Wednesday

Ed is late for breakfast (I ask when we should eat, he suggests a good hour and then usually comes down as promised) and I am all set to complain about the cooling down of my coffee and oatmeal, but he flashes that grin just as I take out my camera. I have to smile back!






Afterwards, we set out for the big box store that has the biggest collection of Christmas lights.  We are starting anew, but with an idea as to how to proceed: get something that matches the porch lights, use twinkling bulbs by the path and white cords around the door. How's that for knowing one's own mind!

I am sort of hoping we'll find a deer or snowman to add to our outdoor collection of holiday brightness, but it is not to be. We settle on the twinklers and the bright steady glows.


Back at the farmette, Ed begins work on pounding in posts that will anchor the garlands of lights. Me -- I can't help much. It's noon. I need to get Snowdrop...

... who is possibly in the best mood I've ever seen her at pick up. (Later I find out that this is the day of the week her class does yoga. If ever you need me to plug yoga for toddlers, just sound the bell. I have proof of its efficacy -- today.)

Outside, we find the car. And a pile of leaves.






But we don't linger. We head  for the farmette, where everything is at once familiar and curious.

"There, gaga, there's ahah's rake!"






Snowdrop, we have things to do! We're putting in winter lights!


At first, she makes me pull out the stroller. She climbs inside and watches.






Not for long.  The strings of lights are exciting!






Standing to the side is fine, but soon, she wants to be in the thick of it: "grandpa, can I help bang in the posts?"






"I think I can do it!"






The hammer is heavy. Ed let's her use it anyway...






...but when she wants to do the whole job by herself, he's sure she'll drop the hammer on her toes.

Still, she so wants to do the banging. He lifts her. The banging continues, albeit in a most peculiar fashion.






She would have kept on going like this for a long long tine, but I insist on a nap.



In the late afternoon, I give her a 2 year old puzzle I'd purchased last spring in Paris. You have to match the pieces to create a range of animals. She nails it way too quickly. There isn't even the slightest challenge.






Fine. She's strong in puzzles. But can she shop??

Yes she can. She tells me here she's off to "shop at Target..."






The sun is setting. We go outside, despite the evening chill. She checks the coop with us, she feeds the chickens. And then we walk back to the eastern edge of the farmette.






Tall firs dominate the landscape here...






... but Snowdrop loves the little guys. Baby trees, she calls them, using her most gentle tones.






And then we return inside. The lights are now on.

We've done our holiday duty at the farmhouse.






It's time to look at the moon, time to rest.

Tuesday

It's unusual to start with a morning photo of the moon, but in fact, it is that lunar spectacle that catches my eye as I walk to the cheeper coop just before the sky takes on the light of a sunrise. The moon had moved in the course of the night from east to west and it strikes me that it, too, has a path and yet it feels mysterious and unfamiliar to me -- unlike the sun, whose movement I follow all year long, constantly. Poor, forgotten moon! Well, you get your moment today as I start my post with you in mind.






Breakfast is in the sun room. I float three ideas past Ed. Poor guy, he hates just saying no to everything that I put on the table, so he picks a yes for one, a maybe for the second and sticks with a no to my third (which, predictably was the most significant and so it had little chance of sliding in on the coattails of the others).





The "yes" is simple enough: I want to shave that Santa Claus beard off already.
You look so much younger without all the white hair spilling down your face!
Is that important?
No, but let me trim it off anyway.
I do. He looks way better.

The "maybe" has to do with holiday lights, or as I prefer to call them "winter lights," because I like it when they go on when the days are short (now!) and stay on until the first crocuses break ground in March.

It's no secret that Ed's not much of a holiday guy, but he has a soft and sweet side to him and he can actually get quite engrossed in projects that have a direct or indirect link to seasonal celebrations.

We test the lights on the porch: good and ready to flip on, starting tonight! But I remind him that the ones around the entrance door gave out last winter. In other words, we need new ones.

We're off, on this again sunny and mild November day, oddly out of sync with a mission to find winter lights for the farmhouse.

(The landscape around us is so pretty when the sky puts on that cornflower and cotton balls look!)





In one of the big box stores, I form a ridiculously strong attachment to a blue-yellow-white combination of lights. And I also notice the twinkling characters (you know -- the deer, the snowmen, etc) that people scatter on their suburban lawns. There was a time when I would regard this as kitsch of the highest order. Nothing I would ever put in my yard!

But over time, Ed and I have softened on our tolerance for some small aspects of it. Perhaps it's a bit of a joke for him (after all, he has attached a forlorn stuffed Santa that he found in the gutter to his motorbike and believe me, Ed does not believe in Santa). Maybe it is for me as well, though I do find some prettiness in putting light into the landscape for those dark winter nights (which are that much darker here in the country).

