the familiar

I grin broadly and cozy up to Ed as we walk to dinner. 24/7! I tease him. You and I, in each other’s space! So cool!

I’m with a guy who not so many years ago was used to 24/7 alone in a sheep shed. Life. Go figure.

Earlier, we are sitting at the hotel Villa Emilia bar, not wanting to pass up the offered free drinks. [And I graciously accepted the free gifted bottle of wine someone brought to our room earlier... do you think they know I wrote them a good TripAdvisor review last year? – I ask Ed. We’re not used to hotels going so much out of their way to please. Or is it the economy? The desire to keep the few hardy travelers in their fold? Either way, it feels decadently grand to be pampered at a place that costs right now about as... the Holiday Inn Express in Sheboygan!] Tired from travel, happy to be in a familiar setting, we’re not in a hurry to walk the city tonight.

I watch the sweet bartender pour my drink of choice here – the deliciously effervescent Cava. I used to think of Champagne as the most perfect (and most expensive!) drink. Step aside, French bubbly. Spanish Cava’s value outshines Champagne’s delicacy. It would have to be a most extraordinary occasion for me to seek out a bottle of Champagne stuff these years.

We decide to forgo tapas for dinner. After all, Barcelona is reputed to be only the number two tapas capital of the world! We’ll be in the spot that holds top honors later on. (An Ocean commenter – a Barcelona traveler – offered some helpful tips for ordering tapas here. I read them after we’d already come back from dinner! Next time!)

Ed suggests the familiar small restaurant around the corner – La Clara. We loved it last year, we love it again this year. Waiting briefly for a table, I glance over at Ed and I think – he looks so good here in Spain!

Maybe it’s the finally trimmed beard. Or the un-torn t-shirt. Or maybe it’s that my eyes are glazed with that rosiness everyone tells me I carry when I’m traveling to places that I love. With my occasional traveling companion.

We both order the shrimp with the garlic, the tomato, the olive oil...

And the waiter reminds us that we are in Catalunya (note their own spelling here) and we should do as they do – have the grilled bread with the tomatoes... (And don’t forget the familiar Catalan Vichy – a fizzy water that Ed could drink endlessly, at every meal.)

For the second course, I cannot resist the carpaccio of beef and local aged cheese. It’s been months since I’ve had beef and in any case, this paper thin stuff is in a class by itself .

So ends our first evening in Catalan Spain. Excuse me, Catalunya. We have one more day on this side of the Pyrenees (if you rent vacation apartments, you’ll know that the starting date always has to be on a Saturday, so we’re not due in Sorede until then), but we’re leaving Barcelona Friday. It’s always less pricy when you get out of the big city. Besides, I’m anxious for a stroll along the water without the roar of traffic behind me.

And still, for a first night away, Barcelona is a joyous, welcoming old girl! And with her dedication to good eating late into the night, what’s there not to love!

up there

Airplane travel is like moving on a game board where someone else is rolling the dice. You’re just the pawn – you can put yourself on automatic and let the chips fall as they may. Sure, there are places for using your smarts. If your airport passport control line is long, you can switch to one that’s moving faster. You can watch a movie in flight or read a book – choosing the one that puts you to sleep seems like a good idea.

But for the most part you move when you’re told to move, you wait at all other times.

People complain so much about air travel and I find that fascinating. I’m more aligned with the person who wrote recently in some article or other that we should pause and consider the wonder of it all: up, 30,000 feet, up in the air, sitting back in a more or less comfortable chair, eating (in the case of this morning’s flight) and English muffin with grilled cheese and sipping tea, while someone else is doing the work of zipping you some 600 miles an hour, only you can’t really tell because it feels like you’re in your living room.

I mean, that’s just nothing short of incredible!

We had the usual little permutations. A complicated trip to Madison’s airport (it’s always a challenge to figure out a cheap way to get there given the awful public transportation to it), a short delay getting into Detroit, a long delay getting into Amsterdam, a frowning agent there as she spies my debatably within limits carryon, a bad sandwich here, a good snack there – all silly details of any day anywhere.

Except, it wasn’t just any day. Wednesday afternoon we’re at the farmette, watching deer scamper across the yard...

...Thursday afternoon we’re in Barcelona. Modern, old, beautiful, quirky, artsy Barcelona.

