Saturday - 120th

Welcome to three catch-up and reset days in a row! This is the time when I get to the most odious and the most wholesome and the most creative tasks, ones that I have neglected since winter, ones for which, arguably, I now have time.

I promised myself this: once the grandkids take their little vacation with their parents and I am no longer hosting them daily at the farmhouse, I will rethink the way I spend my free time. If I can reset myself in some fashion, perhaps I'll carry some good habits back with me to the days I am with the kids. Ever since the shutdown began (for me that would be 120 days ago), I have basically handed all my free non-babysitting hours to the following: hurried random garden maintenance tasks, a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading of news sources, some online shopping for books and clothes for the kids (this is what any freed up moneys go to), grocery washing, and blog work. There was a real danger that with three free days in a row, I will merely expand on online book browsing and online reading of even more news sources. Time to get more deliberate! I would very much like to add back some more creative stuff. Like more serious writing (and reading for that matter). And more careful management of my gardens. And I'd like to add in some better movement options. Biking comes to mind. And return to my French classes! And while we're at it, why not bake something delicious?

So pile it on! I've got stuff to do!

First, the gardens. The bugs are still fierce, but I equip myself with a paddle zapper and head out to methodically fill the bucket with spent lilies. We're at the beginning of their season and still I snip off 335 wilted flower heads. Alright! Garden looks pretty good. Still rough around the edges, but much better! At least for this one day, because of course, tomorrow there will be more than 335 new spent flowers to snip.



 


(double trouble: the froggies we adore)






(double trouble: the dragonflies we love)






Breakfast is on the late side.

(view from porch)





(meal on the porch)






(the big bed)






Next comes the bike ride. There is a new bike path that begins at the development that's sprouting to the west of us, connecting nicely to the rather famous  Capital City State Trail. I'm very happy with this addition because it allows us to bypass three hills that you otherwise have to bike over each time you leave and return to the farmette via the rural roads.

We do a lovely little loop -- maybe half hour, maybe more. I do have a slight trepidation when we cut into the State Trail. There are other bikers on it and we are not used to passing other people, that's how isolated we are! Still, the ride feels good. Something to repeat when you just want to do a fast paced activity for a handful of minutes.

(Capital City State Trail)






(the prairie to the north)






(back on the rural roads)






(approaching home: the front flower bed -- a lot more symmetrical than the rest of the gardens)






I'd like to say that, once inside, I practiced my French, baked a cake, and dug back into my writing project, but the afternoon did not go that way. Instead, I did what we all must do by July 15th: I worked on my taxes.

There is no reason why this should be such a chore. I have an easy tax situation: an unchanging retirement pension, some social security, a small IRA emergency fund that mostly stays where it is since thankfully I have had no emergencies. I mean, classic simplicity! And yet, it takes three hours to complete the damn thing.

Ed tells me -- stop grousing and get to it. He nudges me forward because I insist that he sit right next to me on the couch until I'm done, so that I can run any new complexity by him. I'm the lawyer, he's the engineer and yet I ask him on how to interpret IRS stuff! He is anxious for me to be done with it. I am anxious for me to be done with it. By late afternoon, I click "e-file" and throw the whole folder under the table. Wisconsin will have to wait. My mother's forms will have to wait. You can only devote so much of your day to forms and schedules. Besides, I have a CSA box of veggies to pick up. There's cauliflower in it today! And broccoli and beans and beets... So many veggies, so little time to cook up a storm...

And there we have it: one day behind me and I can't really brag about plunging into new and creative endeavors. Maybe I should do a little French before midnight? Maybe not. Goodnight dear Ocean friends! Let's put our ambitions to rest until tomorrow.
 

Friday - 119th

Well, it's a beautiful day -- crisp and sunny, breezy and warm -- a poster day for summer! Still, you can't really enjoy it if bugs attack you the minute you step outside. And I say bugs, because we have ourselves not only a mosquito problem, but a horse-fly problem. Typically when one comes, the other disappears, but this year we have both. If you study Snowdrop's face today, you'll notice a very puffy eye. That's what happens when one of these flies gets on your face.

