crops

If farm animals are a constant speculative element in our talks about the future (and believe me, much has to happen before we would elevate them from the level of discussion to a plan of action), what we grow here is something that we have to confront every single day, now. Mostly, it’s not about what we plan on growing.  Plans -- they cover an infinitesimal portion of space. Flowers. Herbs. Tomatoes. Asparagus (when we remember to weed the plot). And raspberries. The rest? It's out of our hands.

We do have a huge number of raspberry bushes. They proliferate expansively.





This spring, in an effort to contain them and encourage healthy growth, we spent a huge number of hours trimming, transplanting and pruning. When we came back from France, it was as if none of that had ever happened. The raspberry jungle had established itself once again.

We are, however, hugely lucky this summer. I don’t want to jinx this, but for some reason, the mosquitoes have not quite shown their ugly faces just yet. I am sitting on a half screened porch at dusk and I hear no buzz. In July. In Wisconsin. Rare!






And so I can pick berries today (to be preserved for winter use)...


 



...without the need for protective mosquito garb. Fantastic!





After, I take stock. We haven’t much in the refrigerator. Copps free range eggs. An ear of corn. Lousy dinner choices. I leave the farmhouse and walk over to the fields where Hmong families are growing market crops.
Do you suppose I could buy a head of lettuce? I ask. No answer. The two women getting ready to work in the fields do not speak English. They point to a person coming down the hill. I’m guessing it’s their daughter. Maybe. She’s of the next generation. Schooled here. She speaks English.
I ask for lettuce. She translates, but only in part. As a result, the women rush over and bring me a pint of raspberries. Oh dear. I most certainly do not need raspberries. I try again. Lettuce? Green lettuce?

The young girl translates some more. She tells me – it’s further in the field. Go pick your own. As much as you want. I hand her a few dollars. She refuses. I stick it in her pocket but she finds it and hands it back.





At the farmhouse, Ed and I (mostly Ed) put up the final big panel of the screen for the proch (now there are only two dozen little ones left!). The evening is cool before the expected rush of hot air this week-end.

I have my laptop on the partly finished porch. Isis comes, Isis goes. The sky is beautifully tinted. I’m playing music from Scotland. Firefly sparks come in bursts. Like fireworks. Here! See this one! Bats fly around the silo. One comes into the porch area. Oh! Be careful! Most of the screen panels are in now. He flies out, back with his buddies, darting, searching.





I have no complaints.

farm(ette) animals

Ed, Isis is spending every waking minute in the farmhouse. I'm standing poised with the vacuum, ready to catch any hair that may fall from his nape. Last night he watched TV with us all evening long (Hoop Dreams – a very very long movie),  this morning, he is at the door again, asking to come in for breakfast. (He likes to check on everyone’s food, though he’ll be satisfied with his own bowl of milk. Organic, fat free.)

Yeeees?

Sometimes, can we just say no?

To his begging outside?
Yes. He’ll meow and retreat. (I don’t really believe it though. That cat can sit patiently for hours, waiting to be let in so that he can hightail it over to his favorite spot – on the couch, in my corner, right by my computer.)





To demonstrate my otherwise kind feelings toward animals, especially farm(ette) animals, I throw out a suggestion. Should we get chickens? A friend yesterday was telling me about her chickens in her back yard off of Willie Street. We have all this land! She said it’s easy. Just give them water and food.

We hunt on the Internet for people’s reflections on raising chickens. Sounds not so easy at all. Sounds like Isis is easier. Open the door, feed him milk, organic, low-fat, vacuum up hairs after he leaves. Chickens – if they’re babes, you have to do complicated temperature manipulation. And eventually their “productivity” goes down and you have to... make chicken stew out of them. I’m not going to ax off the head of Martha the hen once she stops laying eggs. Will you?

How about goats? They’ll eat your grass. A regular lawn service. And maybe give milk? And who is going to milk the goat? I will. We look up goats on Craigslist. $150 and that’s before you get the goat supplies. Surely they need toys and bedding and...

