I do so appreciate good words

In the last few weeks, I’ve received a number of “lurker” emails – people who read Ocean and just want to let me know that they do. It truly is wonderful to hear from them, especially when I know that they are in different worlds, with different lives, at different ages and stages. So thank you for writing.


Ed and I woke up to a stellar, sunny day. It had been a quiet night. What a relief! Whereas the previous night, Isis came in and out of the farmhouse no fewer than TEN times (he doesn't have a cat door, so someone -- thanks Ed! -- has to let him in and out), last night he stayed away. I thanked him profusely this morning.

Today is the day to set the parameters of out veggie garden. Ed is suggesting that we dispense with fencing for our peas – donkey or chicken, they're all wrong. String. He’s convinced it’ll be more attractive and effective to use string. Well alright, I’ll give it a try. Let the man create and design. He thrives on this in life.





There’s another Ed idea that I am less tickled with: the tomatoes we planted in flats? You know how you’re supposed to put in a few seeds and then thin them out as they sprout? That’s not Ed’s way. He wont “thin.” He’ll laboriously cut the soil and separate the seedlings so that we don’t “kill” a sprout or two.
I ask him – why don’t we just plant one seed per pod next time?
Because they’re not all supposed to sprout.

But they do sprout.

I have no answer to that.


 


I leave him to his job. My daughter and her fiancée stop by for a country walk, city (Madison) people that they are. We go the way of the Nature Conservancy trail.





The last time I did this walk, it was midnight and the snows had covered our way. That was just a month ago – February 24. Today? Well now, today was very different.


Evening comes. I have a few difficult phone calls and then a wonderful family dinner and then it is all set, over and done with. I think to myself – you can never get others to feel good about life if they’re hell bent on feeling angry at what life has dealt them. You can’t force others to take on your story line, your praise of the good stuff. You just cannot. And that’s okay. But in the process of trying, you can get knocked around a bit. Today I got knocked around a bit. It happens.

Ed?

Yes gorgeous?

People are nuts.

Yes gorgeous.

Let's watch a good movie.

Okay gorgeous.

For once, he said exactly the right thing.

And now let’s consider tomorrow. A bright day, no? I look forward to breakfast among daffodils again.

Saturday

Going shopping alone (for nongrocery stuff) has become a distressing experience. If I don’t buy what I intended to buy, I feel that I wasted time. If I make a purchase, I do it with the awareness that if Ed was there, he’d talk me out of it and I’d be that much richer and closer to retirement.

Women encourage each other to buy. You deserve it! – typical words that accompany a small shove toward the register. Ed is on the opposite extreme. He pulls me away, quickly, firmly.

These days, I rarely go to stores. But today was the exception. Pansies, seeds, REI stuff, bookstore stuff, stuff! 

As I left Barnes & Noble bookstore, I thought how perhaps I’m too old to buy books anymore. I have many that I haven’t read yet and we do make use of the library. A lot. I do not completely endorse Ed’s philosophy that it’s only sad if you die before you turn sixty, but I do feel that purchasing plans of a post-58 year old have to be of a different kind than those of someone approaching 30. My parents both have great difficulty dismantling their various accumulations. Not me. By the time I’m their age (should I live past 60), I may well be living out of a single cardboard box. I’d probably be fine with that.

In the end, I did purchase an REI pack with wheels. It’s a nod toward my youthful ambition of carrying anything I take on a trip on my back and acknowledging that sometimes it’s just that much easier to wheel things. But I’ll return it tomorrow. At home, Ed gently but emphatically convinced me that I do not need it. His steadfast commitment to keep less "stuff" at the farmette is very soothing after a stressful day of store hopping.



Okay, let me turn our attention toward the farmette garden. Much time can be wasted by merely pulling weeds. You walk from point A to point B and you stop a hundred times to pull out a dandelion or a creeping Charlie or a blade of quack grass. The patch by the screened porch is a constant target for us. Isis gets involved as well. He walks daintily between flower clumps. Ed and I are lucky if we trample down fewer than two each time.





We’re starting a new veggie garden and the project combines my impulsiveness with Ed’s devotion to developing a good technique. Ed has a huge roll of wire fencing stored in the barn and we are thinking it may work well as a pea climber.





