farm

I suppose some could say that my constant reference to the farm (or 'farmette,' because it’s a small amount of land) is misleading. Ed and I, after all, do not farm. I remember when I lived with my grandparents in a village in Poland: it was surrounded by farmland, but there, too, I didn’t live on a working farm. My grandma could whack off the head of a chicken and pluck the bird clean for dinner. She’d grow vegetables and my grandpa would tend to fruit trees – but still, they did not make a living off their land.

We are like that. Okay – I wont behead a chicken for Sunday supper, but we try our best at growing fruits and veggies, there is land and, well, everyone around us farms.

So I’ll stay with my statement – we live on a (once working) farm.

It took me many years to decide that this shift toward farmette living would be a good idea. I know that more acres means more land to tend to. I didn’t want it to consume my free time.

When I agreed to move out here, I promised myself I'd concentrate on caring for the land right by the farmhouse. The rest? Forget it. I'll turn my head and look the other way. There’s too much to do in life...

So here I am at the farmette and I am so sucked into every acre and it takes so many of my waking hours – the beetle chasing, the watering, the planting, digging, worrying – where has all my free time gone???

But there is something to add  here (and perhaps I knew all along that this would be the case): I love it. I love being preoccupied with it, I love not being able to walk from point A to point B without a three hour pause to deadhead, straighten, improve, or maybe not improve – maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing, hell, I may have country blood, but it's Polish country, not of the Midwest at all and certainly Ed's roots aren't from here either, but we love it, I love it, yes, it's so true -- I love it all.

Ed joins me most every time I work outdoors. He’ll heave away prickly canes and chop and dig and sometimes he’ll just work on the car, the old Escort and oftentimes Isis will be there as well, walkin' around as if he owned the place. Which he sort of does...

So, living on the farmette digs into my writing time. Is that okay? Is it???

Yes, quite okay. I've done ten things at once before, I can do ten things at once henceforth.

In the morning, we clip, shake, contemplate what should be next for the veggie bed (that turned out to be a troubled veggie bed).

As I snip away at dried rose bushes, I notice hovering wasps.

Ed, take a look at your pick-up. Don’t even try to fill it with gas.

Let it be. They always find a spot on the truck for a nest. They’ll just make a new one elsewhere if we knock this one down.

Later, at Farm and Fleet, we pick up a small shovel because the ancient one finally snapped at the handle. And red duct tape: the one that acted as the “fender” on the Ford Escort has succumbed to the elements. It needs to be replaced. And a few plants.

Farm and Fleet is a scant few miles from us. We take the usual route to get there. Past fields, past fields, past more fields. But this time, the fields are hardly empty.

A flock of sandhill cranes (with wild turkeys keeping tabs on things in the rear). When they see us...



 



... one starts the call and soon they walk briskly, away, eventually breaking into flight, across fields of ripening corn.

A quarter of a mile further, we pass the pig farm that puts bacon on the table at select places in the Midwest.

The pigs here look huge and not too entertained by their surroundings. You stop craving bacon when you pass their pen.

And less than a mile later, we curve down a road and come across this...

I think at first it's one deer, but it's not.

They see me. A pause and a quiet walk away, into the fields of tall prairie grasses.

When we finish our errands at Farm and Fleet, we take the off-highway road back. And I'm surprised to see a farmer's market along the way (the Monona Market, for those who live in these parts). I'm all stocked up with fruits and vegetables, but I do pick up herbs -- a stop gap filler for our veggie plot. We stroll past one vendor and another and we come across this kid selling things made out of duct tape.





Funny, we were just reading about people who make a hobby of duck tape designs. I grin at the display. I want to encourage the kid, but I just don't need a duct tape wallet right now. Maybe next time.

A blue grass player sings to the side...


 


... further down, a vendor talks up her project of soaps, crafted from goats' milk...

I think surely my own project will somehow move ahead, despite all the distractions which, truthfully, aren't bothersome distractions at all. They are the eloquent parts of the everyday.


And because it's Sunday, my girl and her guy come over for dinner, up the brick walkway to the farmhouse...


 


... and we sit around the table and talk about stories we've read, foods we've eaten...

growing things

With adult children, sometimes days and weeks pass and I can't really tell you where they are and what they're doing.  Other times, one or both will be in and around my world and I get to feel their energy and zest up close, as if they still lived with me and woke up to the same meals that I do.  

This week-end the older girl and I did some usual and unusual spins together: first, around the market. Yes, that's common for us. (How can you not buy from the farming families in these days of such stressful growing conditions?)

And, my girl and I biked around the city, completing that twenty mile loop that we love to do every now and then.

