hot pink

I’m in a place where, truth be told, I don’t want to be. No no, I’m not talking about the farmhouse. Far from it. Really far from it.

Early, I woke up to this:





In the evening, I strolled past this:





Oh, not revealing enough? Okay, I also strolled past this:






I’m in Miami Beach, where, for the next two days I have a conference which I thought might be (from the intellectual standpoint) good for me.

But me, in Miami Beach?

When I was a kid and spent a handful of years in New York, my parents routinely took us south for winter break. We drove for three days and plunked down our beach towels on the golden sands of Ft. Lauderdale. Once, just once we drove through Miami Beach. This is where rich people stay, I was told.

Even then, I failed to see the attraction.


I have to admit that when I first learned that my conference was going to locate itself in Miami Beach, I wasn’t displeased. Art deco funky stuff, Cuban food, great weather – hey, what’s there not to enjoy!

And it isn’t bad. I just like the farmhouse better.

Ed of course, chose not to tag along. Who could blame him – I’m busy during the day, the trip is short – just three nights – none of it is to his liking. Yes, I sailed through some time ago. On my way to Cuba – he tells me dismissively.
I need your manly companionship! I pleaded.
You’ll be fine. Find a good New York Jewish deli and have a good pickle on me.

So I’m in Miami Beach, at a tiny insignificant little hotel at the south end of things. (The conference hotel, even discounted for attendees, is more than I would ever spend.) There are children in the room next to mine and though I asked for a pleasant view, I got the trunk of a palm tree and someone’s bathroom windows just outside. I may move tomorrow, but probably not. It’s not as if it really matters.





I’m not used to writing unenthusiastic posts and so let me switch gears a little: flights were good, the public transportation from Miami International to South Beach is excellent and cheap, and the beach is just two blocks from my hotel.

Though I find Florida odd (it’s as if, when you move here, you accept the fact that you’re leaving life’s challenges and settling for something... bland), I do like oceans (yes, how obvious) and funky charm is always interesting. For a few minutes.  I find the Cuban presence fascinating and I look forward to eating authentic Cuban food.

I did that tonight, here.





Chicken, rice, beans.


Okay, tomorrow the sun will be out, I’ll wear two sweaters against the public space air conditioning and life will again look peachy pink.

For now, the pink and aqua are a vivid reminder why we no longer rave about pink and aqua.





From Miami Beach, where the air is humid and the waves threaten to drown the place if the ocean rises in the years ahead -- good night. Ed, don’t forget to water my geraniums if they dry out.

as I see it

It’s like this past winter, only warmer. One day it’s damp, blustery, the next day there’s brilliant sunshine, the next day it’s something else altogether. There is no stability to the weather these days. Every day is up for grabs.

Take Tuesday. Storms? Wind? Don’t know anything about that. A tad cool, but stunningly bright. And calm. Ed calls the fire department.
Any chance of getting a burn permit?
Sure!
Whoa! We’ve got piles upon piles to burn, to make way for the newly developing orchard!

Except, not so fast. Ed is still working on his taxes and I have my job to do. Good luck pal, I wave to Ed and scoot off on Rosie.

Oh oh. Rosie has no gas.

Suffer not the details of this morning with me. Suffice it to say that I am late for class. Three minutes. For me – an unpardonable teaching moment. (I am never, ever late.)

Rosie, you old girl, you weren’t even seriously out of gas! I should have known! You flash warnings when you’re half full! You little attention grabber you!


But, the day grows more interesting, more likable, pleasurable, -- in short, better.

I love my classes. I wont talk about how or why or what may have been the reason behind this, but I do want to note here that there are days when everything falls into place and you just love your work.

So there’s that.


After, Ed and I are primed to meet at Paul’s café, but we're both anxious to burn our honeysuckle and other comparable wood debris. A permit, after all! Who knows when another may be offered!

By the time I turn into the driveay, Ed is done with taxes (not really, but he thinks at that moment that he is done) and the fire is picking up force.





I want to help, but it's so hot, so very hot by the blaze. Remove layers, dig in your heals and start heaving. Pile limbs, put out spot fires, push branches onto the raging fire.







