit back and thank my stars that I didn't let go of it or bump it or do any number of terrible things to have it shatter into a million pieces.

At least the weather is good.

Ed starts us off by placing the plywood strategically so that we can approach the gaping hole. It's a balancing act up there. Walking is safe only in the middle of the plywood or on the beams themselves.





I'm nervous enough that I can't work. I pluck weeds around the picnic table outside. Furiously. As if they had to be gone and out of there in the next two minutes.

Okay, we're ready.

Everything moves slowly now. The initial lift, the steady walk to the farmhouse, the first turn, the one into the living room. We rest before we take on the stairs. Ed mumbles that he should have developed a better pulley system outside. The first big challenge is managing the stair turn. Up, it has to go up and I'm the lead person (and no edge can scrape against anything -- we've learned that lesson!).

Are you okay? I ask. He's hesitating below me.
Are you okay?

Sometimes you wonder at the things you're capable of doing. They seem too mighty, too bold, too brazen. To think that the motherload of glass panels can be lifted, carried up, placed with a quarter inch precision on rafters suspended in midair...

But you do it because it needs to be done.

And this is how we get it round the bend in the stairs, and out the window, at a tilt, all ten feet by thirty inches of it, balancing ourselves on the rafters and the plywood, pushing it gently in place.

Well, here we do falter. I can't push it hard enough. Ed goes down to the porch, climbs a ladder and like the mighty Hercules that he sometimes is, he lifts the pane above his head while up there, on the roof, I guide it into position.

And there you have it -- the largest of the panels in place, suddenly throwing light into the western corner of the porch and, more significantly, into the dining area of the farmhouse kitchen.






After this, everything else seems like child's play. A few more panels, more strips of wood to screw in and we're done for the day. Of course, we're not done in any true fashion. We have installed fifteen panels. The sixteenth we'll have to reorder (because of the nick). I wailed loud and hard and finally Ed agreed that the nicked one needs to be discarded. Then, too, he has edging to do and finally, we'll need to paint at least some and possibly all of the boards and beams. We don't mind the funky look, but it's a tad too funky out on the porch right now.

But as the sprinkles return in the evening, we have the satisfaction of knowing that the greatest effort is behind us. In an unusual moment of grateful appreciation for my efforts (as if I did even a quarter as much as he has done!) Ed suggests a Monday night out to celebrate. Yes!

This evening, though, is reserved for my daughter and her husband. They come for Sunday supper late enough that they can't appreciate the sudden burst of light in the kitchen.






But they bring a gust of cheerful energy into the farmhouse and they listen to our stories of roof issues and I'm thinking -- it surely will be so nice for us all to be sitting out on the porch again next summer. Under skies of blue, or dusky gray, watching the bats swoop above us as the warm evening turns into night.

up on the (wet) roof, continued

All day long we played tag with the rain.

Breakfast in the sun room, but there's no sun today. A thick fog lifting just a bit to reveal darkening skies.




The radar shows a band of showers, but they should end in an hour.

(An hour later) We're clear for at least two. Let's go!
We're clamping down the glass panes on the roof with more butyl and screwed in boards. Delicate work. The screws cannot touch the glass.





Time and again the forecast is off. Right as we position ourselves on the wet boards, the rain comes back.
Let's finish this one and take a pause. Be careful! I say this now with even greater urgency. It's slippery out there!

I'm so focused on what we're doing that I barely appreciated how grand a rooftop view can be. We're looking out toward the barn and sheep shed. Same view as from the porch, only from a higher plane.






We do this stop and go work all day long. It rains. I read indoors. It stops. We go out. It starts, we get wet, we pause. And so on. By evening, I will have done my school work load for the day and we will have completed the clamping of all the glass panes thus far, adding two more panels to the lot. So now we have eleven down and five to go (for a total of sixteen; I'll get the number right yet!).

After supper, we run errands. A trip to my daughter's to babysit their cat.





Then a stop at Menard's (building supplies).  One-by-twos and, too, vinyl stripping for the roof edge.

My role in the roof project would have come to an end Sunday -- with the installation of the remaining panels, but we still have the problem of one nicked panel and no meeting of the minds as to what to do with it. At least Sunday promises us some clear skies. Whatever we decide will look more hopeful and bright in the golden light of the sun.

up on the roof, continued

The roof replacement project stalls as both Ed and I have work to do in the morning. Clouds hovered over the forested hills...