I think about the huge amount of work the porch project has been – even more for Ed than for me, though I still need to finish painting today. I’m aware of the front porch that still needs to be replaced and the cedar planks that are in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Let’s think about the animals, okay?

Okay.

In the meantime, I walk over to the farmers’ hut in the fields by our farmette. We hear a rooster crowing and I want to locate the source. Ah. So they keep a caged rooster here. Interesting.





I don’t want to cage a rooster. I don’t want to buy a tractor for chickens and wheel them from one spot to the next. I don’t want electric fencing and I don’t want to chase the old hen once she’s done with the egg laying bit.

Ed, we need some eggs.

We get on the motorbike and zip over to Copps. Organic, free range.

paint

My Cinderella story for today involves drudgery, heat, the buzz of nasty horseflies, stretching on a tipsy ladder to reach high places, cursing as splashes of paint fall to the brick floor (white splashes look awful on red brick)).

By noon I’d been at it for five hours. My hands, shoulders, legs are splattered, smudged and dabbed with paint.

Time for the great transformation. Step number one: the shower. No, not at the farmhouse. That’s a clean shower stall. You have to preclean yourself to go there. To Ed’s sheepshed then. Where nothing is too dirty to set loose in the tub.

Step two: don the frock, put on dangly earrings, take out the sandals with the silver straps and off you go, to the ball.

Not the ball really – just a reception for the new dean at the Law School, but my oh my do it feel like I am stepping into a different world.

Driving home, I think how nice it is to move from the world of laborious work to dainty cookies and lemonade and quiet chatter about this and that. And then, how nice it is to come back to the farmhouse, even though the porch is only half painted and the horseflies are up and buzzing and it looks like screening the damn thing will take many many many days of work.





Now, have I mentioned how wonderful it will be to have a place to sit outside without the bugs? Yes? I have? Okay, well let me not be too repetitive.

on this day

Well, some days are harder than others. You wake up, the sun shines in your face and then slap! You’re hit with one of life’s punches.

This did not happen to me today, but I thought I’d remind you and myself (though I’ve not forgotten) that life is not always easy.

But for these fleeting seconds that make up this day (thus far, because you never know) – I have been lucky. Avoiding calamity is tough. As I said – I have been, on this day (thus far) (more often than not), without major mishap.


In other news, I finally had the pleasure of seeing one of my children. She’s back in town and happy to come over for dinner.





... and also worth noting: the tomato race continues between Ed and myself. His plants are doing well. So is the one that's"mine." I water his to help them along, because a good race is one that is evenly stacked.





In not so good news, I have this to offer: I prefer food over art. Please, do know that I love art. But food is better. So that when I arrived on the Square and found not the Farmers Market, but Art Fair on the Square, I was disappointed.

On the up side, I found, to the side, a few vendors with peas,  asparagus, flowers and berries (other produce as well, but I mention things I myself purchased).





...but it was not the same.

Back at the farmhouse – oh, we are working so hard here! Isis looks on with utter disgust (being, himself, more inclined toward napping). (Please, do not remind us that the grass needs a trim; we know that.)


 




So, the sun was out, the lilies stood tall, other flowers -- well they stood, that counts for something...










...and work continued. On the Book Notes and/or on the porch construction. (Depending on whom you ask.)

Book notes, continued

At 5:30 in the morning, I hear the faint sound of the rototiller in the fields next to the farmhouse. The truck farmers work long hours now. I pick up my camera and roll out of bed.

Sunrise.





Nice.







I consider starting the day then as well, but I’ve been writing on and off all day and part of the night and I’m feeling like it would be a real effort to get anything out of me right now.

But I think about this project as I lay there half resting, half dozing. I should do what wannabe authors do: I should pitch this book project to some agents. That’s how writers proceed, no?

What agents?

