Thursday

Steady, deliberate, rhythmical work. Day lilies to plant. Stakes to put in. And watering: established flowers can be left alone even in week-long dry spells. Not so new arrivals. They need a more pampered summer season.

It was a good day to devote again to outdoor work. True, there are the emergent bugs now, but not in a way that would disturb me. So I worked.

What can I give you on a day like this? Well, a sunrise! I mean, how many of you were up to see the sun take hold of the sky this morning? Claim mine then! Here it is!






Oops, not yet risen! Let's wait a few minutes... Okay -- up and out now!






Breakfast? Well, you probably had your own. Let's pull our breakfast memories together. Here's mine:






And after? Since I stayed in the garden, I'll show you some special bloomers, including the first display of a day lily! This one has ruffles and delicate lilac and yellow tones -- there are a million variations!






And so long as we're on the topic of flowers (aren't we always here, this spring, on Ocean, on the topic of flowers?) let's recognize the June rose (wet, after a hose-down). If you have a rose bush that survived all the polar vortex issues we had this winter, you're likely quite proud. I'm quite proud.






Polar vortex! Oh, remember how this land looked just a couple of months back? Consider the difference! To the front...






To the back...






Alright. What next? Well, Ed and I took one of our road trips.


 


We don't go great miles and more often than not there'll be a stop at Farm and Fleet somewhere along the way, but these *trips* have been a great favorite for both of us. Today's lasted only about two or three hours. First stop: farmers' market. And now you can finally tell that we're in full growing season mode.






Our purchases included strawberries.





But why? We have such a large berry patch at the farmette! And yet, right now, we can eek out no more than half a dozen berries per day. They are so delicious that the chipmunks have been bringing their entire extended families for a feast! I ask the vendor how he keeps his berries away from these thieves. Grow many, he tells me. Some will be eaten, but they'll leave some behind for you. I foresee next year an expansion of our strawberry fields.


We also bought a baguette and peas (our aren't quite ready yet).











Done with the market. Where to then? We have a destination -- a twin household just south of Verona where the women decided about a dozen years ago to divide and sell their perennials. Right now, they have hundreds of offerings (including many a dozen of day lily varieties!) and it is grand to see their set up. And yes, we carted away a day lily or two and a hosta...





......but the main thrill was to take a look at how a person might fashion a hobby to be self sustaining.

After that -- well, Farm & Fleet. I needed more chicken treats (a combination of sunflower seeds, raisins and nuts) and while there, I needed to steer Ed to a rack of shorts to replace what he has been wearing around the farmette. Here, take a look:





Now all I need is to get him to throw away the torn pair. That's tomorrow's project.

Tonight, the chickens were calmer, gentler, and seemingly even happier. Maybe it's the faintness of the sunshine (they prefer it that way). Maybe it's that they had my company outside for the good part of the day. In any case, their rush to greet me now brings a grin to my face and I don't even flinch as they run through the flower bed.





It's late now, that wonderful lateness of a mid June night when it barely is dark and you know that sunrise isn't that far off either. Such a beautiful time of the year! For you as well, I hope.

in honor of...

First, in line with the suggestion offered by commenter, I did acquire a plant today, though not a cedar pot.

The plant (or actually three)? Day lilies. A careful reader of the newspaper might worry that I am inadvertently paying homage to one Mr. Sharp, a 90-year old drug mule -- featured in the Magazine section of the NYT this week. I am not, though reading about this old man who went from being a famous and beloved cultivator of day lilies to being a major transporter of cocaine to Detroit reminded me of the place day lilies hold in my own heart.

I began my now thirty year love affair with perennials by being completely wowed by this flower. Two virtues stood out: first, even though each bloom lasts only one day -- one day! -- the plant can keep on flowering for weeks on end and indeed, the species hemerocallis "happy returns" can carry a show from late June all the way into September! That's very impressive.

Too, its second virtue caught my attention. My very first garden was in a spot with a variety of trees and shrubs not too far away. I worried about planting flowers with fragile roots close to these big guys. Until I read that a hemerocallis  can stand up to tree roots any day! None of this flimsy stuff! Day lily roots are powerful!

And so my first garden had day lilies. As did my second garden. And right now, at the farmette (my third garden in life), where I grow hundreds of flowers, I would say that the day lily is the favorite. It appears many times in all beds and indeed, in the first large bed fronting the farmhouse, it is the dominant flower.

I love day lilies. Thus a fitting end to this year's ambitious planting season would be to put in just a few more of them -- targeting now not the wedding week, but the weeks of July,  August and even September, when there is very little to rave about in a summer bed. I have to thank the writers of the article on the arrest of Mr. Sharp for the reminder that deep within every person, there may be a day lily hiding in his soul.


