return to farmette life

Yes, it went quickly. One day I am immersed in my younger daughter's Chicago life -- her market, her local coffee shop, a walk to the park around the corner, a dinner in a new neighborhood bistro -- the next morning, I am spending the last precious minutes, watching them march through their morning routines. Get the girls dressed, pack a lunch, feed hungry mouths, braid hair, put on sunscreen. (The younger girl is in her same school for the summer, but the older girl is onto a new experience -- bikers' camp -- for the week.)

 

(good morning!)

(to you as well!)

(hair braided: check!)

(hair braided: check)

(time to go? really?)

The little one is off and away, I read Ramona with the older one and then she leaves, I leave, the visit is behind us. Sigh... Well, no matter -- I'll see them next month for sure.

I asked for coffee shop recommendations -- they have so many! Should I try a new one? -- they point me to Allez. Sounds French! I drive over -- oh, but it feels neigborhoody and very Chicago! Just perfect!

Equipped once again with a croissant and a milky coffee for the car ride (oh, the crumbs!), I head home.

 

It's a strange day in all other respects: the garden is a mess and I mostly let it stay that way. (I snip away a couple hundred flowers just on my path in and out of the farmhouse so that it wouldn't pain me to look at all that neglect!) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There had been a storm the night I was away: four inches of rain fell in a very short period of time. Everything is damp, made more so by the muggy air outside. I decided to wait until tomorrow morning to do a thorough clean sweep. It'll be me and the mosquitoes out there!

Too, I promised to do the one month walk through over at Steffi's House. The construction crew will be back to make minor adjustments to their work in places where adjustments are needed (almost none!). While there, I said goodbye to the young Polish mom and her baby -- they're traveling back home tomorrow. Needless to say, I dont envy her the nine hour flight with a newborn!

Back home, I feel I could do with a nap, but instead, I take to making lists. So many lists! Then I throw it all down (attending to what's on the lists is a whole 'nother project for another day!), have a nice cup of coffee and exhale.

A short spell digging up the flower bed by the driveway, a check in on my very reluctant to do anything at all mother, and then I call it quits. Tomorrow is another day, right?

 

(almost ready for planting)

 

(the cleaned up trumpets in the late afternoon...)

Evening at home. Reheated soup, a movie, a quiet moment. To think, to plan, to savor. And to love.

 

 

urban interlude

I swore I would not go away at all in July. The garden needs me and I need it as well! But there's going to be an exception -- to see my granddaughters in Chicago. If they can't come here (due to visitors, commitments, musical events, what have you), I'll go there. This morning, very early, perhaps too early, I set out. No, no lily plucking. I was happy enough to grab a cup of coffee at Tati's, and a peach and a stale croissant from home -- to drink and eat while driving.

(glance at the fields just outside the porch)

(stepping out with my bag and camera)

It can't be a long visit and indeed, it's imperfect because this weekend, too, the younger family had events to attend and so did I. So we squish in time in between and we make do. 

Hi, kids!

(kids greet me with songs)

It's a beautiful day and we set out right away to the local Wicker Park Farmers Market.

You'd think it would be very similar to ours "up north," and it is, sort of. But in the end each market is unique and special, with a personality all its own.

They pick up produce, I get flowers and some of us also load up on local La Boulangerie croissants. Almond for me this time. Plain and chocolate for the girls.

(walk home, again with song...)

Lunch is at home.

And we do split the time between the house and the great outdoors. 

 

 

 

Primrose is enthusiastically picking up speed on her bike riding. I tag along behind her and her dad while Juniper naps.

(up now: a very musical day!)

Dinner? Absolutely delicious, at Bar Parisette. A new place for all of us. We take the bus there and walk the few miles back, just because it is such a special, beautiful evening!

[And yes, I am aware of the political upheaval taking place in D.C., or in Delaware, or, truthfully, in all corners of this country. I'm sure we will do exactly the right thing. Hope springs eternal.]

With a full heart and so much love...

a different kind of July day

I've never come across a doppelganger -- of me or of anyone else for that matter. Do they even exist? But I did run into someone who had a remarkably similar (in form if not in content) life to mine. I wont bore you with the checklist of shared experiences, but I'll just note that she is an author person and I met her because she had the table next to mine at the Oregon Public Library today at the "Meet your Local Author" even held there today. (Her book is about Palestinian struggles -- something she knows intimately, being married to a Palestinian and raising three Palestinian children.)

As you may know, I do not love doing PR work on stuff I've written. I've agreed to exactly one reading, two interviews, and I did submit my book (Like a Swallow) for a competition and it did bring me a Finalist medal, for what it's worth. And that's it. But the Oregon Public Library event coordinator is a dynamic young woman who puts together great community events and I was reluctant to say no to the invite she sent out. Especially since this Local Author event was to take place on a Saturday, where my one other commitment was merely to snip lilies. 

And so this morning, I snipped only half the beds (no time!). And I took only a few pics.

(good morning!)

(bright and early)

(well, well, the glads --gladiolus murielae-- are starting to bloom! Their white flowers with grape throats, with tall straight leaves are stunning among the lilies!)

And I ate such a hurried breakfast on the porch... 

 

 

 

... that half my coffee stayed in the mug while I dashed about getting stuff ready for the book event. Because, of course, I'd done nothing at all to prepare for it. I wasn't even sure if I had the books to bring for a display and sale. In the end I scrounged up a handful. Thank goodness, because they did sell. 