But let me not neglect to post this fantastic photo:

Fantastic, because I take it as we start our descent to Barcelona. The clouds of France part and I see right under us Sorede! It's always easy for me to recognize it. It's a small village, yes, but it stands alone, up against the hills that spill into the sea -- the end of the Pyrenee chain that separates France from Spain. (You can't actually spot Sorede proper in the photo -- the window view is to its east -- to the ten kilometers that separate it from the sea.)

I can't stop smiling. 

And now we're in the  Barcelona airport -- which is such a contrast to any other urban airport, because it always feels quiet. And shiny. 

A bus takes us to Barcelona. From the Plaza Espanya, where it drops us off, we walk (travel light!).

I’ve written previously about this crazy wonderful city, so maybe you remember that it is in Spain but it’s really Catalan. Spain is quaint in that it has these autonomous regions: Catalonia, bordering on France (and on the French side, by the eastern Pyrenees, people also regard themselves as being fiercely Catalan). Andalucía in the south (where we traveled this past winter). The Basque region on the Atlantic side (where “fiercely” takes on a whole other layer of significance; and by the way, that's where we'll be heading after Sorede). One country, many national identities.

And so here we are, boosting the Spanish economy so that our markets back home would quit crashing and eating away at our pension plans.

We’re staying at the same winner hotel that offers such good deals if you book ahead and prepay. The exchange rate between the Euro and the dollar is, for once, deliciously in our favor. So, hi again, Villa Emilia with the cool rooms that sometimes bend in odd directions (ask for a corner room!)...

...And with the free drinks at the bar, if you book from their website. And with the free coffee and pastries for everyone and believe me, more than anything right now, on this late late Thursday afternoon, I wast a cup of coffee.

Once again we’re spending only one night here. We’re impatient with big cities, especially early on when the desire to get close to village life is, for me at least, intense.

But, no one, not even Ed can argue that Barcelona has the great food. My oh my, does this city have the great food! And so you may be surprised to hear me say that I find it hard to eat here. Oh, I’m sure if you want to spend money and go to conventional restaurants, you would have no issue at all. But if you’re craving the tapas menu, you can find yourself staring at long lists of dishes that, on paper, mean nothing at all. If they’re translated, it’ll be from Catalan to Spanish. But so what, even if  one of you can read Spanish it’s still one huge mystery. Prawns this, eel that... Some tapas dishes come straight out of a can others are exquisite and freshly made that day, some are fried, some are in delicate sauces – most with the running theme of olive oil – it’s all so terribly confusing that you can walk away feeling either ecstatic or merely satisfied, vowing to come back, except next time you’ll be sure to order what the people at the other table were eating.

I’m writing this before we set out for dinner. I’ll let you know tomorrow if it all came together. We’ve been modestly lucky in the past. But I can even now write with confidence that it’s going to be a thrilling meal and the accompanying Cava will be delicious.

going going gone

A day of packing, keeping it light, very light, no tents, no inflatable canoes this year. Just the two of us, with now years of traveling together, knowing where to bend for the other, knowing how to think about our time together elsewhere.

We’ll be flying to Barcelona (in a roundabout way), the third June in a row now, then driving up north, with the goal of getting to Sorede, France by Saturday.

Sorede. Any longtime Ocean reader will remember it. This will be our third visit to this small Catalan village, stuck somewhere between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. Sorede – in the southern most part of the beautiful region of Languedoc-Roussillon.  Where Provence has been overrun with moneyed summer people, this piece of heaven is humbler. I have yet to spot a beautiful inn, certainly not in the deeper south and I don’t hear much about must-eat-there places.

In July and August -- the two French vacation months (and how grateful I am that the French all pile into their south-heading cars no sooner than June 30!), the towns dotting the sea here are chaotic. Full of holiday villages, carnival like playgrounds, cheap food, ponies to ride, boats to rent – it must be rather crazy and, depending on your inclinations, noisy and cramped. As I said, it’s a humbler piece of paradise.

But in June, ah, in June, this region is, to me, the closest I can get to perfect loveliness. Everything about it makes me smile.

And so we’ll be returning there for two weeks and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about it on the toughest weeks of the year.

After, we’re roaming a bit – without a car but with an agenda. But you’ll have to wait for that. I’ve said too much already.

In the meantime, we eat our oatmeal on the porch, we stock up on groceries, we run to fix my suddenly broken power strip (really!), we do laundry, we do all that I find so essential before leaving.

And my nephew and I pause for a final peanut butter and jam on the porch.

 

And we wave good bye to him, my sweet nephew (thanks, all who have offered to help – he may call on you yet!) and we take off.

and this is where...

I’m so used to taking friends to Poland. Show this, explain that.

