quiet

I don't like to think of myself as being needy. Or, to put it differently, everything I really need is within reach. People, time, flowers, books. The occasional trip. Good health good cheer, the happy faces of people I love. Is there more?

Still, I woke up thinking that I am in a bit of a fog. There definitely has been a pileup of activities. I'm on it, I'm not overwhelmed, but I do need a quiet day to get myself centered again.

Today I have it: a completely quiet day. Awesomely quiet. Breathlessly so.

I admit that it is slightly askew. It starts off along predictable lines: I snip spent lilies. 602, so I think the peak of blazing flowers is behind us. But you couldn't tell by looking out at the fields of color.











It's a little buggy again. No surprise: rains bring bugs, but still, it is manageable.











(Stately, serene Java: the chicken that by her very presence inspires calm.)






Ed is just waking up as I come in from my morning garden work. He remembered that he had promised to take my car in to check the wheel balance. There is a shimmy in the ride. Well, there's only one nearby place that is willing to do this today and they have to have the car in right away.

Breakfast is going to be very late.

Ed sweetly takes my car in and waits (only to discover that actually I need four new tires; oh dear...). Well now, I surely have the better end of that stick. I take out my moped and scoot to the downtown farmers market. Not to linger, not to stroll, but to pick up the essentials for a week of good eating. Baby bok choy. The oyster mushrooms. Young corn. Flowers. The first apricots and cherries ( and sour cherries!) from Door County (should I make ice cream maybe?).





Riding a moped today is like gliding on a sail boat, only without the waves that usually make me queasy. The breeze is magnificent. The air -- perfect. The smell -- of a summer day.

As I approach the farmette, I look over at the construction site and who should I see climbing a hill of pebbles? Stop Sign.





I stop and wave and right away he turns toward the farmhouse and the path leading to the entrance -- a place he typically picks now as he waits for his meal.

And now it's not only past our breakfast hour, it's getting dangerously close to being past the lunch hour.

We sit down to our first meal of the day.






In the afternoon, my older girl stops by with Snowdrop and Sparrow.

I ask the little girl -- would you like to pick a baby tomato?
Yes! And this one! And that one too!
Hold off, Snowdrop. That one is for tomorrow.






(Anything for us?)






(the thrill of picking a flower. or two.)






Both kids are as chill as can be. I mean, Sparrow shows off the art of far niente...






Snowdrop plays with her lego characters and the castle.





You could not ask for a more relaxed moment.

(They leave to pick up the dad at the airport -- he'd been away on a work trip...)






Evening. Ed asks if I'd like to eat out. I give it the usual minute of thought. And predictably, I opt for dinner at home. bok choy, mushrooms, corn... and today's eggs from the big girls. Blissfully simple. Quiet.

don't cry over spilt milk

Really, it started with the milk.

I had done well in the morning. It's a rainy day and so I didn't think I'd make much progress with garden work today, but lo, I was able to sneak around the greatest rains and I did my snipping. 640 spent lilies, with wet shoes and damp clothing, but a small burst of pride at having accomplished this task, weather notwithstanding.






(You may well guess why this is called a spider daylily)






(The trumpets call, the angels sing...)






(Morning greeting)






(The quirky, delightfully dainty front bed)






(Anything else for us?)






Breakfast, on the porch.






(Rain outside)






Grocery shopping comes next on any Friday morning. I am feeling quite like the queen of leisure. My visit with Sparrow is postponed as the little guy has other plans. So I have time. (Or so I think.)

An hour before I am to pick up Snowdrop, I get an email from Air France, concerning a future reservation. I think the airline has gone bananas with its online services. And I say this even as they are my loyalty airline and I hate the idea of turning disloyal. Nonetheless, I think things are slightly amiss there (please don't remind me that they're near bankruptcy due to their labor disputes -- I'm aware of it). Today they notify me of a flight change. And not just a flight change, but a change of day of travel change. Now hold on there, can you even do that?

I must investigate. I place a call to the airline. At the same moment, I am still enjoying the leisure of knowing that I have 59 minutes before I must pick up Snowdrop. This is when I reach for the milk to make myself a cup of coffee, but since the fridge is full (shopping day!), I bump into some food or other and the big carton of milk spills.

Did you ever spill a big carton of milk from an upper shelf of your fridge down into the lower levels, after filling said fridge with foods for the week?

Everything has to come out.

All this time I am on hold with Delta who, on this side of the ocean, speaks for Air France.

After, it's one huge comedy of errors. Chickens screech, Stop Sign comes calling, the clock is ticking, the Delta/AF agent is perplexed and milk keeps trickling into every single bin of the mighty fridge.

I pick up Snowdrop with phone glued to ear, still waiting for the agent to figure out what's going on (we're only 80 minutes into the call).

Snowdrop asks -- can we go to the park or pool? 

It's verging on rain/storms again. But all I can think of is the fact that if we go to the park, I will buy myself at least fifteen minutes of "hanging on the phone waiting for solutions" time. So I tell her: park it is, only it may rain, so be prepared to run!

(Look Gaga! A little bird!)

 
 

Oh, Snowdrop, you are as thrilled with summer sights and sounds as I am!


Eventually, the airline agent comes back with what he thinks it's a solution. Only when I return to my computer do I realize that he accomplished nothing and I have to start all over again, but right now, Snowdrop and I are on the swings, feeling mighty good about life.

But the rain is about to hit us hard again. We do a hasty retreat.

(At the farmette: but if I walk barefoot, my feet will get dirty and I'll have to take a bath! Or, you could just come in and play.)