Ed, is this really for growing peas and beans? I’m skeptical. The stuff is heavy and hard to keep upright.
Well, they say that it's supremely well suited for containing donkeys. Not sure why I have it. It’s looking too funky, isn’t it?
That’s a hint that the end result is likely to look like something your great aunt Hilda may have tried to hoist up after having one too many beers. There isn't a chance that is Ed going to let a funky fence like that stand.

We could try to straighten it.

In the alternative, we could take it down and put up some chicken mesh. Tomorrow.

We’re done for today. We have a vision, we have seeds. A few pots have pansies in them.






And really, at this point, everything looks ridiculously lovely just because we have around us buds and flowers that belong to May. In March. Sure, it is a bit cool today. Fifties. And still, it's a postcard type of day. Even the sheepshed looks dreamy nice. Imagine that.

questions requiring no answers

Why can’t you come with me?

Why do you need to go?

One Q is mine, the other is Ed’s. We’re really not asking, because we know the answers. We’re stating our position – that I wish he’d want to go, that he wishes I wouldn’t want to go.

Spring break is very late this year – it does not start until at the end of next week. I tell my students – it’s been so warm, it feels like we’re wrapping up the school year. Except that we’re not. Not yet. Even as in the last months of a teaching year, every bit of reading, of lecture writing, of class preparation takes longer. You don’t want to slow down, you don’t want to finish limply and so you do more, even as your brain neurons have a healthy dose of spring fever. Sort of like softball pitchers, effortlessly tossing balls into the air. Without focus.

Spring break is the time that Ed rarely wants to go anywhere with me. Too short a break. Besides, he likes the farmette in the earliest months of spring. His preference is to go away for long, but rarely. Mine is exactly the opposite.

So this year, I’ll go away alone. In my life, I’ve traveled alone more than I’ve traveled with someone and so I am quite used to it, even as I wish my occasional traveling companion would drop the “occasional” part. I know, I know. He’d like me to drop the “frequent” in his description of me. Meet Nina, the frequent traveler. "Occasional" would, for him, be much more satisfying.

We would not be who we are if we were what the other wanted.


In other news – well, in anticipation of leaving this Thursday, I have a load of work – both of the bookish kind and outdoor stuff as well. Spring has galloped ahead of me and now I’m left with raspberry canes to trim, lettuce seeds to sow, our tomatoes to transplant.











Oh, it's a green world out there! Ten days ago, there was not a sign of spring. I took a photo of the farmhouse. Bathed in brown. Today? Well now...





Good work. Happy work. The skies are gray, the temps have settled into the comfortable sixties. We’re indoors working, we’re outdoors working, back and forth, all day long, one task, another, and another, until the sun, if there was one to be seen, nears the setting time.











Yes, it’s a green world out there! I honor it by cooking asparagus spinach soup – winter spinach and spring asparagus. Perfect combination.

What if I give over my miles and you could travel free? I already paid for a room...

What if I took you out to dinner every night here? We could work outside, then finish with a dinner out...

I've always said -- Ed is Ed. But, too, as he so well knows, Nina is Nina.

colors

Do you like pink? I ask Ed. Pink’s okay, he answers, then goes back to his reading. I recognize it as meaning – how could color matter? Ever?

Case in point: it matters to this young woman! On Bascom Mall today. Every detail in pink. (Please do take note of our green, remarkably green hill of grass.)





Earlier, during our morning breakfast on the porch, Ed asks – did you plant colors other than white out front?

Well he may wonder. The first narcissus that came up out front is the white one. And then another and then another.





I tell him others are soon to follow, but really, narcissus are all of the yellow-white family.

And speaking of yellow, on campus, we are experiencing the peak of yellow forsythia.





It’s short lived, but I’m always happy to see it, even if this year it is accompanied by most everything else. Bursting, blooming, growing substantially ahead of its season. We continue to be breaking record highs. Today it was in the upper seventies.

What’s your favorite color? I persist, wanting him to put down the New Yorker.
You! Ed says. You’re gorgeous! Ah, his dialogue tape is on auto pilot. He cannot be distracted. A shame. I go back to playing my very limited iTunes selections, picking songs carefully, even though I know that he isn’t really listening.

warm air thoughts

There are many many things to admire and respect in Ed, but the trait that came to mind today is his utter tolerance for another one’s conduct. Let them alone, it’s none of your business – these are his words, even when he doesn’t say them.

