life's peculiarities and unexpected surprises

For me, technology is like health insurance: at some basic level, I don't understand the way it works.

The insurance puzzle is easy to lay out. It's known to any insured person who has had to use medical services in this country: you think you're covered by insurance (though you never ever know the cost of a medical procedure or visit because it is a closely guarded secret, so don't be foolish enough to ever call a provider and ask, for example -- how much is a cataract surgery? The answer will always be -- "that depends," and there it'll end) until weeks or even months later, when the bills start coming: the co pays, the deductibles, the not covered by insurance -- on and on, from the person who answered your phone call, to the stitches used, or the pills popped -- you'll get all these bills and suddenly you realize that you're not home free.

Technology is equally mysterious. Ed has a firmer grip on it and indeed, spends many of his work hours finessing some aspect of some technological piece of magic and still, sometimes it eludes us both. Take last night: at about 2 in the morning, I woke up and realized that I had forgotten to turn down the thermostat for the night. Easy: the farmhouse temperature is regulated by a smart phone operated thermostat (indeed we don't even know how to do it like in the olden days -- on the wall). I reach for my iPhone, click on the app, click several degrees down and we're set. Two seconds after doing this last night, I hear the robotic vacuum cleaner wake up downstairs and set out on its journey, in search of dust particles. Ed, who is still downstairs is dumbfounded. What just happened??

You think you have life figured out -- black holes, galaxies, apes evolving into homo sapiens and then boom! You're back to wondering what the hell just happened when you clicked your thermostat that then woke your robot vacuum cleaner.


Morning. I go outside to feed the cheepers. Snow once more? Really?











Breakfast....





When I glance at the forecast, I am delighted to see that there will be a warm up later this week -- the first one of the year! I am less delighted to note that it will end after a mere two days.

But then, in my morning mail, I find a (general audience) message from Snowdrop's school principal. She writes about the need to connect our children with nature. I smile rather smugly: yes, don't I know it! We are losing our connection to the natural world! Children are detached from seasonal transformations!

But as I read through the email, I pick up a new twist to her message. She quotes (from a Montessori webpage): Children may realize that, just like humans, nature has different patterns and “characters." Nature can be daring, silent, wild, gentle, gloomy or glorious. There is no one way to “be.” These patterns come and go.

The point is that children, too, have feelings, moods and reactions that aren't linear or always predictable. That's interesting in its own right: we shouldn't expect them to be this way or that, but instead we may teach them to understand that dips and peaks come and go and there are plenty of gentle and glorious days ahead. We can't do much about the weather and perhaps we shouldn't feel hostility to our own or to our children's feelings as they ebb and flow. Point well taken.

But further in the piece I also read how this disconnect from our natural environment is proving to be damaging to our children at a deeper level. American kids (perhaps others as well, but the comment is about our own) are more anxious and oftentimes less healthy than their parents. Might we help them by changing their routines somewhat? By bringing them, as it were, in closer contact with nature?

I have the luxury of living at the farmette. In the same way that I spent so much of my childhood at my grandparents' home in a deeply rural village in Poland, I now benefit tremendously from having each day defined by what is happening just outside the farmhouse doors. I plan my free hours depending on the "mood" of the weather.

Of course, you don't have to live in the country to pay heed to nature. It's just easier that way: the natural world throws its mood in my face, like it or not. My hope is that my grandkids, when they are here, will pick up the same love of shaping their free play depending on what nature delivers on any given day.

My second comment is a little bit of a rap on my own knuckles: I've been a rather demanding "observer" of what is taking place outside this month. I'm mad that we still can't dig into the pile of wood chips because it is frozen solid! And the crocuses are hidden and the buds on trees look like they did three months ago: shut tight. I've replaced my "isn't that interesting" observational stance with something that is more like an entitlement approach: why hasn't April delivered great sunny days already??

Let me see if I can readjust. It's a cold April morning. Isn't that interesting! Can't heave wood frozen solid chips, but can admire the emergence of daffodil foliage. And wait more patiently for those sunny, warm days.

I pick up Snowdrop. We investigate what's emerging close to her (southern facing) school buildings. Snowdrops and glory-of-the-snow (which I call blue bells for her benefit... sorry for the slight, oh beloved Bluebells of Scotland!)!





We come back to the farmhouse.

A visit with the babies, excuse me -- the teens girls...