I look past the Santas and elves and pick up a large light filled chicken (chicken??) decked in a winter scarf -- how about this?
You're kidding?
No, it's actually sort of charming.
I absolutely refuse to get anything that's not LED. Imagine how horrible it would look with bulbs burning out!

In this, I find permission to continue, so long as it's LED!

In the next big box store, we find nothing that passes our critical eye (and the LED requirement), but we do agree to extend strings of light along the farmhouse path.
Look here, these lights twinkle! -- I say this with some bit of excitement, which a little bit surprises me.
They don't match what we got for the door...

Still, we bring them home -- a mishmash of lights, twinkling and not twinkling, colorful and monochromatic. And of course, we conclude that they really dont work well together and therefore must be returned and exchanged for a more coordinated effort, but I call this a step forward! A day ago I would not have believed that Ed would accept the task of pounding posts into the ground along our walkway so that I could deck the place with twinkling light bulbs.

But for today, we're done. It's noon -- time for me to pick up Snowdrop!






(For a moment I am tempted to drag her to the stores with us to look at lights again, but I resist such selfish thoughts. Ed and I take forever to decide on any purchase, even one that doesn't call for great cash outlay. Snowdrop deserves a better afternoon.)

We walk with her to the coop where she studies our routines: check for eggs (none), load in more wood shavings (spoiled birds!), clean out the bucket of chicken droppings. Ah, farmette life! (Snowdrop is all too familiar with these small tasks and she is an experienced and excellent chicken caller: her loud "cheepers! come here cheepers!" can be heard far and wide as we call them in for their bread treat.)






At the house, she feels the need to snuggle with her penguins. She is a tired girl. A nap will be a welcome pause after a full day.






And indeed, it is a long nap. We're all recovering from bugs and viruses. Sleep, good sleep -- it's an essential.

The evening creeps in. Snowdrop is intensely engaged now in every game! Here, she's shopping. Target, she explains to me. 






She and Ed decide on what essentials to put into her gorcery cart.







Eventually, she piles a bowl with toy veggies and proclaims she is eating "soup for supper." To my knowledge, she has never had soup for supper (though it is indeed a staple at the farmhouse), yet there she is, piling on the vegetables ladled into a bowl from the toy soup pot.






It's a quiet night. A darker night. A beautiful night.

Sleep well Snowdrop.

All of you -- sleep well.

Monday

It is such a Monday-ish Monday! It has all the makings of a typical day that begins another week.

Here are fragments of it, but honestly, I am sure you can fill in the rest. You know what Mondays are like.

Sunrise.





I let the cheepers out and one of them -- Butter -- immediately goes to the barn and lays an egg in her new hiding place. We have no idea why no one is laying anything in the coop and we can't find the other hens' eggs (if they're even laying). Butter, the most reliable of our girls, has chosen a spot behind a discarded water heater in the barn. Darn chickens!

I return to bed, but not for long. It's Monday, after all.

Breakfast.






And an eye doctor appointment -- because I like to stack these on Mondays. The week looks less cluttered if you get things out of the way. (I hadn't been to one in several years and I am amused how the conversation begins with the words -- you know, people our age, that is in the sixties, have three things to look out for... Yes, I do know. People past sixty never ever have flawless vision. It's just a matter of how much this or the other thing needs adjusting. So far, I'm coasting on pretty strong vision, but you know, people our age...)


Noon. I pick up Snowdrop.
("Where is the car?")






I expect her to be a tired little girl -- she had a full weekend and little time for napping during it. But, as always, she rallies. We've been playing a game of "go find the car" and she considers this to be an important assignment.






Once she locates it, she is off and running, not towards it but away, making sure that I chase after her. We have strange routines!






At the farmhouse I suggest that we rake some leaves. Unfortunately, our rake is rather on the large side.






She quickly gives it a label -- ahah's rake.






Not that she doesn't try to work it...






... but clearly it's just too big. She asks for "Snowdrop's rake," but finding none, she settles for the broom by the house. This at least she can more or less use. More or less.






Inside, she remembers that I promised cookie baking once more. It's not the cookie dough that she loves and not even the final product. It's the process. (And the raisins.)






I count to myself as I flatten the cookies on the tray. ... three, four, five, six... She takes over: ...seven, eight, nine... I smile and ask -- what's next? Three! -- she tells me with conviction!

Ed is with us, fixing himself a sandwich. She climbs down from the chair and follows him to the living room, all the while eyeing his bread with tomato.





Which, of course, he shares.



After her nap we play. Oh, do we play! And Ed is included, because the little one always includes.











(The two discuss the day's events.)