There is in there (though he wouldn’t admit it) a healthy respect for anyone’s life and for decisions people make in directing their own futures. Sure, if someone is hurting another, especially an animal, he’ll be appalled. But anything short of that is just one person’s life – not yours to grumble about or make fun of.

Of course, we all think that this describes us as well. We think we’re good at minding our own worlds, that we let others be who they are. But Ed doesn’t deeply think these things through. He just, by life’s habit, isn’t concerned with the conduct of others.

On the downside, I can’t get him riled with a story of a colleague’s misdeeds or the occasional student’s audaciousness. He’ll look at me puzzled and ask – why do you care? What does that have to do with doing your work well? That’s a conversation stopper, right there.







In other news – we continue to have summer. I don’t think we’ll quite hit 100 days of summer, in fact I believe today was the last of the hot (eighties!) days, but still, it’s been quite a remarkable run of it.





I biked to work. Of course I did. And I took the long route. Eight miles in, fourteen on the return. I was rewarded with a nice display of sandhill crane love. He was flapping his wings, she was ignoring him (but not really) and so it continued, until he settled down to follow her in the more quiet manner that seemed to appeal to her.






On campus, kids were sprawled out on Bascom Mall in various states of repose and undress. You could do a catalogue of good photos right there, but I'll show just this one. I like that he rests just outside the Education door. He seems quite ready for education.






After classes, I meet Ed at Paul’s café. Ed sleeps, I work, then we both bike home.

In the fields across the road from us, the truck farmers have been working now daily. This evening, I watch one as she sits with her grandchild. It’s a moment of rest. The boy is taking a sip of something, she is encouraging him. Around them, the fields are no longer brown. This gift of good weather is not just felt by me. It’s hers and his too.






At the farmette, the fruit tree exploded in bloom overnight. Is it a plum? – I ask Ed. Don’t know. Maybe. Or a sour cherry.





We’re not very good at identifying trees.

spring, forward!

Happy spring! ...but really – thank you for this time of summer!

It is a long work day, but it's made easier with a start of oatmeal on the porch...





...and by a glance out at the daffodil and lily patch, where the green stalks are getting taller by the minute!

...and I even don’t mind the chipmunks that are cavorting through my flowerbeds. They’re a nuisance, sure, but their play is my play today.


Rosie is ready to go this morning. These days she and I are one. I no longer reach automatically for a seat belt when I turn on her engine.  On the rural roads, she is my song, my spirit and today -- my spring dance.



Between classes, I take a short stroll to the lake. Some of the Union Terrace chairs and tables are out. Earlier than ever! No outdoor food service yet, but at lunch time, people bring their own foods outside, to eat near this great wonderful body of water.











And finally, in the evening, I'm home.





And I notice that some of the fruit trees are budding!






Everyone knows that I have always favored spring. All seasons, yes, I like them all, but spring is special. Now is the time to feel buoyant, now is the time to sketch plans for the months of summer, now is the time to smile again and again, just at the beauty of it all.

wallpaper

I will never forget this insignificant fact about the house I lived in during my daughters’ formative years: it had ugly wallpaper in the kitchen. We always intended to redo the kitchen, but we couldn’t quite afford it in those early years and so we let it go. Within a few years, I forgot about the wallpaper. I spend most of my waking hours in that room, but I stopped noticing its hideous design.

Could it be that I’ve grown used to this weather, too?

No, not to the point that I take it for granted.

Monday is a tough work day – I’ve said this before. But not so tough that we could not take our breakfast outside. We watch the clouds roll in and, eventually, the rains come down.

Still, what a beautiful morning it is! The first daffodils, vincas, violets – all those.






On campus, students treat the day as hot, beastly hot, shorts weather hot... even as the rain forces them to take their coffee break under cover.






Later, much much later, after my last class, I return to the farmhouse. The sun is out again, mellow and muted now in the evening hours.





I bring home take-out Chinese. We eat outside. The sun drops down, but it still feels summer-like. Our first dinner this year out on the porch.  You can do that now, on this final day of winter. Without a jacket, without a sweater even, if you’re an Ed.