Brutal work. I remember burning branches for the Ice Age trail this winter. A fine job in the middle of the cold months. Less so now and especially when you worry (I worry) about embers flying away from under your control.

Hours later, the sun moves to a lower position, the fire dies down.





We plant another cherry (four to go!), heave dirt, remove boulders, throw water at the grasses around the dying blaze.


It's been a very very long day.

Kashi frozen dinners, chocolate covered raisins. Call it dinner, call it food without heart, but it is the way it is today.

Tomorrow – oh, tomorrow will be different. I promise that.

in the wind

I’m back in the car. Driving the red hot lover. Just to give you an idea – we started the day with mid fifties and proceeded downwards. I had an early morning appointment and I swear, in the time of the drive, I felt like I had gone from spring to something other than spring.

There have been wind warnings. Correct predictions this time.

When I was getting out of the car, the red hot lover’s door swung slightly out (the wind!) and touched the great big SUV in the parking space next to mine. The driver was enraged. We studied carefully his black monster car and, satisfied that I hadn’t ripped it to shreds, he stalked off.

The wind scattered branches everywhere. A ripped tree on Old Middleton Road. Bascom Hill littered. Here’s a photo, from my office window (because it’s Monday, I'm hiding here for the day). Picking up fallen twigs.






Gales and gusts. Heard at night, continuing through the morning.
Are you taking the tomatoes outdoors for their constitutional? – I ask Ed before I leave in the morning. It seems so cold...
They haven’t been out for two days now... Ah, restless tomatoes. Maybe for an hour?
Who knows how to treat this delicate set of veggie infants...


The winds blows the petals down from the old crab. Ed tells me – take a picture, it looks like snow! Well yes, maybe, but snow of any kind – petal or otherwise – in April, feels seasonally misplaced.


But pretty. In a windy and cold sort of way.






No trees planted today, no progress anywhere at all. Reheated supper foods, windows closed inside, waiting for the wind to die down.

storms

I'm waiting for storms to create the usual havoc. Ed says – don't fret,  the forecasters can’t get it right. Still, the air is warm and unsettled. And windy.

Hello, fire department.

Are you issuing burn permits today?

(Ha ha ha ha ha....) No.

So we wait for the storms.







When in the morning, the sky looks rather benign, we dig a hole for one more fruit tree – a cherry. We want to fool it into thinking it’s got a good home, with good soil. So we dig extra hard, extra deep. And of course, just as I decide the hole will do, I strike a boulder.

As one commenter pointed out, yard work, of the overly ambitious kind, can strip you silly of any last bit of energy.Yesterday I may have thought  -- nothing's impossible! Let's get it out! Today I think -- leave the damn rock alone. The tree goes in and what happens thereafter is out of my hands. Watch out for the boulder, roots! Make sure you make your way around it!



The stormy weather keeps us locked into a band of warm air. In the afternoon, Ed takes a book outside (because he has taxes to do). I sit with him at the picnic table and survey the perfectness of our spring flower mix.







Life is good. You have to think that. The spring colors tell you that any complaints are to be shelved for another time, another season.


Even as by evening (yes, not until then) the rains come. We have friends and family for Sunday dinner. I can certainly hear the howl off the wind outside, but by now my attention is on what's inside. On the food. On the company. You know. The important stuff.

ufff!

Three down, thirteen to go.

We’re at Paul’s café, stiffening into the comfortable couches. I am so appreciative of this place! For Paul and his fiancé, everyone’s special, everyone deserves a unique greeting, a send off, too. Everyone. Settle in... listen to the chatter... 

We may never get up and out of here. We’re that comfortable. And that tired.


The box of trees came this morning. Perfect timing, terrible timing. Ed hasn’t done his taxes, the weather is iffy tomorrow – all that.






On the other hand, there is this day and this day is a brilliant one, with a warmth to it that allows us to eat breakfast once again on the porch...





Breakfast with idle chatter.

Nina, why did you plant a flower so that we can’t open the porch door without knocking it down?

Because last year, when I did the planting here, there was no door to a porch. Not even much of a porch either.