Some while back, someone handed me the name of her agent. You’ll love her. Write to her. Oh sure, a reputable agent is going to want to hear from someone who is only now getting serious about book writing. And whose first language isn’t English. And who blogs.

Does anyone know of any other agents out there? I’d like to start collecting rejection letters. It seems to be part of the process.

Eventually we push the day forward. Ed goes off for his weekly design meetings at Tormach, I return to writing. Isis is feeling terribly neglected, what with Ed gone and me inside. I go out and have a serious conversation with him about disturbing a budding author. He looks at me with wise eyes. You? Budding? – he seems to say.

He ambles off toward the shed. Cooler down there. I return to the farmhouse and my book notes.

book notes

Book notes: that’s the file name of my Great Book Writing project. Once again I open the file and take stock of what’s there. I think afterwards – I have read (and reworked) this first part hundreds of times. Surely someone other than myself would read it once?

This is the kind of faulty, circuitous reasoning that leads explorers and inventors to take great risks – only to fail, but I cannot think that way. If I did, my Great Book Writing project would be nothing more than a Laughable Nonbook Writing Fiasco. I’m not there yet.

If I’m to write my Book Notes draft, what’s to become of Ocean in the weeks ahead?
Well, I could recycle photos:












Ah! Had you fooled? These aren’t recycled at all, they’re fresh from the Tuesday (sorry, Thursday) afternoon (today!) Fitchburg Farmer’s Market. And if you think those baguettes look as wonderful as the ones from France – you’d be right, because they are, thanks to La Baguette of Madison. And the sunflowers look much like the ones near Carcaconne, but they are from our fields here... Oh, markets! You are genuinely pretty! And forever interesting.











I have to say that the return home has been made much easier knowing that there is a café waiting for me here (EVP Fitchburg, with the affable and wonderful barista – don’t ever leave!). And a market, too, with La Baguette’s best of the best breads delivered hot, really quite hot from the ovens every Tuesday afternoon.


All this leads me to think that perhaps I wont have to recycle life or photos in the weeks ahead. There's always something fresh and honest to take note of, even if your sole trip is between a coffee shop and home.

Home. Where weeds grow and trees lean under the weight of seasonal success. Where my one tomato plant stands tall, ready to face fierce competition from Ed's arsenal of  of tomato plantings.







Home. Happy as anything to be home. Pain au chocolat breakfasts and rosé wine lunches belong to a time and place. Not here, and not just at this second. Soon. I always hope it's soon. But not now.

connecting

Airplane flights allow you to find a personal link between the world you leave behind and the one you’re returning to. I don’t hate them in the way most people seem to. For me, they offer time: essential time during which you can reconcile world one with world two. To figure out how you can take the best from one place and make it your own in the next.

Oh sure, there are, so often, miserable moments to flying. For instance, the ventilation wasn’t working for the first hour as we sat in the airplane in Paris (where we connected to Detroit and then eventually to Madison). The hot, still air felt more oppressive than the hottest hours in Ghana. The plane was full. Everyone sat in silence waiting for that magic moment when we could take in cool air again. The minutes dragged.

But most air travel is mundane, straightforward and therefore, a good time to close your eyes and think for a bit.

I did that. Flying up and over Barcelona.





Flying into Madison.






The next morning, I wake up at the farmhouse, look outside and see the beauty of a sunrise over an overgrown with grasses and weeds farmette.






Today, my arms ache from pulling and tossing. Returns to the condo were easy. To the farmhouse? Hard, yet beautiful.





The music in my head is Abba (so popular over European airwaves) but the memory of speeding on the twisted roads to La Franqui beach in France, listening to Dancing Queen is tempered by news then from home. I didn't mention it much in my posts, but it wasn't always good news. One thing I will always remember from this trip is being insanely happy one minute, then thinking I should be home for those who needed me to be home.