 


...and eventually the rain comes down, washing away some of that climbing and lifting energy we had. Back to the books again. These days I take my work to the south facing front room (how else to call a space that long ago used to be a front porch?). It brings the coveted winter sunshine indoors all season long. Soon we'll be eating breakfast there too. Soon? Oh dear, we really are that close to winter.





It rains and it rains some more. The dusty pale colors of the cornfields take on a richer hue. A last burst of green and gold color before it all goes away.





In the afternoon, the skies settle into their humid, occasional drip mode.
Want to carry some glass up?
Yes!





Sure, we have some minor missteps. Like trying to fit in the center trapezoid the wrong way. (My fault.) Or resting the glass in the living room while Isis, confused beyond hope, tries to walk through it. But by the time it was too dark to do anymore, we had hoisted and fit in five more panels. So we have nine up and only six to go.

The routine of carrying up glass is, right now, so set, so predictable, that the temptation is to just keep on truckin' until the whole batch is in place. That would give us a glass ceiling by the end of the weekend. But I tell Ed that we need to switch focus. The glass isn't clamped down yet. I want to see whether he can get the screws in without shattering the panels. And he has to design a different edging at the overhang. Something easy and durable and thin enough so that the rain and snow can just wash right over it.

And I need to put some heavy duty hours of reading under my belt if I'm to take off next Thursday eve or else I'll be traveling with great folders of work. I want so very much to have at least one weekend free of scholarly writings. Let the mind go soft. Let other senses kick in.

-->
In the meantime, I make a batch of broccoli soup to keep us going for a while. October, November -- these are broccoli soup months in my mind. Ed picked up some corn from a road stand, we still are reeling with tomatoes -- this is what good autumn suppers are made of.





The end of the week. A good week. But then, aren't they all, at heart, good weeks?

up on the roof

Ed was not up at dawn -- we were both up at dawn. His energy galvanized the both of us to attack the porch roof project full steam today, despite the predictions of storms and thundershowers.

So, after a quick and rough breakfast...





...we rehearsed the game plan. The pulley system, whereby we heave the glass panel up a ladder-like incline and then in some miraculous fashion Ed takes it off the pulley and lays it down flat was, in the end a no-go. I had the ultimate veto power and I expressed it.
I'm too terrified with that one! If it slips or I let go, the whole thing will come crashing and it will be my fault!
If you let go of it under any system the whole thing will come crashing.
Yes, but I especially see the crash coming if we hoist it up outside.

The alternative is to walk all panels (we're down to only fifteen: Ed reminded me that we conjoined the end ones, which were too skinny to manufacture on their own, with their neighbors) into the farmhouse, around three corners downstairs, then up the stairs, mastering a mega-tight turn on the stairs themselves, then finally guiding them out the bathroom window.

We practice with a ten foot board. Tricky, but doable.

It's all in the attitude -- I tell myself. Cautious, but positive. Evincing strength. Yeah. I can do this! (Besides, there is no third alternative.)

Most of the panels weigh only about forty-five pounds. But two -- the end ones -- are more than eighty and unfortunately, we have to begin with such an end one.

Isis watches.

I feel a rain drop. Another. We ignore it all. We have such an intense focus on succeeding with that first panel that I swear it would have to flash and thunder for me to suggest postponing the installation.

We've attached glass carrying handles. Suction cups. Bright red, to keep things cheerful. They help.

Up we go, barely managing the stair turn and then -- out the window, first Ed then me.

You'd think we were home free now. You'd be wrong. Remember, there is no roof over the porch at the moment. It's been ripped off. What remain are loosely placed boards of plywood. If you step on an edge of one, between the rafters, the thing would flip up and throw you down to the porch below.

"Be careful" are my words of choice. About a million times. Be careful, watch it, be careful, you're on the edge! Careful!






And, too, there is this tricky part, where we have to position the glass at the edge of two rafters. This is no rough approximation: it has to cover exactly a one-half inch surface of each rafter. No more, no less.

There's sticky stuff placed on the rafter. Butyl tape. Ed sprays it with water so that the stickiness doesn't catch the glass too early, before we're ready to let it go.





Careful! You're on the edge! Careful!
Can you lift your edge of the pane?
No, not anymore. It's stuck.
Switch places with me.
Careful!

A few more rounds of this and we're done. (The celebratory photo. On the roof.)





At least we're done with the laying of the first of the fifteen panels. Ed will be clamping them down further with wood strips. With the feverish hope that any screw wont touch the pane. Because if it does - boom! -- the entire panel will shatter. Edges of tempered glass are that vulnerable. (Once they're covered with wood trim, we can rest easy.)