The title of the post was prompted by another set of "honors": today I received (in one packet) three certificates,commending my 25 years of service for the state and for the university. That is, Governor Walker sent me a certificate of commendation, and the chancellor sent me a certificate of service, and then there was another certificate of commendation from Governor Walker: a duplicate of the first! Does that mean that my work was commendable enough to warrant twice the certification?

Of course, all of this is silly anyway. I have never hung any certificate on any wall -- office or home -- so I am deliberating why it is that anyone would even keep any of these papers. Perhaps because it feels disrespectful to the institutions that churn them out to simply toss these papers in the recyclable bin. But it surely is tempting to do just that.


Not too many photos for you today. We spent the afternoon chasing down my day lilies, then buying a faucet valve and paint at Menards. And, too, I had a dinner out with my old work friends. Late night, camera tucked away for most of the day.

And yet, there is always a photo from that early morning walk to and from the coop. Today of Oreo -- looking around for a hen to love...






And breakfast, which I know looks like yesterday's breakfast, but still, it was a good moment.






And let me post a grateful nod to the peonies in the garden. I have some half dozen plants blooming profusely right now. Theirs is a short burst of color. But they're greatly appreciated.







And to the campanula: how reliably perky these bells can be!






Finally, evening. I return home just as the sun finally triumphs over the clouds and asserts itself over the western edges of the farmette, as if to say -- you managed well enough without me, but I can tell you're glad I'm back.

letting go

I just called the Menards store in west Madison. They still have a few cedar pots left.
Ed is not impressed. Why do you need another cedar planting pot? Is it that you want to bring something indoors? Because otherwise why not plant whatever it is that you still have to plant in the ground?
I don't actually have anything more to plant...
So where do you want to put this pot?
I don't know. Well, I do know... (hesitate) No, I don't know.

When you have worked on something so hard, so hard, so that most of your waking hours for two months have been consumed by this, it's hard to then just stop. Or even slow down. It's like being a parent, watching a daughter move off into her adult world. It takes a while to get used to not tracking the details of her life.

I still have lists of things to do in the next ten days, but increasingly, they are less about the outside space.

Except for one task - the perpetual "tidy the garden after the chickens" task.

Their scratching at the dirt remains so disconcerting to me, that after one such tidying effort (where I rake back dirt and wood chips that have been dislodged) I go upstairs to a napping Ed (he's been a little under the weather) and tell him that if he got rid of the chickens today, behind my back, I would breathe a sigh of relief.

If you want to return the chickens, we can do that you know. They're not ours after all.
I shake my head. I could not. I am forever trapped in the love of their happiness, their contentment, their belief that all days will begin with a spring out of the coop into the waiting world of worms and watermelon rinds and end in the warm comfort of their perch in the coop that they have learned to call home. The sweet pleasure of watching them thrive is exactly that: the pleasure of knowing that they are happy, that they feel this space is as much theirs as it is ours. It's hard to take that away from them, to snuff out their trust in us -- their protectors, their safe haven in an awfully mean world.

So I get up as always, very early. It's cloudy and so I offer no photos of a golden sun.

Later, we eat breakfast, but in the kitchen. (Did I tell you? It's cool outside.)






And I take care of mostly indoor tasks. Bill paying. Window washing. With an occasional burst of flower bed fixing.





Cleaning, mowing, weed whipping -- that'll come early next week. For now, I merely fix and mend damage.

Eh, maybe I'll get that cedar planting pot tomorrow. A gradual slowdown is much healthier than a sudden cessation.

In the meantime, I can admire the bees' discovery of things in bloom. Each day something is added.





Even as small details are scratched away.

Monday

If I count the number of times I've written here, on Ocean "another lovely, sunny day," I think I would come up with a staggering total. This is the winning side of the upper Midwest: we have more sunny days than rainy ones, more blue sky than cloud cover. Of course, you always remember the extremes: the violent storms, the polar vortex, the rain that never seemed to end even though it was probably only a day long affair. But sunny days, ah, sunny days -- they dominate.

Today the farmette animals got me up and out even before sunrise (which right now takes place at 5:17 a.m.).











(After the first run, the girls always spend a while tidying up.)






It's wiser just to force yourself up and out when the first complaint sounds -- to get up and do the animal chores and then try to squeeze in another hour or two of sleep afterwards. Sometimes it works.

At other times, once outside, I get distracted. A few weeds to pull, a pattern of light to admire...






