Sunday

From daybreak until it is time to fix supper, I stay outside. Oh, sure, there is the quick run in to take a shower and to put breakfast on the porch table -- minutes counted on the fingers of one hand.

It just happened that way. Our days at the farmette often just happen.

Oh, but what weather! What warm, sunny, outdoorsy weather!






Sunrise. Cheeper care. Garden care. I finish pruning raspberry canes. The cheepers go exploring.





Ed's up! We work together. Earlier, I had dug up another batch of tiger lilies, but when he sees their fallen stalks, he is crestfallen. So many ditch lilies slated for the ditch! No, that cannot be!

He finds space around the silo and we dig into the awful clay soil there to make room for the lilies.

And this makes Ed very very happy.

 Finally, breakfast. On the porch once more (with sunlight streaming in)...






And now is the time to purchase annuals for the pots that frame the farmette courtyard. Typically I pick up a few here, a handful there. But  during our Saturday trip to the farmers market, I had paused at Kopke's stand (they usually have the best of the flowering baskets) and Ed reminded me that we had hiked in and around their property this winter when we explored the frozen marshes just south of us. Maybe we should check out their greenhouses?

We do and it is an amazing place! You'd think I'd take photos, but honestly, pictures would not do it justice. It's the enormity of the enterprise that is most striking. When did they plant and pot so many annuals? (The answer, btw, is January.) Wait, here's a silly shot of me, because there was a mirror and I was clutching a few pots and my camera was handy...





And then, bac at the farmette,  I spend the time filling our pots. We have sixteen. Three were wintered over. That leaves thirteen. I filled ten today. I cannot describe how good it feels to create color instantly in this way. Perennials are my focus. Annuals are my indulgence. And so today, I indulged.

Ed asks -- why don't you start your own selection from seed next year?

And this leads us to speculate how we might build cold frames to start the process even in the dead of winter.

We hatch plans all day long. We talk of building trellises for sweet peas along the silo. We speculate about how hard (or not hard) it would be to have a pond and with it -- ducks. We dream big on how to improve the land that is the farmette. It's what we do.

Toward evening, I force myself to stop. I have to fix supper -- quite appropriately, spaghetti primavera, capitalizing on the veggies that you associate with spring: asparagus, beans, peas, a few tomatoes, garlic, basil. Mushrooms, zucchini. Boom! Ready.


And now Snowdrop arrives -- after a long long drive from Minneapolis. I am thrilled to see her walking up the pathway with her mommy! (The cheepers, of course, follow.)






We play indoors some...






But really, who can stay in when the day is so very perfect outside?

We walk the farmette. She loves this and keeps up quite well with the grownups, so long as there is a hand to hold.






Oh, she adores this walk! Cheepers, the willow -- favorites from the past, favorites today as well.












Our dinner is on the porch. I almost can't get Snowdrop to join us -- she is so in love now with the swing back chairs!






But food tempts. I give a final stir...






... and we're set. And as always, she is the perfect guest -- eating everything with the greatest enthusiasm (today's favorites? peas and mushrooms).






I ask -- what did you learn in you great distance travels?

Here's something: she can now execute a perfect fist bump.






The sun casts gold streaks on the walls of the farmette. Suddenly, we left behind the somber tones of the cold season and entered the radiant colors of the warm months.





And that's such a good thing.

Saturday

If yesterday was calm and methodical, today was bursting with growth and spring beauty.  When I come out to set the cheepers free, I am stunned by the perfection of it all.





I stay out and clear some of the distant raspberry beds. I hadn't intended to clear them -- it's a far off item on my yard to do list. But I'm there, they're there and it just feels grand to work outside in the warmth of the rising sun.

 I see a sleepy Ed coming out of the farmhouse. Without asking, he joins in. This belongs to our best moments -- working together in the morning, in anticipation of a beautiful day ahead.







It's noticeably warmer than yesterday, or the day before, or the week before. Warm enough for breakfast on the (cleaned up) porch? Yes! A thousand times yes!











Our plan today was to head straight to the Flower Factory for their grand spring opening. For more than thirty years I have been falling in love with the perennials sold there. David and Nancy (the owners) have grown the business to become perhaps the best place in the Midwest to purchase plants and we're lucky enough to be a mere ten minute drive from where they are.

But, it's also the grand spring opening of the downtown farmers market and someone slipped me a message about one of our farmer friends who had had a rough few weeks recently and so Ed and I decide to pop over to the market first and spend time greeting some of the vendors there. Familiar faces...






Lovely flowers and potted veggies for sale in so many stalls (though not for us this time -- we came on Ed's motorbike)...