The rain continues to tease us. A sprinkle, then quiet. It's muggy and humid, but we want to continue. With the second panel.

As we pick it up to carry it in, I say to Ed -- let's not get cavalier now. Just because we did one of the heavier panels...
That's right. Accidents happen when you're distracted.
And that's when the panel touches, just touches the metal hinge of the farmhouse door.
There is a small nick. Just like that. Ed looks at it. A quarter of an inch of vulnerability.
I don't think we can use this panel anymore, he says.

A quick consult with glass experts. There's no consensus. One says -- file it down and you're fine, the other says -- get rid of it: fifty-fifty chance it will shatter within a year.

Can you tell where in that dispute I stand?

So now we are down one panel.

But we have learned a lot. The edges of a tempered sheet of glass cannot be scraped by metal.


The day progresses in this ways for us:  He installs butyl and positions the plywood boards while I work on my readings, then we carry and fit a panel. And another. And another. Be careful! Be careful!

Four are in place, eleven still to go.

We look up to see it's almost evening.

But the first part of the roof looks fabulous! I'm staring at it from the corner of the kitchen:





We need to do a run to Farm and Fleet. Ed will cut tubing to run the screws through, so that they do not touch the tempered glass edges as he clamps down wood strips to hold everything in place. We're learning!

The next days promise more rain. A shame -- we're pumped to keep going. But a good thing, too. I've got work to do!

And the season moves closer and closer toward the colors of fall. And the beauty of that doesn't escape us. Up on the roof, down below. It's all grand.

excitement

First, a run through the ordinary. Nothing wrong with that! My "ordinary" moments are quite beautiful, especially when the sun stays bright and my world is calm.

Breakfast, in the sun room. I'm waiting for Ed to bring his bowls over to our corner by the window.






Then, a quick walk through the garden. I rarely post photos of the side garden -- the one that lines the dirt driveway. The lavender is doing well there. Still attracting the occasional bee.






And, too, I must thank the pots that lead up to the entrance of the farmhouse. Their blooms are always under-appreciated.






And of course, there is the front garden, displaying its own faded beauty.






Alright. Time to head to campus. You would not believe that we're on the second day of October! So warm! The food huts in Library Mall are doing a hefty business.






I have to stay downtown even later than usual. When I finally am ready to head home, I see that the sun has already dipped below the horizon. I'm just two blocks from the grand Lake Mendota. I'm tired, hungry -- all of it. Should I detour anyway? Yes I should.






And now I point rosie home. As I approach the farmhouse, I pause by Farmer Lee's fields. She still picks flowers for the markets, but I see that slowly, she is letting go of this bit of land. So that her cultivated flowers are mixing with the prairie. Against the backdrop of the changing foliage, it is a quite stunning display.






Alright, home. Dusk has definitely set in, but Ed is outside, working away. I see that the glass panels have arrived. After months of thinking this through, after all the preparations, corrections and speculations, he is at the point of wanting to bring together the final pieces. Here he is, constructing a way of moving the heavy panels -- all seventeen of them -- to the roof.





There is far too little light to forge ahead with things now, but I can tell he'll be at it at dawn. I continue to worry, but he is on a different plane now. For him, the excitement has set in.

work

Over the years, my tolerance for stress has plummeted. Twenty years ago I could send the kids off to school, attend court hearings, meet with students, prepare lectures, cook solid dinners, run kids between their various after school things, run PTA meetings, all in one day -- run run run and think nothing of it. Now, pack my day with a constant stream of work hours and I feel like I've run a marathon. (I'm writing this in the middle of the night because I am too tired to sleep. My ultimate measure of stress.)

I could never be president of a country.

There is, running parallel to my own work issues, the matter of the porch roof. Watching Ed labor through the various problems that keep surfacing is hard. (As is worrying that he'll come crashing down, especially as the boards are pried loose and there's not a steady base beneath him.) Of course, right now, my role is little more than that of being the worrier and, too, a sounding board for his concerns. The latest:  how am I going to get these eight food boards down from there? They're too heavy to throw!








We talk through every such problem that crops up. This morning, for example, after breakfast (it's October and we're still picking strawberries from the garden!)...






...we watched a youtube flim clip of shattering tempered glass. Did you know that you could throw a baseball at a sheet of tempered glass and nothing would crack? But if you tapped an edge with a hammer it would break into a million pieces? This little insight caused Ed to completely redesign (today!) the clamping down process, so that drilling in screws doesn't inadvertently "tap" and therefore shatter the sheets of glass. Those strips of wood he prepared all weekend long? No good. New ones with a protective lip for the screws will have to be made.