Ed tells me he is enjoying the days anyway. There is enough beauty and pleasure outside to make up for the deficiencies. I like his attitude and I don't completely disagree. Nevertheless, cleaning out the flower beds and getting a child in and out of a car to the buzz of these annoying insects can rise the ire even in a calm person.

My morning visit with the farmette animals is brief. No lingering inside the sheep shed. I'm mad at the big cats. One of them went on a bird hunt. The telltale feathers in the shed put the blame squarely on these guys. I know, I know, this is what cats do. I get it, but I don't have to like it. (To their credit, they rarely hunt things off the ground and they superbly hunt down mice. Still, every few months they bring in a bird. Shameful cats!)

I do stay out long enough to deadhead most, if not all the lilies, but after about a half hour of work, I just can't take the buzz and bite anymore and retreat inside. The garden looks good if a little rough around the edges! (A few of the raspberry bushes are producing fruit, but mosquitoes are standing guard.)


























Breakfast on the porch.






After, I drive over to pick up Snowdrop (she spends Fridays alone at the farmhouse). I say a quick hello and goodbye to Sparrow. I wont be seeing either child for a few days, as they are doing vacationy things with their parents next week.






It's a low key day for the girl and me.


 


We do tons of reading and some art stuff. I try to give her a pep talk about not being so hard on herself when something doesn't come out exactly as she would wish, but she is not convinced. Her lovely lemon superhero picture leaves her cold.






It's a sweet sweet day nonetheless.

(Ice cream)






Even small things can be fun adventures with a kid. We drive up to the drugstore to do a curbside pick up of Benedryl for her puffy eye. She wants to know more about the medicine: is it a liquid or a solid, she asks.
And you know about liquids and solids from where?
Oh, so many places!

Indeed. The world is full of information sources.






Late, late in the afternoon, after Snowdrop is already home, Ed again nudges me to try working outside.
Too many bugs.
I'll swat them for you.

And we do just that. He stands over me with a paddle swatter and I work with my flowers.






And the berries too. We have some wild blackberry bushes producing delicious black fruits -- nothing like the stuff you'd pick up in a grocery store.





Anyone have a fantastic blackberry recipe I could try out this weekend?


(Berry pickings: not too large, not too small.)





Evening. Our windows are wide open. We never once had to turn on the AC today. Quiet. It's beautifully quiet all around us. Oh, there's the occasional bird chirp and we hear the sound of a distant passing car. The country rages, the infection destroys, but here, at the farmette, it's so very quiet.

Thursday - 118th

I was thinking how much I admire people whose lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, who have lost so much, who work so hard and yet, when you listen to them, you'd hardly know it. They don't hide their troubles, but nor do they sink under their weight. They soldier on.

One such person is my doc, whom I visit with (remotely) every few months over small things that require such communication. We always chat a bit afterwards and I get an update on how things are going for her. She is hospital staff over at UW and thus has quite a lot of CoVid stuff on her plate. She also has a small child at home and a husband who is in the health care field as well. I mean, how does she keep that smile going?

It's not fair to expect such bravery from most of us mere mortals. You cannot develop good cheer suddenly, in a pandemic no less. My doc was probably born smiling. (She has had a tough life, but somehow she shrugs it off and points to all the good things that came her way.) Still, if you're looking for heroes, look no further than the person who can still crack a smile at the end of a terrible day.

*     *     *

Recently, Snowdrop and I (and Sparrow to an extent) have been reading and rereading the Tales from Deckawoo Drive. They're deceptively easy books -- meaning a young child will like them, though an older person will pick up a hell of a lot more from the text. In one of them (my favorite -- "Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem"), a young girl gets herself sent to the principal's office -- a guy with a scary reputation. And if this isn't bad enough, she is accidentally locked in with an annoying boy in a janitor's closet. She has this ready phrase that gets her through tricky situations -- courage and curiosity. I smiled at that. It reminded me how at the beginning of the pandemic I thought you needed good words to get you going when you woke up in the morning. (This was before I even read the Stella Endicott book.) I had picked courage and joy. Stella (the little girl in the book) and I have at least one word in common.