Barcelona

Google map – I don’t know how you do it! Who put all that information into your system? Did people send you maps from around the world and you masterfully memorized all the street names and their direction? I mean, I really cannot fathom how many things work – that’s an Ed strong suit – but neither of us can understand how it is that we can so easily route our traveling destinations.

The drive from the Costa Brava into the city of Barcelona is a breeze. Once we get past the traffic jam.

We pull up the little car to the door of our hotel for the night – the very very excellent Hotel Villa Emilia (don’t let names deceive you – this is no old fashioned sachet and chandelier place -- it’s a smart, modern little hotel and if you’re as lucky as we are on this day, you’ll get the corner room, with large windows out onto the busy world of Barcelona).





And now comes the task of unloading it all: the suitcase, the backpacks, the canoe. The drysacks, stuffed still with camping gear. The wine box, the beach bag, the loose odds and ends, packed so tightly into the back (where, really, there’s only room for one small suitcase) that if you open the hatch, you run the risk of setting off an avalanche of objects.

We’re efficient. Ed leaves me with the mountain of gear and drives off to return the car. The desk staff of the sharp hotel never bats an eye as I move the not so smart bags and sacks from outside to the elevator and then, in batches, up to our room.


The idea is to spend the day sorting through museums we hadn’t time for before. And to explore the less familiar neighborhoods. But we haven’t the energy for it just yet. We drift into sleep and only when it is very late in the afternoon do we nudge each other to get going.

We put aside ambitious plans. And in a way, that's too bad. The more straightforward alternative – a walk to the port of Barcelona puts us in the thick of such crowds, noise and traffic, that we are rather overwhelmed.

The walk itself ends up being long – very long. Four hours. Five maybe. We do pause for a coffee and a Catalan vichy...





...and then, too, in the Museum of Maritime History and that would be a great choice considering Ed’s love of boats and history, except that the main collection is under renovation and so we see an abbreviated version of what is inside.

Oh, here you can see me – the immigrant, smiling broadly. I’m sailing to America! Happy Fourth to you too!





And then we walk the boardwalk to what appears to be mall on the waterfront. With cafes that tempt me not at all...





...and too few quiet spaces like this.





Off the boardwalk, we’re in the beach area of Barcelona. A place of tight houses and tired faces, of few flowers and too few people picking up the litter that accumulates in the space of a day. Or week. (At least in this block, the Catalan banners add a bit of flair:)






The beach itself is okay – in an urban sort of way.





Neither of us is tempted to step in the sand.

Slowly, we make our way back through the old town, past the wide boulevards too, packed, really packed with people, but that is to be expected. It is summer and the residential neighborhood where we are staying is emptying out as people leave for vacations, to be replaced by the likes of us, the tourists, wanting to taste the racy rich foods and pleasures of Barcelona.

We walk, too, through the ethnically diverse neighborhoods – Moroccan, Indian, Pakistani. And through blocks where stores are still open at 9 and cheap wine is sold straight from the barrel.











Here, the bars are crowded and Ed comments – where are all the old people?





Gone. Hiding. I don't know.

You might think that my love for Barcelona is dwindling. An intense rush of affection that trickles and morphs into bitterness and resentment. Not so. But just at this moment, I am more in love with the two blocks around our hotel. They offer nothing unusual, except a cool room in a cool hotel, a quiet neighborhood and a wonderful restaurant (La Clara), where our superstar desk clerks send us for a late night meal. We eat a superb dinner! Barcelona comes through after all. From mussel appetizers to Catalan creams, with the effervescent Cava throughout.











A short while later, in the wee hours of the morning, we are packed and dragging cases and totes and packs up six blocks to the square from which we catch a bus to the airport.

by the sea, one last time

We leave the Languedoc region of France Sunday morning. Good-bye vineyards.






Hello Spain.





Cheaper gas, different language, no baguette habits. Why do bread eating styles not cross borders?