The farmette is a hub of work.

(And today, Farmer Lee's "sister" came to dig out the last of the beets and carrots on the strip of land she uses at the rear of the farmette. All around me, there is hard work.)






The question you might well ask is -- how long? How long before I catch up with work and allow myself to slow down? Before the roof project is done? Before the rhythm becomes one that is more in line with what I would call normal?

Actually -- a week. Maybe two.

The glass for the roof is being delivered tomorrow. A period of rain means we can't do much with it until Sunday. But on Sunday and Monday of next week, Ed and I will team up and haul the stuff up and he'll presumably not shatter any of it drilling in the screws and by mid-week, if all goes well, it should be done.

My work -- once I catch up with the voluminous readings, should, too, settle down. And, too, I have that mid-semester break to look forward to. It's toward the end of next week!

So just a little bit more.


In the meantime, despite the pace of work and worry, there is much to admire and to love here: the farmette gardens for example.

Even the coral bells are still blooming.






The day is so warm, so very warm! I've not used the car at all to get to classes this semester. (This is a good thing for many reasons, not  the least of which is that it's parked right by the newly discovered wasp nest.) We move fluidly in and out of the farmhouse -- it's all one expanse of summer-like air: indoors, outdoors, no difference at all.

Yeah, much to admire and love. Farmer Lee's fields across the road.






And the gentle evening ride home from work. Past the lesser lake, where the waters are so still!






Evening. I cook a throw together supper, as Ed continues to rip boards off the roof. Steady hours of work. Punctuated by meals...






...and sleep. Eventually. When the world stops spinning and the stillness of the night and the hoot of the owl out the window erase the last traces of the tumult inside.

early, late and not a whole lot inbetween

In one of those early morning moments, where you want to go back to sleep, but you need a little nudge toward drowsiness (because the race of thoughts in your head started much too early), I pick up the NYTimes on my laptop and notice a story about someone who had just died. It wasn't an unusual death (she was older), but this person was to me, once upon a time, unusually important.

Those of us who cook a big meal pretty much on most days of our lives, for decades and decades -- we usually have someone who got us going in those early years, when we were just starting. Our cooking heroes.

She was mine. Marcella Hazan. I read now that she was feisty. An Italian who reluctantly moved here and was appalled at the food she encountered. "back home, I wash my coffee pot with the water that you call coffee..." -- she was known to say (in Italian; her English was never great).

I loved her cookbooks. I think I have most if not all of them. Oh sure, I still used many many recipes out of the classic food magazines (in the way that people these days rely on epicurious.com and other Internet food sites). But inspiration for cooking, for finding the best, the fresh and honest came, for me, from Marcella Hazan.

I read that she cooked a daily lunch for herself and her husband until the day she died (at 89). I understand that. I cannot imagine not cooking. I cannot imagine relying on foods that are not prepared on my kitchen stove. So a quiet thanks to her here, on Ocean. For getting me addicted to cooking.


The entire rest of the day was spent on work and unfortunately, I did most of it on the couch, which means I now have terrific lower back pain. Stupid me.

I do offer the usual and to me -- utterly delightful moments out in the garden.

Breakfast first. On the porch.





A stroll to see what's hanging in there.

By the sheep shed:





In the flower beds:










I stumble upon this guy too. Drilling in holes on the strips of wood for the roof project.





We pause for the peanut butter and grape jam break on the porch, but I'm preoccupied with thoughts of work and he's preoccupied with thoughts of effectuating his roof design. Isis is not preoccupied with anything.






In the evening Ed reminds me that we did not play tennis. That I was a total couch potato. That it would be good to get out some. (Did I mention that we had another beautiful, sunny day?)

I didn't have it in me to go out late for a game, but I agreed to work a little outside on shoveling wood chips over the cleared portion of the raspberry patch. Ed loaded the cart repeatedly from the pile of free chips that we get from various companies that trim trees in the area and together we spread them over the cleared dirt. Until the moment when I look up and see him running.
Whaaaat????

I hit a wasp nest, he tells me.
Together we tiptoe back to the scene of the crime (as if noise is what will set them off again). Yes, there it is -- where all the wasps are flying madly in circles.
Now what?

We'll think about it tomorrow. There are too many small issues on our plate right now. Tomorrow seems like such a good time to review any of them.