*     *     *

As I left the house to feed the animals, I worried that the cats would all be mauled and mangled. There was some ferocious cat screeching outside our window last night. I thought maybe an owl attacked a cat or two. Ed was inclined to believe that the big cats were asserting themselves before the two little ones.

The big cats seemed fine. One of the young ones was missing, but that happens.

My second thought was on the flowers: if the mosquitoes and horse flies are in high gear right now, does that mean that I will never see some of the day lily blooms? I mean, they're only here for a day. But pausing to admire them is tough when you're under a bug attack. These few photos were taken at a price!












Until we get the mosquito population down a bit, I need another solution. How about cutting off some less visible stems and bringing them inside?

This is how we managed to have a very lovely porch breakfast. The lily blooms will last only a day even in a vase, but the other buds will open up. So what you see today is not what you'll see tomorrow!






*     *     *

What to do when the kids arrive! Nature hike? No way! As I spray them with the ineffective "natural" anti-mosquito stuff, I consider our very limited possibilities. Sparrow just wants to see the chickens. Snowdrop proposes that we do some gardening. In sticking to the courtyard and handing over the hose with instructions on how to control the water flow, and by issuing my loud cheeper call, I satisfy both.











My one regret is that I can't really give the girl free  reign with the hose. I would have loved to just let her spray everyone and everything in sight (it's another hot and humid day), but Sparrow is scared of the seemingly out-of-control hose spray and, too, I have a camera around my neck. Still, we all get our share of water!

(Adding some to the cheeper water dish...)





*     *     *

I have no idea where Snowdrop gets her pretend ideas. We'd been reading the Deckawoo books, which, it is true, implicitly promote an adventurous spirit, but surely this is not why, after our reading time, Snowdrop announces: let's pretend we are explorers!






There are props. I get mine, Sparrow gets his. Dutifully, he does what may to some appear as exploration.






Snowdrop finds injured animals. Ed is charged with curing them. I fight off dangerous lions with a wooden spoon.

*     *     *

Remember how last year I snipped spent lily heads every single day? On July 23rd, I broke the all time record in lily snipping -- I knocked off over 1000 spent blossoms. It took more than two hours to clear that much and I did it before breakfast. But this year is different. In so many ways! In all ways! Whereas last year I had the kids here in the afternoon, after school, this year I have them in the morning. It's gaga's summer school after all! So time is precious in the early hours. But even if I had the time to snip away then, I wouldn't do it: it's too buggy out there and it is especially buggy in the mornings. Last year, we were spraying garlic and rosemary oils by now. This year we held back.

All this to say that in the afternoon, Ed gently suggested that I go out into my gardens. I had a lot of difficult phone calls to work through. I was spent. So I went outside and I ignored the bugs and I snipped lilies, which felt almost as if last year was this year and things hadn't changed all that much after all.

Here's a pairing I love: a day lily with daisies.






And this is how a big part of the Big Bed looks like now:





*     *     *


My weekly grocery supplement was scheduled to be delivered this evening. Well now, the skies darkened, the warnings came on, the lightening flashed again and again, the rain came down.

The groceries got wet. But not too wet -- I sent Ed out to get them. I told him to be careful. We were, after all, under a storm warning. He took the time to once again look up and show me the number of lightening deaths in Wisconsin. Just about anything will kill you before lightening does.

Indeed, lightening did not kill him.


*     *     *


Sometime in the middle of all that rain, Primrose calls from Chicago. She is having supper. I am fixing supper. We compare foods. I show her a little froggie that's climbing up the window screen outside. She shows me all the green foods on her plate.







The world of children is so pure and noble! They laugh when you laugh. They inevitably wish you would laugh more. We're all working on it, little ones! We're all working on it!

Wednesday - 117th

This afternoon, I took a nap. I couldn't help it: sleepiness crept in slowly, persistently and I gave into it. My mom (who has 96 years of life's experience behind her) tells me almost daily that I sleep too little (she's an Ocean reader and she has noticed that the posting times have crept up to a dangerously late hour) and I've been yeah, yeahing those reprimands each time, but today, when I sat down with an afternoon cup of coffee (coffee, of all things!), I could think about nothing more, nothing less than sleep: beautiful, soft, luxurious sleep. So I napped.