Summer in March. I’m quite used to it now. Tomorrow, we officially move into spring.

proverbs

Here’s a “Polish proverb” for you: in life, there’s always another weed to pull and another flower to encounter.

I used to write Polish proverbs in my head. It’s not hard. You could say that life offers ample hints.


Spring break comes late this year – not for another two weeks for us at UW. But summer? Whoa.... summer came out of the blue. Take today. We hit 80 degrees. That’s ten degrees above the previous record high for this day. Crazy!

Ed and I work hard outdoors. So much so that I haven’t the photos to prove it. Just one – when I begin to distribute wood chips on flower beds. With Isis leading the way. There was, too, creeping Charlie to pull and honeysuckle out back to chop down.





We’re tossing ideas as to what me might plant in the acre out back, behind the barn. Norwegian spruce? An orchard of apples? Walnuts?

We’ll likely not do any of it this year. Maybe not even next year. But we make ready the soil and strain our muscles doing so and it’s nice knowing that we’re making progress. There’s an old Polish proverb that says -- focus on the steps you take to the market; the fruit, once purchased there, will have a richer flavor.

the luck

It continues to be warm. The kind of warm that lets you sleep with windows wide open and, most importantly and sublimely, eat breakfast out on the porch.





Isis comes – he has his own entrance to the porch. He’s happy here, sort of outdoors. He climbs on us, jumps over to the table,  emboldened, knowing that he has a ready escape. In the farmhouse, he needs us to provide an out. But on the porch, he’s free, he’s king, he’s in control.






Will it really be a six month stretch of outdoor breakfasts? Could we be so lucky? I think about adjustments I thought I had to make when I moved to the farmette: the mosquitoes in the summer. But somehow this year, there were none. Then the worry about heavy snows to contend with mornings before work: they didn't happen either. And now this – the out of nowhere treat of an early summer. Temporary? Maybe. But in these last hours of winter, I can't think of a wet and cold tomorrow. We've got a glorious March -- let's just marvel at that!


Ed tells me that land just a couple of miles to the east of us, leading up to Lake Waubesa, has been acquired by the county, extending public access to the lake and linking it to the nature preserve that includes vast areas of wetlands here. You can hate living not too far from wetlands -- they attract insects. Or you can love it. You are on the flight path of birds. I read that nearly seventy species inhabit this area. These days, when we work outside, we can always hear the warble of a sandhill crane. He's loud, but so are the other birds. I'm not skilled at naming them, but I come to recognize their unique voices. And this year, their song comes early and strong.



We work in the prairie again, sawing down honeysuckle, creating great big mountains of chopped down limbs. Everything around us is sprouting already. One month early by my estimation. The willow that caused us great troubles around Thanksgiving? Remember? Well, it's an explosion of golden green buds now!






Saturday. In the afternoon we set out to do what has to be done: tedious errands. Including the rare trip to the mall. We're listening to a Freakonomics podcast on Ed's ratty Geo radio. It's hugely entertaining and we're loathe to turn it off, even as we pull into a spot at the crowded parking lot.  I swing open the door and lean my feet on the edge of the open window. Ed's window hasn't opened for years, but the Geo has a sunroof and that's propped open too. I comment how ridiculous it is on this fine day to sit in a parking lot and watch cars pull in and out, but it really isn't ridiculous. The sky is still blue, the breeze is equally warm. Even here, on this vast slab of concrete, life is good.


They say it's St. Patrick's Day but neither of us has any Irish in us and still, here we are, retreating to the farmland green, the unexpected luck of the green that's rapidly taking over our yard. And purple. And gold. Right there, for all to see.

the sun, the sky, the city, home

Early in the morning, I tell my girl – I don’t have to shower, eat, any of it. Do your morning as you would if I were not here. She looks at me in the way that only daughters can – with horror, pity, but too, with a smile of understanding.

She goes off to work.

I head for Lake Michigan.





If I thought there’d be dramatic fog – I was wrong. It’s a tad misty and there are a lot of joggers out there on the lake path. And dog walkers. I think how tough it is to have a dog in the city. I've done it. I would not want to do it again.