She wants Ed to read a book. It's intense!






She goes back to study her favorite. About the weather.






Yeah, I think she has that one figured out!





And then I take her home.


There is a moon tonight that defies all moons. It's best to view it just at early evening. I do not go out to see it then. This is the time when PBS commemorated Gwen Ifill who passed away today. Ed and I -- we are such loyal PBS viewers and I had searched google high and low to figure out why she was not covering the election results this year. So instead of the rising moon, I listened to the tribute to her.

And then, at the end of it, Ed and I went outside.


 


Bright and uniquely beautiful, just a touch sad tonight.

Sunday

I look outside and I think -- in the last few weeks we moved from near summer temps, through fall appropriate brisk winds, to (coming next weekend) a wintry chill. And still the glorious sun continues to shine down on us, making this a gentle time: despite all that's going on at the political front, here we are, in that rural landscape of the Midwest, basking in seemingly perpetual sunshine!






I'm still picking up the pieces of a busy Fall. The yard is more or less ready for winter, but the house needs a thorough scrub. And so breakfast is late. Very late.






And then in the afternoon, I push us out for a walk.


The fields to the east are cut and a plow runs through them all day long...






We walk on. To the Nature Conservancy lands, where, at the side, cattle graze.






But the trail I'd been wanting to follow here is too overgrown. Ed says it's manageable, but he's way taller and still the grasses top his head.






(The extravagance is in the sky. The big beautiful Wisconsin sky...






We walk in awe of it.)






And eventually when the going gets too tough, we turn back.

I'm thinking -- we move together well, Ed and I. We like it, need it, look for it: movement.


In the evening, Ed goes out for a meeting of fellow bikers (all aging, all liking to scheme big, even as the biking adventures grow smaller, shorter...). It is the weekend's end and so the young family comes to the farmhouse for dinner.

Snowdrop is in a lovely mood!











(Showing her Eastern European roots?)






She loves loves LOVES everything about dinner, except the decorative green sprigs of fennel. She picks them out daintily and continues, totally satisfied.






Happiness. We all strive toward it and yet, sometimes I think that the younger we are, the easier it is for us to grab it when it rolls by.






It's a school night. The young family leaves.

Outside, the moon is as large, pink and beautiful as I've ever seen it.

It shines brightly...





on all of us tonight.

pause

You could say this is a day of pause for me. Catching up, cleaning, the yard work -- all of this filled my morning hours. But even so, I would not describe it as a day of great productivity. In fact, most of the afternoon hours I spent on the frustrating task of trying to fashion a holiday card for 2016. Funny, no?

I don't send out very many holiday cards, but I take the task of creating one seriously. It's not an easy job. Ed isn't a holiday guy and if you had to attach us to any tradition, you would have to remember that Ed's family is Jewish and mine -- well, it's a bit of a blank slate and so here I am thinking of how to write a card that is authentic, even as it has to have some elements of  beauty and a conveyance of good feeling -- with photos that support as much. I mean, the whole process is fraught with twists and turns and perhaps because I make too much of it, I am never happy with the end-product. But engaging in this project and working hard to convey love on what is ultimately a commercial piece of sillliness -- well, it's oddly rewarding and hugely important to me. And so I do it.

Go figure.


But first, I have a few hours of trying to be sympathetic to a sniffling Ed. (I did remind him many a time that I spent the whole week being sick and tending to Snowdrop and suffering through elections and cooking dinners, but then I decided I sounded a bit loopy so I calmed down and let him rest as if  he really was down and out, even though I don't think, just judging by the number of tissues he used as compared to me, that he was either fully down or out.)


After I cleaned the bathroom and tidied the kitchen, I asked Ed if he would like breakfast, permitting the possibility that he would not be able to slide downstairs for it. He said "yes, but just fruit."






That was just fine. Certainly not the first time that he turned down food early in the day. But I was amused that, as I rinsed breakfast dishes afterwards, he reached for stale baguette and bits of cheese to tide him over for the remainder of the morning.

After, I worked in the garden, fine-tuning it for the coming of winter. (Would you believe this little gem of a day lily?! Remarkable!)


 



I'll include a front view of our farmhouse. I rarely photograph it -- I focus on what's central to our life here and that would be the courtyard rather than this, but in late fall I give it a huge nod of appreciation, because it really looks pretty in the gold of the leaves that surround it (rather that rundown... which it is, but hey, we'll get to it one of these years!).






I'll end with a photo taken from my kitchen window. There are three birds in the pic -- two on the ground and one in the tree and it just seems so real, so representative of life around us.






Sleep well Scotch, Java. Sleep well old robin in the tree. Dream big, work hard, sleep soundly. It's life as we know it.