How time has rearranged things for us! Several years ago, when I made occasional day trips to the farmette – these were years when Ed dutifully commuted to Madison to stay with me there – I had a half-assed approach to the land here. I liked it, I was overwhelmed by it. It seemed out of control, beyond his, mine, our capacities. And yet, I was tempted by it. Drawn by spaces that would profit by an interference. I scattered plants here and there, for impact value. I never thought I’d be here, that I would need a plan.







Of course, now I am here and our ambitions have grown. A flower bed to the north, to the west. A vegetable bed further out. And now, the biggest project of all – the tree garden.

We could not quite clear the land in time. Ed burned off some of the cut down timber, but most still remains there, along with rotten boards from a torn down shed and who knows what else. Our local fire department stopped issuing burn permits the day after Ed did his first bonfire. We’re stuck waiting until the rains provide some needed moisture.

Still, it’s an orchard, darn it, not a flower bed. We can do this! We can!

Ed takes out his ancient John Deere and hacks down most of the tall grasses and prairie growth.






We spot dig – places where the trees will go. Thirteen trees and, in a burst of optimism (it’s not the perfect soil for this), three blueberries. If they thrive, we’ll add more.





Each tree is carefully chosen – honeycrisp apples (three of them – they’re our favorites), moonglow pears, Anjou pears, and four separate varieties of sweet cherries – ones which can withstand our winters and our hugely imperfect soils.

Soils with boulders. Which I strain to dig up.






We’ve got awful clay here, the worst stuff for cherries, for pears too. I remember planting at my grandparents’ house in the village in Poland. So sandy that the water ran away when you poured from the watering can. [No hoses there, no running water – just a pond down the hill and yes, you had to go down, to fetch that pail (after pail after pail) of water...]

I’ve grown used to clay. In the suburban home where I grew perennials for years and years, the soil was perhaps even worse: compacted clay. Hard as concrete on dry days.

But what with the quack grass and the thick clay, digging at the farmette is painful.

We start off rather discouraged, but as I take to the digging routine, I grow more at ease with the prospects. And when our first tree goes in, I insist on a commemorative photo. It is, for me, a proud moment.





We have several such proud moments as we finish planting the apples. Three of them.

But tell me, when are we going to put in the rest?



At home, I rub some cream into my roughened hands. I purchased it at the market in Gargnano from the bee lady. A jar that caused me problems at the final airport security screening in Minneapolis.

It’s not a liquid, it’s congealed cream! Stiff as butter!

It’s a liquid. And it’s more than an ounce.

I didn’t think it was disallowed. In fact, neither the Milan or the Amsterdam airports had issues with it.

It’s a liquid. Is this your last security check?

Yes...

Okay, but next time – know that it’s considered a liquid.

The cream is a little bit lumpy. Home-made, with bee propolis and lemon. I love it because it is so imperfect, so simple and just barely fragrant.

Okay. My hands feel better, my arms haven’t stiffened yet. One more tree maybe. Two more...





...each doused with a bucket of water hauled in from the farmhouse (the hose, even in its longest form, doesn't reach this far).







We end it at seven trees (though we had to redo one so my arms say eight). Six left, plus three blueberries. I wont be terribly upset if it rains tomorrow and we have to pause.

 I mean, we need time off, so that we can again listen to the bees.

orange

Tonight I received a letter from the hotel in Gargnano. Valerio, the proprietor, wrote in the most delightful way, in Italian, thanking me for a review I’d put up on Tripadvisor (I am a senior reviewer there – every once in a while I come across a place that deserves words of support and so I'll write them). 

His email came at a good time. My notes here yesterday notwithstanding, it was a very busy end of week. And after all work details were attended to, I had to check in with a doc and after that proved to be a good and unproblematic visit, I exhaled.


But how?

Well, what with the Italian reminder of blissful times spent letting go of the day at sidewalk cafes where Aperol spritz blazed orange on most anyone’s table, I thought I may as well do it: buy that bottle of Aperol and make my own spritz here. In celebration of a day well spent. Or at least spent.

True, it wasn’t at a port-side table, no indeed, but I poured the drink on my Limone table...





 
...and then I carried it over to where Ed was hauling wood chips.

Nothing about the scene shouted Gargnano. Resting on a cool and dreary evening, in my old jacket, in fact, in my ex’s old jacket, against the backdrop of the old Ford pickup...