Today, Oreo offered his own distraction. Because he is crippled (remember? a one legged rooster), he has a hard time finding a willing hen to satisfy one of his basic needs (he only has three basic needs that I know of: to eat, to mate and to protect the brood). They can outrun him and quite often they do. Finding himself intensely frustrated, twice now in the morning he has come to me while I'm crouching over something and explored the possibilities of mounting me from the back. Needless to say, he quickly remembers I am not a hen and in case he has any doubts, I surely tell him as much in rapid fire English.  (Hens only now how to coo and cackle, though I do think that Scotch's repertoire is somewhat broader.)

We've been reading a lot about rooster issues (you gotta do that if you really care about your animals) and many "experts" suggest asserting your humanness when roosters misbehave by either feeding them or holding them. Apparently hens don't do either and so you reinforce your difference. So there I was, at 5:20 by now, walking around with Oreo in my arms. It is amazing that I managed to get any sleep after that, but I did. A little.

After a beautiful breakfast...






...there was outdoor work to attack, as the list of essential tasks grew during the weekend of the young couple's visit. Paths to build, front yard limbs to cut down so vans with food and equipment could come through, a new place to weed and tend to as we decided on a different positioning of the portable toilets. No, the farmhouse one toilet wont do for such a crowd and besides, it's up steep stairs -- not so easy for the very old and very young. [And if you're going to ask me how we intend to handle that when we're too old to climb those stairs, I'll tell you that I never plan that far in advance. Lightening could strike tomorrow and the worry would have been pointless.]







It grew warm. Very warm, but I persevered even as Ed took many breaks for many naps. But by late afternoon, I had had enough and we did something that we haven't done for such a long time: we went to Paul's cafe for a snack (the usual for Ed -- a pickle, as it is the only place within spittin' distance that has good pickles according to him) and then we took our old rackets and our flat tennis balls to our secret public tennis court amidst the pines and we had a very very nice few minutes showing off how rusty our game has become.

Finally, a late evening on the porch. There, I needn't even say it -- it's so obvious: it was a glorious day and a sublime evening. We specialize in both, here at the farmette, nestled in the state of Wisconsin.

Sunday

An unusual day in that it follows no routines, no predictable patterns.

I take that back. At 5, Isis is meowing for food and release and I hear the rooster crowing. It's drizzly wet outside, so going out is hurried. I pause only to photograph the ripening strawberries. Here they are, moments before a chipmunk comes and eats the whole lot of red ones.





The netting we have thrown over the berries does not deter chipmunks. What's the next strategy to get a crop out of our strawberry field? Still workin' on it.

Put aside the strawberries for now. Face the farmhouse. Appreciate the varous clumps of peonies coming into their own.






Thinking back, it was a restless night for me -- too many small details to think through and work out. But though the wedding is in some fashion beginning to occupy so many of my waking hours, I have to say that it is by my choice. After all, I am not cooking anything that weekend. The young couple has hired the Underground Food Collective to cater a simple Midwestern meal. All details surrounding food and drink and, too, the ceremony itself, have been taken care of by the soon to be marrieds. I merely provide the venue.

But there is a huge amount of *venue* out there!

This morning, we gathered on the porch for breakfast. Frittata with this week's eggs, then too, pancakes with our own rhubarb compote, and home made granola.


'


Oh, but I love having my daughters  here! Including this one who has to head back to Minneapolis this afternoon.





And shortly after the meal, the skies cleared and as the couple went over the various staging details with those who will be running the show on that day (less than two weeks now!), I sat back and thought more about all that was still before us.

When they left, the faremtte became eerily quiet. No voices, no sounds, no questions thrown out, no answers scribbled, recorded, forgotten.

Ed and I finish chipping the raspberries and I sit down to make my final final list and then I put it all aside and concentrated on eating a chocolate fudgsicle, defiantly avoiding the plunge back into outdoor work. For a while.

And then we plunge again. We weed according to the new guidelines (the young couple's input has caused us to reconfigure some of the paths and passageways) until we can weed and plunge no more. (Even the chickens are exhausted with our efforts.)






I wince at their clawing and scratching, but Ed reminded me that the beds look fine and we will survive their antics! We will!





Supper? Well, it's probably the worst meal that I ever "cooked" for Ed and myself: reheated egg fritata and reheated last night's pizza. Yum.

Saturday

You could fire off a long list of things you get unused to when you retire.

Obviously getting up very early would be on that list, though if retirement means chickens, then getting up very early simply gets replaced with getting up very very early. Today's sunrise was almost worth it though.





In fact, yes, it was worth it.






Everything about color and tone in that moment of dawn's early light is nearly perfect.











[We pause for an interruption of regular blogging: Martha the groundhog has just crossed the sheep shed path on her way to sample the flower garden.]