I don’t think I have ever shown Madison to anyone.

You might say that I have, therefore, no friends living far and wide and wishing to travel to see me in my home town.

Maybe. Or, you could say that my friends discovered Madison before I did, though that would be hard, since I moved here in 1979. That’s 33 years ago.

So today I made a modest attempt to show my nephew Madison. Which is uniquely strange because he was actually born here. But, at the ripe age of one month, he was back in his home setting across the ocean.

So where do you go, what do you point out?

The Union Terrace?

Our lakes?

It’s not as if he’s just here for a few days. The goal is to show places he can come back to. Here’s the Capitol. So now you can come back and actually see the Capitol. Oh, and here is my office. It's not tourist worthy -- I just need to pick up some papers. But the campus! Ah, the beautiful, yet so empty campus! I'll spare you the photo. You get enough of those in the course of the school year.

After, we take the bikes out and spin around the various routes that he can take to go to place X, Y or Z. Ed and I lead him, of course, to Paul’s café, but our itinerary is broad: the library, the post office, the drugstore, grocery store...

Oh, but do we ever have the good bike paths here! My nephew tells me the countryside reminds him of Poland. I look up and I have to agree, even as I never before looked at it in this way. 

And then comes the reality of a week of good weather behind us and good weather ahead for him: the garden needs watering. Many buckets carted to the fruit orchard, a hose raised high to reach the tips and ends of flower beds. A several hour undertaking.

I feel it’s maybe a bit overwhelming, a huge imposition, a pain in the butt. But my nephew disagrees. Zen like, he tells me. You stand, water falls, very peaceful.

He and I think the same way.

In the evening I have a small harvest from our veggie garden to add to our supper.

So, the deer left something for us. Thank you, deer.

And speaking of animals, Isis is coming around. He avoids Ed (who messes with his wound), but he’s back to purring if I rub him long enough at his side. And he'll take the milk I pour for him. He’s one tough cat.

And that's a good thing.

hiding

Isis spent the day avoiding us. Ed says he’s harboring a grudge, I say he is in a dazed stupor, fighting off evil bacteria and his suddenly quite feeble state can only accommodate one set of issues at a time. (I always think that for Isis, people present issues: some good, some bad.)

And so he hides. I mean really hides.

My commenters are right to fret about his welfare. Last year, during our June away, we lost Ed’s other cat, Larry. Shy, quiet Larry. He was hit by a car. Our neighbor buried him. Isis doesn’t really go near the road anymore. But the countryside is full of creatures, hiding, waiting. You can see that Isis carries this knowledge always, daily. He looks, pauses and never rests unless he is high up or hidden, well protected. Buried in my flower beds, for example

Me, I’m methodically attending to things. I got many guffaws from my beloveds for writing out for my nephew a many many volume text on how to manage our farmhouse, our animal, our plants. Some would call me compulsive, but if you were spending a month mostly alone in a farmhouse, wouldn’t you want to know what product to use to wipe down the sink in the bathroom? And where to take the compost out? And how many hours it takes to water flower bed A, B & C? And what to do if Isis 'rings' your doorbell compulsively?

My nephew hasn’t been to the States for more than a dozen years. He splits his time now between Sweden and Poland in some fashion – I almost always see him when I travel to Warsaw.

He is ready for the challenge of moving around here only by bike (he doesn’t drive). At 29, he’s a spry and energetic guy and I imagine that even if he had to walk to the nearest store (some four or five miles away) he’d be fine.

I pick him up tonight at the airport – and we eat one of the typical no fuss suppers that are so pleasant to do in the summertime.

I tell him that one of the best ways to spend a late evening is to watch the bat show from the porch after sunset. They’re out now, our wonderful crew of bug eating bandits. They swoop and fly and are never outdone, not even by the fireflies who, too, are trying to do show stopping swirls and dips in the evening.

It truly is summertime. Lee, our farmer friend hides under both a hat and an umbrella as she harvests her fields. 

 

The sun is strong. No rain in the forecast for days on end. 

Even though it should hardly matter for us. We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.

runaway children

In the late afternoon, Ed comes in with a troubled look on his face. That’s rare. Ed doesn’t trouble easily.

It’s Isis, he tells me. He has an infected bruise on his ear.

We know how it happened. There is a new cat in the area. We’ve both seen him. The cat came onto the farmette and Isis defended his turf.