... I thought – no, not Gargnano. But home. And I have to say, an Aperol spriz tasted lovely here, at the farmette.

Thursday

Toward the end of the week, things slow down even more. It's a little tricky this particular week, because I have to teach late Friday (a makeup class), but still, I feel it in my soul -- I'm slowing down from the mad dash mentality I adopt for the other days. (My office neighbors would tell you that I am often seen rushing into my office, only to rush out again two minutes before class -- with time to pause to fill my cup with hot water for a chamomile tea bag before I enter the classroom. And I am never late.)

Yes, sure, these are stressful times. For the students as well. Today, we had dogs at the Law School – there for students to pat and make much of, in the hope of providing at least a momentary relief.






Slowing down. Somewhere in the back of my head I do recall how it works: you stop work for the day, maybe pause for an Aperol spriz, exchange a few words with a person who crosses your path, yes, I remember.



Work’s done, I rev up Rosie. To Paul’s café first. Ed and I will meet up there, it’ll be the transition from work to home life.

It’s a gorgeous day. A bright, bright day. Paul tells us – I’m going up in a friend’s airplane tonight. It’s so clear that they say we’ll be able to see Chicago from here.

I think about that as an ending to this fine day. Yes, good, I admit it, but I like mine better.






I turn down our road, Ed is closely behind.  And now we're home.

Another load of wood chips has made its way to the driveway and Ed is in the middle of spreading them in places where he wants to arrest quack grass.


It’s time to take out the last packets of seeds and finish sowing the raised beds. More lettuce, scallions, radishes.Our peas are coming up already. Our tomatoes are doing fine too.












A good evening. Every once in a while, we stop and take in the bees. We get them in our flowering giant and it is immensely gratifying to hear them up there in the crown of branches. And let me say that this great big flowering tree is no more and no less beautiful than the old willow behind it. They're all, right now, at their very best.






When the sun sinks lower, I go inside. I don’t have a dinner planned but it hardly matters. Salad, with fried eggs, some defrosted Trader Joe’s salmon. Chives over all of it. From the garden.

All that. Thursday. Getting toward the end of the week. Nice.

shifting to slow

Last year at this time, I was getting ready to move. The farmhouse wasn’t quite ready – renovations were ongoing until early May, but enough was completed and I wanted to be there.

It was a crazy month: the move (mostly done by us, to keep costs down), the end of a tough teaching semester, the sale of the condo, the ambitious preparation of flower beds for the planting season -- it all seems overwhelming now, in retrospect.

By comparison, this month this year is very calm.

Home, work – they fill the hours. A big decision for me now would be whether I should bike to work. And then whether I should turn back (and take the car) if it feels too cold.

Today it felt too cold. The arctic wind made me want to turn back and when I didn’t, my face solidified into something very stiff, so that when I met with students during office hours, I felt a tad constrained. As if I was speaking from behind something solid. Maybe a clay mold. A dried paper mache form. With a voice inside.

But the ride itself was (aside from the cold) stellar. Strong northerly wind, but bright skies.

The farmers to the east of us were working away. Tilling, always tilling. Breaking down the clay.





I pause to watch. No matter how pressed for time I am, I always want to stop, watch for a while, wave. They probably think I’m odd that way. They work. Work is work.



The day spins forward and before I know it it’s late and I’m pedaling home.
This evening, the return ride is exceptionally beautiful. Even at 6, the light is good, the air is at its warmest. Once I get home, I don’t want to go inside. Not just yet.

There’s so much that I could, that I should be doing now.





Consider the raspberry patch. A jungle of canes, some flourishing, some past the moment of compulsory retirement – all mixing well with weeds, thistle, creeping Charlie – in other words, a mess.

In the early years of hanging out with Ed, I’d come to the farmette and set my goals high: I’ll fix this patch, I’d say to him. And I would try. But never adequately, never so that it made any real difference.

These days, like Ed, I do as much as feels right. Never less, never more.

And when I am too tired to continue, I clip a few lilac branches and retreat to the farmhouse.






I seem to have left my faster pace behind when I moved here.

We should plant the next two rows of lettuces.

Makes sense...