A rushed breakfast would be on the list (of things you get unused to), except on days you have packed too much into one morning. It may be beautiful, but leisurely? No, not today. Not for me anyway.






If you're retired, it seems that you also get unused to being on time. You'd think it would be the opposite, no? You have time! That is your retirement gift, worth the income drop, worth the status loss -- you have time! So why the constant lateness? Maybe it's that not keeping to a schedule makes you pokey. You smell too many roses along the way.

Just one more then, okay? Being retired should make you calm. Unruffled, unphased by the discourteous nature of grumpy people you pass on the path of life. Quite the opposite! As I am pulling up to a gas pump on Rosie, the car before moves so slowly that I have to wiggle Rosie's front half a little, just to maintain balance. That, for some reason, did not sit well with a driver coming from the pump. He yelled through the open window -- learn how to drive!

Normally one ought to ignore the rudeness of others. Not me. I did what I have never done to any stranger in my life -- stuck out a very impolite finger at him. I mean, asking for a fist fight or worse, isn't it? It's as if I had to make the statement -- dont you go around belittling grannies who cross your path, you jerk!


So in the second half of the first year of my retirement, I have a new list -- of things to do better: be on time! keep your hands to your side when drivers express rage! Et cetera.


In other news -- it was a pretty day today. A little still, predicting the storms that surely would come, but pretty nonetheless. I spent some time at the market with my girls...






...and then we put in a great many hours discussing the details of the wedding of my youngest. Believe me, when you are hosting some 150 out of towners for festivities (or at least a portion of the festivities) at the farmette, there is a lot to discuss.

This girl is getting married. True.






But hey, it is a whole two weeks from now. In the meantime, there's pizza to be eaten, stories to be told...





...a Saturday to savor.

food sources

Since I was young, I've cared about my food sources. My grandparents cared, too and I suppose they passed this on to us. My whole family -- mother, sister, nephews, daughters -- they all care. Sure, with different emphases and sensitivities, but we all pay attention to how food is cultivated and consumed. You know that line about kids these days not knowing that the supermarket cellophane covered drumsticks actually come from a chicken that once had feathers and a personality? It doesn't apply to me. My grandma axed live chickens for Sunday lunch and I helped pluck feathers out of the barely dead animal. I know what's what.

But I have my lapses. Sometimes, when I'm not thinking, I can do something that shows just how removed we really are from having an ingrained understanding of where food comes from.

Take this morning, for instance. Oh, I'm fully aware of chickens alright! Up at 5:30 and even that is late for them. Clean coop, make sure there's water and only then do I stumble back to the farmhouse, just as the sun breaks through the clouds at the horizon.






Breakfast. A little rushed, but still good, on the porch, on a sunny and warm Friday morning.




                                                               

Ed goes off for his round of techie meetings and I'm about to go off to pick up groceries for the week and as I take stock of what's in the fridge, I shout out to him -- you know, there's not enough left over kohlrabi soup for even a small lunch portion. I should give it to the chickens.  

I throw down the last bit of soup into a plastic container and watch them enjoy a rather tasty mid-morning snack.





And then I go off to do my shopping and in ticking off in my mind things that I need to restock the pantry, I remember something: at the last minute, I had decided to use chicken stock for the kohlrabi soup. Damn! Yes, it had plenty of vegetables, but it wasn't really vegetarian. Oh, sure, it was greatly diluted and boiled and the whole thing was not much different than giving a piece of cake (made with eggs!) to a hen, but still, I feel duped by my own absentmindedness, rooted in that same kind of thinking that leads you to forget that a box of beef or chicken broth actually has a source.


In other news -- it is plenty warm today. Still, garden work is pleasant and no longer rushed. The basics are in place (and will remain in place if only the hens would quit digging up dirt around my flowers).





And I even have enough time to do a tornado clean up job at the farmhouse (my little one and her soon to be husband -- in two weeks! -- are coming to town for the weekend) and to take a walk with my older girl all around one of Madison's lesser lakes.

Toward evening one of our many secret sources of free wood chips came by with a truckload of freshly chipped pines and cedars and so after supper we were out again, throwing pitchforkful after pitchforkful of chips around one of the old raspberry islands until I could throw no more.


We end the day on the porch.






There is no better ending than this -- whether we are reading or writing or doing absolutely nothing at all except watching the bats swoop down. It's quiet now. Around midnight the coyotes will howl and at four, Oreo will begin his daylong song. But in the hours just after dusk, sounds are muted. As if far away. Receding as the day recedes, colors blending into one shadow of lushness, until tomorrow, when each individual sweet plant will impress me all over again.