I do a little shopping. I don’t like that I do this. Spending money on things is most always not a good call, but still, cities have a way of reminding me what's lacking back at the farmhouse: I don’t have this. I could surely use this. And so on.

In the end, I only acquire simple but much coveted dessert plates at Crate and Barrel. And then, outside the store, as if I needed to be reminded that I could have managed without them, I accidentally knock the bag down and break two of the six. And, too, I miss the earlier bus back home. That'll teach me.

Will it? Time... what’s time? It’s what you need to get work done, to get close to your sweetie. I catch the later bus. Plenty of time. For work and for sweetie.

Rosie’s there, waiting by the Law School. I ride her in the warm breeze of a beautiful evening...





...home.

Ed suggests a local pizza for supper. Roman Candle. Just up the road.





In our usual way, we sit in the booth on the same side of the table. It is what we do. The pizza is the same, too.





I ask Ed after – miss me? He responds – of course!

It’s the way we talk. He knows that I will ask and I know what he'll say in response. Predictable and warm. Like the garlic and mushrooms on the pizza. We've come to like it that way.

82!

For whatever inconsequential reason, I came to work this morning with almost no sleep from the night before. It happens. One thing you learn quickly if you’re a teacher is that you are on the next day no matter what your little issues are from the night before. If anything, I work harder at being alert when I am somewhere in zombieland. So you could argue that I am better when I am less good. 

But it made for a hard workday.

In general, I will admit that today had its tricky challenges. Take the ride in. It was Rosie time and a fine ride it should be, with promises of continued summerlike weather. The sun rose behind the orchard, daintily, gently and I was glad to have extra minutes to make the ride more leisurely. The upside of not sleeping is that you’re up and out earlier than usual.





But this morning there is a fog advisory.

Not so bad initially. Pretty. Gentle morning mists are so often balmy and calming out around the farm.





But things got muffled as I came into the city. The fog threw a thick band of wet, densely white air right at the entrance to the isthmus. The lake usually gives a nice view of the skyline. Today, it gave me this.





Well okay. It all disappeared quickly enough. Indeed, if you think yesterday was a record breaking hot day at 78, take note that today we hit 82. 82!

After my last class, I left Rosie in a spot where I thought she may be safe for a day or two and I ran to catch the late afternoon bus to Chicago. I haven’t seen my youngest girl for two months now. A dinner in the city with her and her guy is something to look forward to. She picks a place she knows I’ll love – Giuseppe Tentori’s Fish and Oyster Bar. You get really nostalgic for good seafood when you live in Madison.

I take the El downtown and think to myself how even though I’m south of home, it’s nippier here, by the mighty Lake Michigan. A brisk walk helps. And it’s a lovely walk – right across the river...





...and into the heart of the River North? Or is it the near North? Or west of the Golden Mile? Chicago is difficult to pin down that way.

The food is grand, the evening’s jovial..





...and now we’re home – her home, planning, scheming, talking of the next encounter, maybe up north, maybe over spring break...


Friday is a workday for her and for me too, but I promise myself a solid walk along the lake before returning home to Madison.

Meantime, keep throwing that good weather at me! I’m getting quite used to it.

78 degrees

Five things to do on the warmest winter day in Madison (perhaps ever):

1. Bike to work. Of course. What, no time? Make time.





Say hi to the otter. Remember: last week -- ice on the lake, this week -- swimming otter in the lake.





2. Take your Property class for a Bascom ice cream cone at the Union. You say they need every classroom minute you can give them? Maybe. But they also need to feel sunshine on bare arms in March. Tell them to walk fast so that you can continue to pound knowledge on matters of property after the ice cream break.





3. Graciously accept a dinner out invitation from Ed. And take note his concern for your huge work load, even if that concern is voiced from a reclining position, where I leave him in the morning. With Isis. Both decadently sprawled out.

But, when the time comes in the evening to go out and both of you get distracted by planting tomato seeds in starter trays, let it go. Dinners out can happen another time. Sitting at the picnic table and pushing seeds into composted soil on a warm “winter” day is rare.











4. Pay homage to the crocuses. They deliver gold every day now.





5. Breathe deeply when outside. That’s a general thing you should do on any day. I’m told it’s good for the lungs. Or something.

Such a glorious summer winter day!