True, this is what cats do. But I’ve grown to know and appreciate Isis for his sweetness, for his fear of the attack, for his life prior to coming to the farmhouse. And then there's this: Isis is getting old. I should think he deserves to roam his turf without fear. Right now, he’s poised for war again. With the drooping shoulders of old age.

And it doesn’t help that Ed works to clean the infection in his wound. Isis is in pain and as soon as he can free himself of Ed's grasp, he takes off like a wildcat.

We don't see him again for the rest of the day.

Thinking back now -- our morning was so very delightful! The three of us – my girl, Ed and I, have our usual breakfast on the porch (and yes, to Bex, my commenter here, I eat oatmeal nearly every day: with fresh fruits and acacia honey and a cappuccino... can you think of a better breakfast?)...

And then the clock begins its accelerated run through the hours. My girl is to leave in the afternoon and suddenly there's hardly enough time... to eat, to walk, to talk, to exchange this, fix that...

She and I take a country walk...

... and I want a nice one, a special one for my urban child and if I had thought straight, I would have realized that walking on a Sunday afternoon along the road that leads to the boat ramp at the lake is a dumb idea. Country road – yes. Peaceful? Forget it. Cars and trucks with boats roar by and isn't it the case that if you want everything to be exactly perfect, you'll find that life teaches you that this cannot be so.

And so she left and of course, that’s always a drag. Kids take off, parents feel wistful and the farmhouse feels suddenly awfully quiet.

We work outside some, Ed and I. 

 

It’s so lush right now!

I know you come to expect these photos of green everything, but please, try to remember back to March. And now look again, at this:

Ed continues to plant the last of the tomatoes.

We have now perhaps one hundred tomatoes, growing, some thriving, some thinking about whether life is worth living, scattered in odd places all over the farmette. I'm thinking they are like very young children: who knows what will become of them!

By evening, Isis still had not returned. I have my Neosporin ready for him (Isis, pain killer! Come on Isis! Where are you Isis?)... Nothing.

As I walk back to the farmhouse, I think to look in the garage. Yes. We have managed to lock him inside (to our credit, when we called for him there earlier, he chose to hide and keep quiet).

Ed breaths a sigh of relief. The Neosporin is applied and of course, the act of medicating him causes him to run off again.

Not for long though. I’ve come to know that your kids’ll come back if you keep the door cracked open – just enough.  So they know there’s a lighted room waiting for them.

June song

It’s a bouncy fa la la la la, la la la la kind of a day with maybe a hint of the Polovtsian Dances and a splash of (maybe Dali’s?) dance of the flower maidens thrown in for good measure. A prance and dance below puffy clouds that only once every many minutes cover the bright, bright sun.

We have breakfast on the porch and I linger over it so long that the oatmeal gets lumpy and stiff. Ed and my girl laugh at me. It’s good to hear their chortles.

I look out at the garden before us. We'll just miss the early coreopsis and the June daylilies. Phlox, too, is going to be lost for us. Last night the animal population (and Ed reminds me that I should add rabbits to our core dining club) came out and evenly cropped all my phlox so that I have nothing but stubble – like a green bearded man who hasn’t shaved for a while. (Ed, you need to have that beard trimmed before we leave!) So it goes.

My girl and I go to the market on the Square. 

It’s not just a lovely market on a sunny day, it is a market filled with kids and dairy themes and it extends beyond the square to accommodate all the June fuss that we have before us. Here's a group of little ones doing... yoga.

...and a group of big ones grilling cheese sandwiches.

We stroll and pick up just a few things – not too much, not too much... All beautiful at this time when there are no frustrations, none at all, just the prettiness of an idyllic moment.

And after – it’s shearing time. Ed sets off for his beard trim, my girl and I set off to shop and windowshop and days like this tend to fly so quickly, but that’s fine because each hour, (even the evening hour) is pleasant.

 Ed and I continue the shearing theme – he takes out his old tractor and goes after the month-high grass, then out come the pruners and down come the dry, spent limbs, I go after tall grasses, whack away, let it all come down...

Well, not all, not even a tiny fraction. Far far more remains to be done, or not done.  We work at it because we like it – no other reason than that. And then we put down the tools and sit back for a while – out on the porch, grilling, on the beautiful new cheap, cheap, yes, how about that, cheaper than a Weber, cheap and gorgeous grill – how could we not grill, one last time before we leave?

Chicken in mustard, corn, and a summer salad – need to use those peas because, guess what, our vines are now bearing pea pods too!

And then the day ends. A perfectly beautiful June face of a day.

June day

I’m so frustrated! Ed, listen to my ten points of frustration!