Cheese curds galore (an Ed favorite)...






New vendors to get to know.






Ed, try this! Sorrel or pine needle pesto! 
He tries it. Turpentine.
What do you mean turpentine? It's great!
Tastes like turpentine which makes sense because turpentine is made from pine.
Unbelievable! How can you not love it? And the sorrel?
Eh...

I can't believe I live with a guy who basically doesn't like pesto. I mull over that one for a while: if you like each of the ingredients, is it possible to not love a combination of them? Taste: what a complicated thing it is!







At home, Ed gives a hen a hug...






... and now we're off to the Flower Factory.






I take great care with what I buy. Ed and I have expanded old fields and created new ones and it would be so very easy to load up many carts with new acquisitions. But one has to take care. The farmette is large and could swallow a credit card limit of purchases in no time. So we pick up only the center pieces. The rest I'll fill in through divisions and seeds.

Still, it's always thrilling to bring home plants from the Flower Factory...






... and to add them (a few each day) to the landscape here.

By late afternoon, if you'd ask me what's blooming at the farmette right now, I'd say (somewhat impishly, as all these are additions) --



Primula, which I learned to love in the gardens of Scotland




Anemone




Bergenia




Lathyrus


... and of course, the (finally!) emerging daffodils.






Ed picks up the camera and catches me in the act of planting. I do this routine dozens (hundreds?) of times each season and every single placement of roots into the ground is special. Memorable.





Grow well, little plant. I hope the cheepers steer clear of you and that the groundhog finds better shoots on which to graze. I so look forward to watching you thrive here. Welcome.

Friday

When I am not traveling, I have very humble goals for Ocean photos: I want to pay tribute to the early morning meal that gets me going in the right direction, and in the summer I want to recognize flowers that bloom in the garden, and on days that I see my granddaughter, I want to pick out something in her that made an impression on me that day.

A funny thing happens when several worlds collide (for instance, Snowdrop is at the farmette and does many fascinating things, while flowers bloom, birds sing and maybe all this is taking place during breakfast) -- I can't stop myself from taking another photo and another and one more, until I have maybe 22 and believe me, it may have been four times that if I hadn't restrained myself.

In other words, one thing inspires the next and this interplay is so heavenly, that it spurs me to keep the camera out. (Too, sometimes there'll be so many radiant blooms, or Snowdrop will be a whirlwind of cleverness and delight -- that, too, has me reaching for my camera again and again, despite my humble goals.)

I can't say I ever have flat days when I just do not want to take photos. But there are days when I just want to stay with the basics.

Today is such a day.


It's a gorgeous Friday. Really gorgeous. The daffodils are now running full speed ahead.






And of course, our breakfast is in the sun room.






And then I have the week's dinners to plan and groceries to buy and I put my camera down and I know this is all there will be for you, because in the afternoon, I'll be working in the garden and in the evening, tiredness will seep in.


I have now spent too many weeks preparing land for new plants and yet this is the perpetual challenge in creating gardens. Today, Ed and I try to eradicate a weed that somehow crept in behind our backs and is now threatening to take over the raspberries if not the world (it's the terribly invasive garlic mustard and if you have it in your yard -- do yourself the favor of pulling it out and destroying it now, or else...).

It's not really hard work -- it's a dig and a pull for each of the hundreds of clumps, but it's boring work and in the meantime, the wood chip pile is smoldering (it's so hot in there!), and the beds have holes that need to be covered (thanks, cheepers -- I know you live to scratch, but if you could work around the budding new growth, I'd be deeply appreciative), and the dozens of chomped off tulips have to be buried (I know it's you, groundhog, you fiend, you!)


I add tiny photographic details here. Of Ed examining tenderly the tomato sprouts.






A little sunburned! Damn!

And one of the cheepers, rushing.





Girls, I expect you to get along. That's directed mainly to, you, Scotch. You have to lay off of Henny. Got it? No? Remember, my kick is stronger than your fearsome chase.

In the evening, in a burst of enthusiastic and visionary hope, I cleaned the porch: I stripped all cloth (from the table, the swing back chairs) for laundering, I picked up the debris of winter and I scrubbed off a layer of blown in dirt. Should there be a beautiful hour tomorrow, I'll sit back on the porch and write from there.

that's more like it!

A day that could only please. I find no fault with it at all! It begins with a spectacular morning, with plenty of sunshine. I needn't have bothered with the fleece when I came out to open the coop.






I survey the gardens. Asparagus tips, coming up!
My flowers are tentative. One petal at a time. But I assure them, this is the real deal.