Maybe after I clip a few canes.

Uh huh... I have some woodchips to distribute...

Yes you do...

But for now, there are the blossoms to admire. That takes time. Everything else can wait.

we have a plan

Across the road from us, a woman rents land and farms it as a truck farmer – growing things for the markets. She has six grown children. Her husband died last year, though I do not know how or why. You saw her here and here – I’ve paused numerous times to watch her. She works terribly hard and she has a most generous impulse – always handing me flowers, always with a smile (her English is just barely there).

She wants to farm the farmette’s acre. Veggies, flowers. She is always looking to expand, even though she has so much under her care now.







Ed’s acre is overgrown with weeds. We’ve hacked down the honeysuckle, but that’s only the beginning. It’s hellishly brutal land. Clay, with a dense network of aggressive roots. Still, she wants to farm it. And we like her.

So we have a plan: the higher portion of the land we’ll use for an orchard. The lower – we’ll let her take over if Dan, our man with the machinery, can remove enough of the roots so that she can proceed.

It’s a good use of the land.

In our own corner, we’ll plant fruit bearing trees and shrubs. We ordered thirteen trees today and six bushes. We’re very excited. I'm thinking -- unlike chickens and goats, you can leave a fruit garden alone for a while. I hear it can survive without your love and oversight for a week or two or three.






In the meantime, we're bracing for a night of cold. Good thing we haven't young trees to worry about. Not yet. But soon.

burning issues

Longtime readers of Ocean will remember various ideas I threw out as to what Ed and I would like to see for the acre of land at the farmette that lies behind the barn. We have talked about chickens roaming the land. Just a few. Pretty ones. Or goats. More recently – bee hives, maintained by serious bee keepers (not us). Tentatively – grape vines. Or give it over to forestland. Meaning – create a forest.

None of these ideas moved beyond the speculative phase.

But now, suddenly, we moved forward. And you could say today we really moved forward.

A not too distant neighbor who has big time farming machinery came by to assess the tilling possibility.






And, after receiving permission from the fire department to burn the chopped down honeysuckle branches scattered over the land, we set fire to them. Or rather Ed set fire to them.






He did the burning. Monday is a heavy teaching day for me and all I could offer was a quick early guarding of the blaze as he fetched extra buckets of water to contain the fire, should it spread. It really was a windy day.


A bright and beautiful windy day. A day when the blooms on the farmette were at their peak.






In the evening, I returned just as Ed was kicking the final branches into the dying fire.






What next? I’ll keep you posted. For now, I need to return to my work.

Easter Sunday

A week passes and it seems like I was taken off one game board and placed onto another. This coming Monday – one that follows a week at Gargnano and a week-end of family, surely isn’t going to be the same as any other previous Monday. Time, events, places, people push you forward and it’s your job to figure out how to make that next place a good one, benefited from what came before.

My places right now are good. And this Sunday was especially a good one.


My little girl and I put breakfast out on the lemon splattered farmhouse table. It was a lingering sort of breakfast – the best kind, in my opinion. The chives were from the garden.






After, Ed and she walked the farmette land. He talked about what we’re trying to do with the acre out back – our plans for it, our dilemmas. She seemed to take in the air out here in the best way – with deep inhales and wonderment at how beautiful it all is now, in these April weeks.

Ed settled in to replant our tomatoes.






She and I managed to squeeze in a walk. Past the fields that abut the farmette...






...down to the county park by Lake Waubesa. Ed and I skied here just a few months back, but now the trees are almost green – at their best in their nearly there state...






And, of course, there is Easter dinner. A simple meal, but on good days like this, I like simple foods. Complicated preparations belong to other times, other configurations.






At the end of it, I take berries, put ice cream over them , crumble meringues and dab them with mint. From the garden.






The most amazing thing this early April day is that I am able to already pull in things from the garden. Other amazing thing? Well, that a week ago, I was elsewhere and now I am here and it’s Easter and I can’t remember when the sky has been so radiantly blue on an Easter Sunday in Wisconsin.

Yes, tomorrow is Monday. My crazy work filled Monday. You'll get my usual brief post then. But for now, I'm still savoring the transition to that new game board. New and improved, benefited from what came before.