It's early in the evening and by coincidence, we're pulling into the driveway on our motorbikes at the same time. He had his work errands, I had mine and now here we are, except I just want to unleash the torrent, just for a minute...

Except that you can never really expect sympathy from Ed for the inconsequential irritants in life. He’ll give you that look that asks – really? And this made you upset? Incredible... And so as I glide from point one, to point two, to point three (and so I invested my quarterly savings – my piddly thousand, just before the market REALLY plummeted!), to point four (and then the eye doctor said that what with glaucoma in my family I should have my eye photographed.... no no no, I did not have it done, because, guess what, they don’t have that capability at my doctor’s office and I ask you, why go there then if it means that you have to make two more appointments this summer to pull it all together and you know, there’s nothing even wrong with my eyes!), to point number five (and the administrative assistant hadn’t given me all the exams to grade and so I still have one to read!), and so on...

Let’s go inside and eat.

Neither of us had had much of anything today. Fixing food is a good antidote to frustration.

Eh, but life is good. The flowers in the various beds are just emerging and they look strong and healthy...


 


... (as opposed to the veggies – they look severely chomped). I’m tired, yes, I’m tired but that is so completely my own fault.

...Because last night, I got an email from the school of my childhood in New York. UNIS (the United Nations International School, where I was a student for six very young years).

The email told me that I could see this year's graduation ceremonies on the UN website. There’s a link – click and watch!

I click and watch. Eventually Ed joins me. We spend several past-midnight-hours listening to kids we never heard of make speeches, play musical instruments, smiling as they march up to receive a diploma.

Why are we so mesmerized by this? It could have been any school, any group of eager camera-toting parents, anyone’s speech, no better no worse than countless others given this month across the country.

But it was my school, and as I watch I have to let myself wonder  – what would it have been like had I stayed? And graduated from there? A UNIS grad, rather than one from the Lycee of General Studies in Warsaw, named after the Polish writer Zmichowska?

The students’ names are called, one by one they walk up, all 116 of them, the girls in such high heals, the boys in suits. Boring, right? (A redeeming feature – the graduation was in the General Assembly, so it felt very UN-ish.) No, not boring at all. For whatever odd reason, we are drawn right in.

And so today I’m tired. On my way to town, I pause and watch Lee work in her fields. She’s helped by her daughter and her son in law. Her grandchildren are there as well, eerily bopping into view, then disappearing in the rows of pea stalks.

Lee gives me a bag full of peas and so now we have our supper. 

 (By comparison, our own pea plants are daintily small. Singularly pretty. Singularly.)

And after – well now, here’s the good part: my little girl alights from the Chicago bus. Here for just two days, but I’m not complaining, no not at all.

And did I mention that the colors in the garden are becoming more intense? They are. Welcome to June. The pretty month.

end of the month

With all this unallocated time, you’d think I’d be out, running, biking, boating, flying. Exuberantly.

Well now, consider this day: a fool’s last day of May. The thermometer never passed 50. The furnace has long retired into seasonal hibernation, my woolies are folded, washed. What is this – northern Europe? (I remember many such weather surprises in the course of a Polish summer... In fact, didn’t I buy woolen caps for my daughters the first time they traveled to Poland in July?)

a chilly afternoon market

So I mostly stay indoors. Ed tells me – get under the quilt!

No no. I have a mental separation as to what is daytime furniture and what is nighttime stuff. Beds and quilts belong to the latter.

In the afternoon, I go to Paul’s. Perfect biking weather, you might say. Really? You can bike in this kind of chill when you’re at the tail end of winter. On the cusp of June, you expect better.

At least at Paul’s the heater’s running.

There’s much to be done in the time and space just before us. In five days we leave and I’m one of those weary persons who likes to tie all the knots before moving on to the next stage. An annoying trait, I know. Ed says – it must be hard being you!

In the evening we begin the task of clearing all foods out. Eating leftover this, leftover that. Asparagus from last week, brats from last week, locally grown and pickled sauerkraut, leftover wine, leftover days of May that flaunt their unusual cold demeanor in my face, maybe to get back at me for once complaining that May was too picture perfect.

cooking with leftovers

eating in a chilly farmhouse

No need to water the plants. It rained all night. Perfect time though to use the grass cutting shears we picked up last Sunday at Farm & Fleet.

Let me tell you, standing on a warm sunny evening with hose extended is much more fun than hacking away in the cold at waist high grass that has invaded everything.