Breakfast in the sun room.





And then Ed and I carry the three big pots of wintered over annuals outside for the season. That's how sure I am of the warmth that finally broke through today!

My day with Snowdrop starts a little later in the morning, but I am with her until her bedtime and so the photos will come flying, especially since I wont see her again until Sunday (the young family has a busy schedule of activities in the next three days). So, lots of Snowdrop today. Lots of sunshine the whole weekend. Lots of joyous celebrating of the outdoors hereafter. (I calculate that the garden starts to look grand in my eyes toward the end of April and stays that way until toward the end of October. That's six months of rapture. We're just at the cusp -- the very best place to be!)


I come in and Snowdrop greets me right away -- grandma, will you please read to me a gazillion books, one right after the other? Please?
God, are your eyes blue today, Snowdrop.





Let's just read one and then -- guess what? We can go out right away!

No complaints there.

In our walk, we do pause at the distant coffee shop, where yes, the raspberry crumb from a scone tastes good...





But the people watching... ah, the people watching!






The day is so sunny, so perfect (in the sixties F by noon), that we detour to the little playground by the lesser lake. By now, a swing is old hat to Snowdrop. A happy hat.

There are a handful of other kids there and this just pleases her no end!






Since they do the slide, she's happy to try it too. With assistance.






Sweet one, the goal is to slide down.
But I like looking at the others from up here!






Let's slide down anyway.






The people watching was better at the top.


We walk over to the beach (as do the other kids). Is it her first time walking across yellow sands? How many beaches will she know in her lifetime?





We go to the water's edge and she is just seconds away from walking right in. But of course she can't and I see that this is going to be a tough one to navigate in the summer. My older daughter swam in Madison's lakes when she was little. By the time my younger one was a toddler, the warning signs went up: keep kids out of the lakes. Even today, a cautious parent warns his little boy -- don't touch the water!






I'm ready to head home, but she is not. Okay, how about looking my way for one last photo by the lake?
Nope. You see, there are these little kids playing over there...






It's past her lunch time/nap time/home time.
We need to go home, Snowdrop.
Funny how quickly they can round the mouth to produce that favorite toddler word.






Oh, but it was a glorious morning!


In the afternoon, we leave the big city and make our way to the farmette.

It's a turning point for Snowdrop, I think. Whereas before, she would be wide eyed and tentative to all that the outside world presented to her, today, she seems so at one with the undulating land, the swoop of the birds, the sway of the willow branches.






(Our tomatoes, outside for the first time today.)






Where is Grandpa Ed? 
In the sheep shed, working. Let's call him out!






He comes. She happily mounts his broad shoulders.
Grandpa Ed, look over there!






But he does have work to do and so we continue on our own.

Grandma, is something different here?
Yes, Snowdrop. We moved some flower pots outside today.






And finally I nudge her inside. There, I show her the New Acquisition -- the much debated table and two chairs. And here are two surprises: first of all, she is a tall girl, but the chair is nonetheless too high for her. She needs help (at least today she needed help) to get up in it and down from it.

But there is also another surprise: she loves it! Loves the confines of the chair. Loves the table play area. Loves that grandma picks up (for now!) whatever she drops to the floor.






Late in the evening, I tell her we need to make pizza for supper.. At first, I place her high chair by the counter and hope for the best. (Here, she adds her punches to the crust dough.)






Eventually, I bring her closer to the pizza, closer to the proccess of putting it together. As some of you have suggested, I place her on the counter, right where the action is. She watches as I distribute the sauce, the garlic, the mushrooms. I tell her it's time for the cheese. I hand her the bag.

Like every great chef, she tastes the cheese before spreading it on the pie. It's fine -- bring it on!






When the pizza is ready (mushrooms and ample garlic), she is too excited, too anxious to get her own piece.






She touches it. Too hot! Tears. But not for long. A few minutes later, she eats as if she hadn't eaten all week.






The sun is sinking quickly now. We go out again. Of course we do! It's so easy!

We walk the farmette, she and I. Behind the barn, to the east, to the west. I show her the daffodils. Anyone else and I would have shuddered: careful careful careful! Flowers. Don't touch! But I say none of this to her. I feel this place is as much hers at it is anyone's. Perhaps it's a grandmother's thing -- the child should not be held back too much.

And of course, she responds withe the greatest gentility and care.






She is my partner here. For sure.






I show her how the sun sets behind the willow and we both look up at the fragment of the moon. Look at the colors, Snowdrop, just look how beautiful it all is!





She looks. She understands.