And then Snowdrop dives into her pretend play. This time she pulls Ed into her games.

As she places a headband with stars on his head and skips about with an endless tale of events and happenings he can barely follow, we can't help but laugh heartily at the whole set up.





All this takes place upstairs in the bedrooms. How to get her back down? I tell her that there is a party to prepare. This girl loves to fix pretend foods for a celebration.

She comes down and immediately changes it all to a wedding, announcing that she and ahah are getting married. Weddings to her are party platforms.

And here's a shock: the man who was born announcing to the world that he has no great love for the institution of marriage (so he'll tell you), allows himself to be lead "down the aisle" by little Snowdrop. Hold up your wand, ahah! You have to have a wand for the wedding!






Happy girl...






We click onto youtube and "Going to the Chapel and Going to get Married" fills the room. As the song runs its course, the next number by the Shirelles  automatically starts playing -- "Will you still love me tomorrow!?"

Snowdrop looks gravely at Ed and says, as if this sung question was a no brainer -- I will always love you! And within a second she is onto something else: pretend tea and cakes, grilled cheese sandwiches and pickles.


I lose them then to a few more soundtracks from the 1950s -- a music era that has basically held Ed's attention and affection since I've known him.






Evening. Snowdrop finds ribbons that I set aside for dance class. Pink with polka dots. She insists we wear them.






So, the usual, right? Work a little, read a little, admire photos of Primrose, play with Snowdrop. Or, not the usual at all -- a day of new charms and insights and warm feelings and yes, cold temperatures. What an interesting April this has been thus far, don't you think?

Sunday

For a good part of the day I truly believed that this was slated to be a throw away Sunday. You have days like that, no? Nothing really terrible takes place, so there's no reason to complain and yet your hours are filled to the rim with chores and tasks that are hardly pleasant. Maybe you remember that this was the weekend for farmhouse spring cleaning. Well, it took longer than I had planned. Even after scrubbing much of the upstairs yesterday and handing over most of the vacuuming to the robot, I still found myself cleaning for close to seven hours. Toward the end, I was losing all bits and scraps of good cheer.

It was tedious work.

It didn't help that a quick back and forth text with my daughter revealed that Snowdrop continued to be under the weather. Sunday dinner was suddenly a question mark.

And an afternoon hike with Ed? It was hard to muster up enthusiasm for it. Three words describe things perfectly: cold and gray.


That's the downside. But days are never really defined by downsides. They have sparks and twists and funny moments. My Sunday was like that.

So let's forget about the scrubbing, wiping, pulling out shelves and dressers, taking out winter grime from the porch, and especially let's forget about all the time spent on picking out countless poops from the chicken box.

Here are the stellar moments: let's start with breakfast, which is actually more like brunch. It's rather late.






And now you have to let many hours pass before the next stellar moment.

It comes late in the day. We've given up on an ambitious hike.  But there's time for a quick strut through our local county park. It may not be grand, it may be gray...


 



But we do pass fantastic sandhill cranes...





Though remember, it's cold and gray. I mean, it is what it is.


Toward the evening, I get the text that Snowdrop is feeling better. Dinner's on!

There's nothing lovelier than having Snowdrop with parents here, when you thought all day long that all the corn and dessert cakes you purchased for the little girl may have to go to waste.






Afterwards, we pay our respects to the three chicks.






Snowdrop is apprehensive about their sudden moves, but she adores looking on at arm's length.






(Her dad makes friends with Pepper...)






It's all extremely delightful...






... and the farmhouse is so super duper (to use Snowdrop's words) clean it makes my heart sing!

It just goes to show that even a dreary day can have speckles of magic sprinkled throughout.

Saturday

Well, the month is quickly running away from us. Enough of waiting for the spring that will not come. We must get to work.

Let's start with the inside of the farmhouse. Each week I "clean" it. But you know how it is. There's cleaning and there's CLEANING and all too often I opt for cleaning with a very small "c." This weekend I make up for my sins. Baseboards, walls, you name it. All must be scrubbed. At least, this is the plan. I begin with gusto and even a modicum of enthusiasm. Spring cleaning!

I pause to tend to the baby chicks. I think they need an adventure to keep them from tearing their place apart. Here you go, babes! This is the outside world!





(Tomato, as usual, is the most easy going about this new perch. Cupcake is the one most easily frazzled.)