For me, daytime naps are rare, possibly because they aren't as deeply refreshing as nighttime sleep. I drift around somewhere between dreamland and reality and wake up groggy and cranky. I remind myself of the Snowdrop I used to wake at school at pick up time when she was three: she hated rousing herself fully and I'd sit with her for a long time waiting for the moment when she would be ready to fully rejoin the world. She has my cranky napper genes.

In my own woozy dozy state, I let myself drift among a dreamy mixture of past images and thoughts about the future. Like for instance, I thought about the cafe on the ground floor of the building of my Warsaw apartment. Hey, remember that I have this tiny apartment in Warsaw? Am I likely to return to it in the way that I once did? It seems so far away and the journey -- so complicated. How about Paris? I have many many dollars of credit in the little hotel I was to stay in this past March and then again in May. They've been closed, but are they're reopening soon. Not to Americans, of course. Not yet. I'm betting not this year at all, which is fine. Who wants to travel for pleasure when nothing about travel is going to be fun.

So I'm thinking about Paris and Warsaw, and I have this insight into my own future: I'm not likely to ever go back to a time when solo travel is again part of my seasonal routine. Something snapped there. Being alone and far away is the last thing that I miss. Being with family, friends -- yes. Here, there, near, far, anywhere. Making my way by myself to a remote Scottish island or a Catalan village on the border of Spain and France? I just don't see it.

Prove me wrong, life! Go ahead and prove me wrong!


The day is hot. Hotter than hot in fact. It feels like July in Florida, with Wisconsin mosquitoes let loose to really make any outside work a chore. My morning walk is brief. The barn is buzzing with bugs. I feed the animals and smile at the lilies...

(this one was newly planted last year and starting to bloom beautifully this year...)






(another -- with piercing color!)






(how does a flower even get to be like that??)






(each blossom lasting only one day... still, look at all the buds! So many blossoms from one plant...)






Things are perking up alright!





Okay, back to the farmhouse.

I tell Ed that this is the time to mist some garlic oil, to push away the bloodsuckers out there. Not next week, next month, next year. Now. He is still arguing that the damsel flies are working hard to solve the problem for us, but I'm no longer listening. We are losing this year's war with mosquitoes. Time to take some steps to at least put up a modest fight.

Breakfast. Blissfully behind the screens of our porch.






The kids arrive then and they are antsy to frolic. Well, okay. If we stay in the mostly sunny courtyard, we wont suffer. Not from bugs anyway.






Snowdrop takes to the hose. Sparrow is a little hesitant. He's happiest when we're doing something predictable, like scolding the chickens for digging up my flowers.











Okay, we admired the growing tomatoes, we scolded the chickens. Time to go inside.

For a while, the kids are happy with some tame activities. Snowdrop finds a bag of old plastilina clay (like play-doh only it never hardens) and though it's not easy to work with, she hashes out some pretty convincing edibles. Sparrow goes along.
















But then, things get crazy. She wants to bathe some of her little babies. It sounds innocent, but what she is really saying is that she wants to splash the dickens out of the little tub and get everything as wet as is maximally possible before gaga says  -- enough!






Sparrow goes along.

He is at an age when he can now do a lot of what she can do, even as he doesn't always understand why she is doing something and what is amusing about it. She puts her feet in the tub. He attempts to put his feet in the tiny tub I'd given him for his characters.





I keep wondering what goes through his young mind -- are we having fun yet? Am I a big boy at last?

Eventually I tell her she is spinning out of control. The carpet is wet, we are wet. But, there was a lot of spirited laughter. I'll push the limits a lot for some spirited laughter!

We go back to reading. Sparrow is super tolerant as we push through nearly two chapter books, though he does take a break from snuggling next to me and staring at page after page of writing to go and add two brush strokes to his canvas-in-progress.


Okay, you know my post grandkids afternoon: I nap and think about travel.

Wednesday evening. No biking today. It's too hot. No cooking either. Chop salad greens, throw in CSA cucumber, reheat frittata.

And guess what -- I'm sleepy again. Ten o'clock and I can hardly keep my eyes open. Nap -- you really were worthless!

Yawn... Goodnight!

With lily love...