We are utter imbeciles at finding our way to the quiet little hotel (Mas Ses Vinyes) on the outskirts of Begur, Spain. (Why there? Well, it’s just a couple of hours north of Barcelona and we need to return the car early the next day. And it’s a snap to get to the sea – the Costa Brava. And the rural inn prides itself on being a quiet place. We’re still in a quiet zone in our state of being. We're bracing for Barcelona the next day.) True, there are fifty google steps to take to get to the place, but at least the last one – “drive up 300 meters to the Mas Ses Vinyes” should have been obvious enough.

We stop at the gates where there is a sign “Ses Vinyes.” No one’s around. Ring the bell, I tell Ed. Nothing. I don’t believe he pressed hard enough. Do it again. Silence. A place of real silence.

Maybe they’re out. What now?

I peer through the crack in the gates. You know, I don’t think we’re at the right address.

We retreat.

But five minutes later we do finally locate the Mas (rural inn) and are given a delightful corner room where the winds blow through and make you feel almost as if you’re in a tent (I tell Ed).





There is time for one last swim in the sea.

We drive to the nearest beaches, even though we’re told they’ll be crowded. A Sunday in July, after all.

First beach. Not too crowded at all and why should I be surprised – it’s a nippy and gray day. Any other time this little cove would draw us.


 



Today, we look at each other and shrug. Pretty. Very few people. Want to go? Maybe we should look at some of the others...

We snake along the rocky coast,  past Begur, up one hill, over the next...





...and it really isn't all that long -- a few kilometers, no more than that -- before the landscape flattens out and the shoreline turns into one long strip of golden sand. The beach here is crazily packed at the entrance point. But as we walk away from the road, the sandy shore thins out.

As does the attire. Nippy as it is, this Roca beach is for those who hate the encumbrance of swim suits. Nakedness is the norm. A father and son kick a soccer ball, a couple plays a sporting game of badminton, a mom and dad try to coax their little one into the water – all, or at least most are clothesless and normally I would think – oh, fantastic! Peel those layers off on this hot hot day, except that today is not a hot hot day. Indeed, I kind of am missing my sweater.

Surprisingly, the water is quite warm. I am almost tempted to go in for a swim. Almost. But the thought of coming out of the warm sea into this chilly air gives me pause and I opt instead for wading knee deep in the choppy waters of a rather agitated Mediterranean.

Ed feels the water with his toe and says – I’m going in!





No hesitation there. He emerges once with a big grin, goes back in, comes out, goes back in, diving, surfing, doing all sorts of acrobatics, happy as the dolphin that he is.


And now, one last photo from the beach...





by the sea, by the sea... And off we go, back to our corner room with the billowing winds.

The post should end with mention of great food and a sound and restful sleep, but actually, the food at our rural inn is surprisingly tame. I’ll highlight the best of the bunch – a rice and seafood dish...





Maybe it’s that we’re spoiled now, terribly terribly spoiled by a month of great pizzas, salads, ducks, shrimp and pain au chocolat. And don’t forget the mille feuille. So that a reheated this or that and a limp whatever just seems so unfortunate.

As for the sleep – well, I suppose it’s our own fault. The idea of breezes blowing through the room all night long was so alluring that we left the windows wide open. During the entire month, we’ve had no real run ins with mosquitoes. But on this night, one made it into our room and it takes only one to keep you from sleeping well. I’m not an inept bug chaser, but the tall timbered ceiling and various nooks in the room stacked the deck against me. Near five in the morning, one slap by Ed finally put an end to things, but this was only a small victory since we were by then just a couple of hours short of our wake up and get going time.

I refuse to end the post on the mosquito hunt though. Instead, let me say that even as the inn puts too little effort into the food, it surely makes up for it by having lovely flowers.













And, finally, I do want to say that I hope your Fourth was a happy happy Fourth of July. Ours just ended, in Barcelona. Crowded, lively, noisy Barcelona. I’m sure to have more to say on that once we haul ourselves and all our olive oils, rosés, mustards and jams across the ocean. Right now, it's time for us to pack up and head home.