Another pause, for breakfast.






And then we brave the cold (and it is cold: just a degree or two above freezing) and work outside. I have a very clear vision of how we must prune our grape vines. The trip to Burgundy gave me ideas! And so we snip away.

(Before -- I know, a mess!)




(After: gettin' there!)






(The cheepers never come out to this corner of the farmette... except when we are here.)





Fingers only partly frozen, we then attack the young orchard.

The planting of the new fruit trees has been eye opener for us on all that can go wrong. It took a couple of years to figure out how to protect the trees from deer. Having solved that problem (Ed built cages), we are now trying to understand why we loose the crop to birds and animals and, more importantly, why the trees are attacked each year by beetles so that by late summer, most leaves are skeletal images of what they once were.

Farming is not for the faint at heart.

By mid afternoon we're done with pruning. All work and no play! Time to head out for a leisurely hike. It is sunny, after all. Let's look for the turtles in the County Park up the road.

There are no turtles.The biting winds must have sent them scurrying. The park belongs to the brave souls. Geese...






... ducks too, of course...






...and in the fields -- cranes. Waiting for the warmer days...






Deer, too. Looking for the greens shoots that should be here by now.





It truly is astonishing that we should live this close to the heart of the city and yet have all around us the habitat for so many birds and beasts. True, the trucks and diggers have been rolling in this past week. They'll be starting construction in some of the open fields to the north, to the west. But right now, the land is vast and the developments that threaten to encroach upon it are limited.

We are so very fortunate that we should live here at a time where we can look over our shoulder and spot a deer, a badger, a wild turkey or a crane -- animals and birds that have lived in these wetlands, prairies and forests far far longer than we have.

conversations

Crazy day! Cold, then colder (are you tired yet of my weather reports? Me too!), a dusting of powder, then cool sunshine -- all of it pushing away any thoughts of spring.

I go out to tend to the cheepers and notice that the girls have dug up one of my tulip beds.

I have no good words to say about them! You are so bad!
Then, to Ed: I can't believe we'll be letting loose three more wild girls into my flower beds soon!
You knew this about them. When did you think they would not dig up your beds?
In the middle of February, when I was only thinking of eggs and sweet colorful chicks.
You want to put them up on Craigslist?
Of course not! I just want them to behave!
They wont, you know that.
(Scowl.)

Breakfast in the sun room, with the three little chicks...


 


Except that the three babes are looking more and more like rebellious teens, knocking down everything in sight. Their water spills. I rush to clean it up.
(Scowl.)

Well, never mind.  We like 'em.

And the sun comes out.





And after grocery shopping, I stop by Sur La Table. I need a pitcher for the Sunday dinner table. There -- that one! Oh, hand made in Poland. How perfect is that!





Home again. In a rush, in a rush, in a rush, but oh! Here comes a trickle of Primrose photos from her parents. She is now more than a week old! Must admire -- yes, so adorable, smiling in some reflexive fashion when they play music -- so lovely!

Back to groceries and baby chicks who are now having a "mud bath" in the finer bits of wood shavings. Have to laugh at their antics! You just have to laugh!

And now Snowdrop comes for her afternoon at the farmhouse. Her mom is with her, as the two had to side step to the doctor's office for a check of the usual something or other that hits kids in their first years of school.





Her mom rests. Snowdrop and I fall into our usual: she tells stories. I interrupt them with absurd questions. She always has an answer!





The mice of Brambly Hedge and Suzie and Daffodil (her babies) are here for a breakfast celebration. Grandma, come sit right there and eat your cakes and macarons!
Yes, okay, but you know I like tea with my cakes.
Well, you can't have tea because there is none. And we can't get any because it's too cold. 
Why is it cold?
The cold air is coming through the open window.
Well then close the window.
No, we cannot close the window. It's broken.
We'll get ahah to fix it!
Grandma, you know ahah is at work. (Ed is in fact at the manufacturing firm.)
He'll be back soon! 
Actually he won't be back soon. He is enjoying his work friends and so he is not coming back for a long long long time. (Her mouth draws down in a perfect imitation of total grief.) So I'm sorry. You cannot have your tea. (She returns then to her story.)

Ed does eventually come home and Snowdrop is on him to "fix that broken (imaginary) window!"
He goes along: I need to scrape out the putty from the old window first.