Embarrassingly, I pulled out the poster boards from the elementary school Poland presentation I did last spring in my grandkids' school, and I dragged out the kid Polish costume I had in the closet. I had to put something on my table! 

Ha! They were, in fact, a draw. People liked to look at pictures of pierogi and comment on how their grandmother used to make some of those as well. Those who purchased the book will be disappointed to learn that I write nothing about pierogi in it.

My publisher (Little Creek Press) was at the event (here we are!)...

... and she lightly wagged her finger at my reluctance to push my book more. She did secretly tell me that she loved the cover of mine still so very much (she designed it, but I suppose you always have ones you're especially proud of), perhaps hoping that this would inspire me to put it out there more than I have done, but it's no use. I like to write. I don't like to promote.

 

I did not get home until late afternoon and I felt all talked out by then. Thank goodness Ed and I lead a quiet sort of existence. I wanted to say absolutely nothing to anyone for the rest of the day. (Yes, I admit it... I'm becoming more quiet with each passing year!)

Still, I felt compelled to return to my lily snipping job. Reluctantly. After all, the day will soon be over and the next day will bring on a new set of unsnipped lilies. Why not just wait until then?!

 

Am I getting garden lazy??

With that thought in mind, I took out my shovel and started in on the destruction of the driveway bed.

The bugs were on high alert, but I persevered. Ed helped by standing nearby and waving the bug zapper that makes a very satisfying snapping sound when it hits a mosquito. Small progress is better than no progress at all. (Can I appropriate this as my gardening slogan going forward?)

(in the afternoon light)

In the evening I reheated the soup and made salads and exhaled. Ed found a show for us to watch, we ate chocolate. A very satisfying conclusion to an unusual July day.

with love...

the garden as...

It's not that you just grow flowers, take a few pictures of them and move on to your next project. Gardens -- creating them, maintaining them, sharing them, changing them -- there is a force behind them that I find hard to explain. 

It's not an obsession, even though many have wondered if perhaps snipping lily heads for two hours each summer morning is a form of insanity. And there isn't an end goal exactly, even though you may have images in your head or on paper of how it will all look as the growing season explodes. 

Gardens are unique creations that bring people closer to earth's elements. They ask of you that you learn something new and altogether different than what you would do for yourself to move ahead in life. You grow flowers, or at least I grow flowers not because I love it, but because it feels right to learn and plant and toil and experience frustration as the unexpected happens. It feels that my time is well spent on this, outdoors, even if it means swatting bugs and pulling weeds that grow monstrously big overnight. 

Private as my flower fields are, they also do draw people to the farmette lands. Today, we got a call from an old friend -- the wife of Ed's former business partner. She and and a visitor from China -- also known to us for many years for the same company work reasons -- wondered if they could stop by for a visit. Seemingly to say hello, but really to explore the farmette flower fields.

I was glad, therefore, that I had done an adequate job of snipping lilies this morning. 707 today! This has to be the peak! And I do see that some big time bloom producers are slowing down. (Dare I say it -- thank goodness! Snipping sticky wilted flowers is tough, especially if you do it as I do it -- in the wee hours of the morning when the bug activity is on the higher end of normal.)

Here's my morning walk-through:

(good morning!)

(sunlight...)

(I have to be careful: sometimes the little green frogs sit in opening blooms, sometimes they hide inside spent flowers...)

(a pair of doubles)

Because I have a somewhat crazy day tomorrow and I wont have time for much in the morning, I decided to drive out to Madison Sourdough today to pick up croissants for the week. And cinnamon rolls for today's breakfast.

(Stopping to take a look at Steffi's House: it's finally finished on the outside!)

(breakfast)

And now comes the truly nutty moment: I decided just yesterday that most of the flower bed that abuts the driveway has to be redone. It hasn't been good for years now. I keep hoping that tweaks will correct it, but it hasn't happened. I need to dig it out and plant afresh. Typically that is a spring project. But here's the rub: if I stick to lilies as the backbone of this bed (and I will, because it has to be in harmony with what grows immediately behind it, along the secret path), putting them in next spring means that I wont see much in the way of flowers until the year after. 

But if I put them in still this year....

So the crazy idea is to dig out the bed now, right in the middle of the blooming period, and put in replacement plants now, this month, before it's too late!

I contacted my best lily growers. They were on board. I picked out some plants. And I sat back and wondered how exactly am I going to fit this in next weekend. If they come by next weekend. And if not? Gulp. I'm leaving the week after. 

Gardens are created with care by some. I'm planning on visiting just such a garden later on, in August. But mine have never grown that way. They've been whimsical and off the cuff ideas, implemented in great spurts of caring and love, building on what's there, making do, given my time constraints and of course resource constraints. Flowers can be expensive if you aren't careful.

And just as I finish dealing with the lily people, our friends arrive. To walk, look, take it in.

And to sit down over a cup of tea, on the porch.

Would we have seen them now were it not for the garden? Maybe, maybe not. I'll stay with the idea that flower power is real and it does bring people together.

They leave, I go to pick up the kids for solid hours of farmhouse time.

And toward evening, as I drop them off at home, I linger there to chat with my daughter, on her porch, enjoying the fading warmth of a beautiful summer day.

A supper of soup. With corn -- in the soup, on the side -- sweet, delicious corn. I'm thinking about all that must be done now to get the garden ready for its next incarnation. The garden as a social magnet,  the garden as a place to lose yourself in, the garden as a source of stories, the garden as a great motivator to do the impossible.  

with love...