June, please do better.

the sour cherries in the old orchard are ripening!

farm guests

A longtime reader of Ocean, one whom I never met but consider, through our Internet communications, to be a dear friend, asked for a photo today of a feast. Dear Lili! How I would love to please you! But I couldn’t do it! Let me explain, in three points:

1.     Comings and Goings

Now starts a week of departures and arrivals and then more departures and arrivals. My daughter and her guy left Madison today and between our various travels, I wont see them again ‘til mid July. With a desire to be helpful I threw out an offer to take them to the airport.

Thanks, mom! That’ll be wonderful!

Okay then! What time?

Well, the flight leaves at 7:20 am.

Enough said. This, after a night of listening to an old computer (these days used by Ed in random places) cry all night. Have you got a crier? We do. It whines and moans and even closing the lid wont quiet it down. Ed sleeps through it, I do not.

climbing sleepily into the car, I caught the sunrise

On the subject of comings and goings – in a couple of days my younger girl will come for a quick visit, and then, immediately after, my nephew comes down to house-sit for us. Most people would think that it's appropriate to have someone local do their cat and garden care in their absence. Not me – I want my nephew. The one who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. More on that later.

And of course, farmhouse sitting means that Ed and I are leaving. But not until next week. More on that later too.

2.     Exams and work in general.

The (set by me) goal was to be done with all school work by noon today. Sluggishness slowed me down. I was half an hour late -- done by 12:30! A few administrative do-dads and by 2:30 I am free!!

Sort of.

The house is disorganized (according to me). There is no food worth cooking. Ed has his evening bike ride tonight and so cooking for me, just me, seems – eh, not such a worthy goal. Even if there was food. Which, again, there's not.

In my first free hours, I turn to the essentials: pulling out a few weeds and finishing the interrupted Google calendar.

So no, dear Lili, it was not a good time to cook.

3.     There is always an upside

Here’s mine. Or ours. Or just out there, an upside:

I’m loading exam grades onto the Law School website. For many reasons, this task requires utmost concentration. And I hear the motion sensor doorbell ring. Almost always this is because Isis wants to come in. Sometimes it's because the chipmunks are frolicking nearby.

Ed, I cannot be interrupted. I say this and continue loading. The sensor bell rings again. And again.

Ed, I cannot deal with Isis right now. You deal with Isis (there’s that “he’s your cat” tone in my voice).

Ed gets up and goes to the door. Nina, come look at your “chipmunk!”

We have a visitor. Probably a repeat visitor. That would explain the utter devastation of one lettuce bed. Forget the chipmunks – we have all of nature living in our backyard!

Well what are you gonna do... Dis-invite them? Nah...  Continue forward, as best as you can.

I live in the countryside and the countryside lives with me here. And that is, for the most part, a very good thing.

I hope, dear Lili, your eyes are fine after surgery. I do. In case they’re a little fuzzy still, here’s an easy close up of our beautiful guest.

Much better than the photo I could have offered of our reheated Chinese takeout, I promise.

(She was gone in a blur of movement. Not your vision, my friend, no -- just her rapid saunter.)

final run

Unless something untoward happens, I’ll be done grading by tomorrow. By noon, I say, by noon!

I’m giddy at the prospect. I worked today against all odds (from Ed: Nina, do you want to set up a Google calendar? – he has no shame...).

As usual, I needed to take my work from one spot to the next. You can never grade too many exams in a single setting. You want to keep each person’s answers compartmentalized, distinguished, clear in your head. When, like me, you have well over a hundred exams and papers to grade each semester, this is the ultimate challenge.

So my day is one of long periods of concentration and short breaks.

Of the type where I go out and note that things are topsy turvy out there, needing my attention... Sorry, not today, not today...

And later, in the afternoon, I trot out to our new orchard, to watch Ed plant more of our odd assortment of started-from-seed tomatoes. Isis is our buddy, our loyal companion.

You know why these tomatoes are doing so much better here than the ones in your vegetable bed?

Yes, there's no shade: they have twice the sun hours here.

And what else?

I know not to take this further. Ed has a scientific curiosity to him that is sometimes best left alone. So long as it causes no harm, I'll let him study the soils and deliberate on improvements without interference. 

We are, this spring, in a season of butterflies. Just like some years mosquitoes have ruled the summer months, so too, this spring, we have had more than our fair share of these beautiful bugs:

And so I watch them, admire them, smile at them...

And then I return for the final push, the final big work effort before tomorrow, noon, when, if all goes well, summer will officially begin for me.