Here's a knife ahah! Put your putty in the garbage here!
And I need to buy new putty and a new piece of glass.
Let's go to the store now!

And they're off!






Shopping for putty and glass.





And the wind blows, and the temps never cross the freezing point, and at least one tulip bed is a mess, and the flower beds are begging for more chips and more care, but it all has to wait until tomorrow or maybe next week or the week after. But our world inside is warm and snug and we laugh and laugh at Snowdrop's antics and toward the end of the day she'll ask -- have I worn you out yet?

Crazy cold spring!

Thursday

We're still waiting for the thrill of those warm days that come with spring. You know what I mean -- when you walk outside with short sleeves for the first time, when you linger longer than you should because the sun on your face feels so good, when you roll up your pants and start thinking of shorts -- that kind of a day.

In the meantime, we make do.

Spotted sunshine. Enough to make for a warm breakfast in the sun room.






It's still cold -- just a few degrees above freezing -- but we think it's warm enough to go out for a solid walk. We head for Madison's Arboretum. The city usually shows signs of spring a few days ahead of us out there in the hinterlands. Will we find something to satiate our thirst for this elusive season?






I can't say that we do. Traces of snow remain here, as they do at the farmette.






Still, it's a lovely walk. The soil is wet, muddy, spring like! And there are the birds -- as anxious as we are to move on to warmer days.






In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop. I typically pick her up in the cloakroom, but today I look for her in her class. She's churning through puzzles, one after the next. Nothing hard, but she loves the routines -- of picking something, of putting it away, of tucking her chair in. She knows I'm watching. She has that pride of classroom that kids so often have when their adult person pops in to visit.






Outside, as almost always, she scoffs at the idea of a jacket.  Well, it's a short jaunt to the car. Just long enough to find one blooming bulb flower.






At the farmhouse, she wants so very much to go back to a game we've played for what seems like years now. (It involves tea.)






I find this to be sweetly touching. It's as if she knows she's growing out of many past games and yet she wants to hold on to her favorites, in much the same way that I held on to childhood books long after I was reading more serious stuff.

Ed comes in from a tedious set of phone calls at the sheep shed. (Don't get me going on the impact of threatened tariffs on people who try to grow a small machining business in America these days.) Snowdrop cajoles him into our play.






And he cajoles her into a visit with the cheepers. The little girl loves them -- at a distance. Their sudden movements (see below) make her back away. Understandable. Yet each day she greets them, talks to them and every now and then, her gentle finger will caress their light feathers. Until they flap their wings, trying to maintain their balance.






Evening. It's quiet in the farmhouse. Ed works through some technology sticking points that stand in the way of a more perfect integration of new ways of communicating and innovating within the company that has commanded so much of his time these past few years. For me, an evening is far less ambitious. A post must go up. A snack must be eaten. A rough sketch of the next day must be in place.

I retreat, leaving him to his work, knowing it will be many many hours before he calls it quits and comes up to rest.

the power of the sun

We wake up to a snow covered landscape.






You would think I'd be disappointed. It doesn't fit with my mental image of spring.






But the truth is, it's kind of pretty out there. Oh, sure, the cheepers are not happy.






And since they venture out before I sweep the snow away, Peach gets stuck...






... definitely in need of a helping hand!






But when the sun comes out, the snow begins to melt and it feels intensely spring like, even though it's actually hovering just below the freezing point.





We're chugging along here, slowly but with determination. Onwards! Toward the warmer seasons!


At the farmhouse, the little chicks are growing fast. We laughed at the size of the feed back when we brought it home three weeks ago. We're not laughing anymore. It's nearly all gone!

We eat breakfast in the sun room and listen to their chirpy noises.






And in the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. Sometime in the course of her school day she had put on her ballet shoes in anticipation of this afternoon's class. They stayed on.






There is just enough time for a quick Snowdrop story...






... and a lightening quick play...






... and then it's time for class.






They're enacting some butterfly story, but it hardly matters what the plot of it is. Wee little butterflies, moving this way and that -- it's enough to make you smile.





And all the while I think how incredibly lucky I am (we are) that Snowdrop's parents let the little girl open herself up to the world of grandmas and Eds and any number of others who so love this child. In turn, it is so obvious that she lives in a rich world of people who care deeply about her. There isn't a doubt that she is made stronger by their presence in her everyday.