(Play, airline calls, cherries, books, against a backdrop of so many Snowdrop stories!)


 



True, things are a bit rushed again.

But it's all so trivial, really. If such small glitches as airline snafus and tricky schedules get to you, then you really are ill prepared for life. And yet, I had been so sure of an easy pace today! One spilled milk, one email and I'm back on the treadmill.

Still, the rains are receding. The flowers are happy as can be. As are the kids, chickens and all the other animals that make their way to the farmette.

Happy summer, indeed!

can photos tell a story?

There is no other way to fit all that must be done today: I have to be up at six, so that I can give the garden the attention it craves. Or, that I imagine that it craves.

On the upside, sunrise is still very early and so I have a lovely morning to do the work of trimming the day lilies against the subtly sweet backdrop of morning light.

If I thought yesterday's trim was a record setter -- I was wrong. Today, I snipped off 745 spent blooms.

Someone asked me -- why do I give myself so much work? Perennial gardening isn't supposed to be so labor intensive. To me, it's a question of visual pleasure: nothing will happen if I leave the spent blooms drooping from the stalks. Eventually they'll fall off of their own accord. But in my view, the garden looks infinitely more beautiful when it is trimmed and tended with some regularity.

As to the cultivation of daylilies -- are they more trouble than they're worth? No! Each bloom is gorgeous...






... and when viewed together, they are extraordinary!






And so I snip away, my hands purple from the juices of some, snip snip, until I pronounce all the beds in the garden ready for the day.





Because it's an unusually full day (I know, I've had several weeks, or is it months of those!), I'll rest my pen so to speak and let the photos tell their own story, with explanations only as needed.

(first to greet me as I step outside)






(one flower bed against the background of another)






(breakfast)






(this view, from our porch, is perhaps my favorite view from any window anywhere: it's one huge wave of flowers)






(errands with my mom)






(Snowdrop, at the farmhouse, after school)






She and I play pretend nonstop, for three hours; we cycle through shopping, apartment life, art class, family, school group time, zookeeper's life, and life guard at pool, to give you an example of our range.

(shopping; and yes, I trimmed her bangs)






(school group time)






(I have to stop our games now; I'm fixing dinner for mom, Snowdrop, Ed and myself -- dad is away for work. Snowdrop finds out that cleaning fresh corn is not that easy.)






(mother and younger child)






(it was supposed to be a stormy rainy eve; instead, it was a beautiful eve)







(Pandering to Snowdrop: couscous with roasted pine nuts, chicken with red peppers, a salad of small tomatoes, and freshly picked corn on the cob. She loves all the above.)






(with berry and chocolate macarons for dessert; I take no credit for making those)






(the final photo needs no further explanation, right?)






Fireflies flicker, Ed prepares for his forthcoming sailing trip, I put my feet up and exhale.

it continues

It's a beautiful summer afternoon. As Snowdrop and I stroll over to the playground, she asks me -- grandma, what did you do this morning?

I don't know what prompted her to ask, or to even wonder. Three year olds typically are busy trying to figure out how to make the pencil work magic on paper, or digging into their lunchbox to see if it contains something yummy. At a rare philosophical moment, they'll maybe want you to explain whatever happened to your own grandma (Snowdrop asked that very question yesterday; when I told her my grandma isn't around any more, the girl pushed me further -- did she move?)

In my recount of the morning, I wanted to sound at once adventurous and responsible. Merely telling her that I spent several hours snipping off faded daylily blooms sounds pretty un-exotic, even had I bragged that I snipped off an astonishing 662 finished blossoms today. Snowdrop is a whiz at arithmetic in the single digits. She would not get that 662 is impressive (and perhaps an old time record for me).

Still, I discuss my garden a lot with the little girl. I mean, she's the only one who will listen! I name flowers, we delight in birds, I report my thrill at seeing monarch butterflies decide that our milkweeds are good enough to call home. So I answer her truthfully -- I worked among flowers.











(while Ed watered tomatoes...)






(Our beans are doing so well!)






Tomato, wanting a treat.






(Breakfast)






And then I visit with a smiling Sparrow.






(Tummy time)






And of course, now, in the afternoon, Snowdrop and I are walking to the beach park.

It's a beautiful day to be with little Snowdrop. (That's a song. I've been singing it in the course of 3.5 years' worth of walks.)






















Later, toward evening, I quickly make my way to a meeting of like minded people at a Groundswell Conservancy event. There are many reasons why the work of this organization is especially important to us (Ed has been involved with it for quite a long time), but today, even without their umbrella of support, we're likely to have been among the dozen or so people who came to a two hour "meet the farmers" event at the Parisi farm. Both Ed and I like to learn what challenges small family farms are facing here, in south central Wisconsin. Terry Parisi and her family are clever farmers and fantastic story tellers.


We listen to their struggles ("three climate events that sent all us small farmers conferring with each other on the internet: extreme cold in April, extreme rain in May, extreme heat in June. Add to it groundhogs and tomato worms -- phew!") and we smile in admiration. Terry's good natured approach to life's challenges is downright inspiring. And the tomatoes she shares with us are yummy!







And the goats? Well, the goats are your best friends forever, especially if you feed them clover or are wearing a dress that reminds them of clover.






We're offered cups of fresh milk from one of the mama goats. Only a few of us are willing drinkers. (I'm one of them.)

It's late by the time I return to the farmette. Ed is biking, and I myself am wondering where my day went.





Oh, I know: to gardens and farms, to Sparrow and Snowdrop. And goats. In other words, to the good things in life.