She tells me we somehow always hit this bike trail in prime blooming time - when the prairie flowers are at their best. Maybe. It surely looks as if this year, we come at a time of prairie magic. (Can you tell that I don't always pause to take a photo?)

I leave her downtown and continue along the path that now borders one of our big lakes. Where fishermen still reel in a good number of... bluegill (that's a guess on my part) on a hot summer afternoon.

And then it's back to the prairie fields for me. With the gay feather and the black eyed girls and the lacy Queen Ann.

And speaking of blooms, this, too, is the day for me to continue to mend and fix the flower beds at the farmette. While Ed patiently works on repairing my car  (Ed, please be careful! That thing looks like it's about to roll on top of you! Mmmm, yes gorgeous...), I patiently repair the heat damage in the yard. Oh, I can't get it to be as it would have been without the endless blast of hot, hot air, but I can do a lot to make it feel abundantly lush again. Untamed, verdant. Like this:

So that it is once again a pleasure to walk up the brick path...

Or to step back and regard the whole farmhouse face on, in the last warm rays of the setting sun.

It's very late when we finally throw up the shovels, hoses and (in Ed's case) wrenches. Very late.

the quiet day

We’ve been shaking beetles from the wild roses that grow so abundantly here at the farmette (well, they grow abundantly when there isn’t a drought and a heat wave). Down they go (if our aim is good) into a dish with soapy water.

Typically Ed leaves bugs, all bugs, even annoying wasps alone. But the beetles can make a ghost out of a bush pretty quickly and they have the audacity to do it in pairs, often seeming to be copulating at the same time that they’re devouring the newest growth. Sort of like having your cake and eating it during sex. Enough already! Leave these stressed plants alone. Plop. Another pair hits the soapy water. Ed says we’re exercising the Amygdala of our brain. Fine. So long as we're flicking off beetles.

So many of our plants rebounded with the rains and cooling temps. Unfortunately the meteorological down swing lasted less than one day. We’re picking up the degrees now quickly, too quickly. As fast as as plopping beetles into what is becoming beetle porridge. Last I checked it was 83 outside. Tomorrow it’s supposed to go to 96. By Monday – 103. Short-lived joy. The drought continues.

And still, it was a beautiful morning. The kind with blue skies and blue dishes with blueberries on the porch table, which has a blue tablecloth.

Like the rest of the country, I read the news of the day and of course, that surely puts a stop to those beautiful feelings of peace and quiet and summertime contenment. It’s impossible to be happy when others are so deeply hurting. Ed reminds me that we are a less violent society than we were decades or centuries ago and I know he is correct and yet on days like this, it’s hard to believe that this is the case.

We walk to inspect the tomatoes out back. Isis joins us in what is a favorite stroll for us. Bounty indeed. They’re doing well back there. Watching tomatoes grow is very reassuring.

(The peaches are coming along as well. Here, take a look.)

Today I also replace spent flowers along the brick walk leading to our door. The lilies bloomed and withered in the heat (they’ll be back next year) and they have been further insulted by a deer who, in our absence, took to nesting in their midst, as if it were merely a bed created for the buck’s pleasure.

At Johannsen’s Greenhouse most everything is sold and gone and what's left is discounted. That’s good. A few sunflowers, zinnias, sweet smelling alyssum – things that will not shrivel against the bracing heat.

We bike to Paul’s again. There,  Ed sleeps, I write and after, on our way back, we hit the tennis courts again. I neglected to take my tennies (well, hiking shoes) and so I play in sandals which is both amusing and awkward. But I’m getting better or Ed is getting worse or maybe we’re just getting to be slightly more like the other, which doesn’t surprise me at all. Eating same foods, moving along similar paths does that to people.

In the evening I reheat our chicken soup and I make an Aperol spritz – with a slice of orange for added zest.

There’s a reason to  read and write about these trivial elements of the everyday: they are what makes life grand. Better than grand.

Sigh...

...with you tonight

(Morning. Writing on the porch.)

Yesterday I was taking out groceries at the checkout counter in Whole Foods. I lined up next to a  certain cashier – one that I like. He’s my age, with a pony tail of graying hair. He’s not too friendly and I like that too. No bubbles and smiles. It’s grim when you watch the totals add up at the register. Not a time for small talk and chuckles.

Whole Foods lets those who work there pick their music and this time I recognize the song playing over their sound system. I sing it to myself as I put out my groceries. Peaches, carrots, lettuce... just hold me close, don’t ever let me go... chicken, cherries, cheese...please go all the way, it feels so right...

Singing that out loud is almost like acting out an orgasm at Katz’ Deli in the "When Harry Meets Sally" movie. It’s a very suggestive little ditty.

But this is not what flashes through my mind. I'm thinking, instead, about days when this played on the radio, again and again. It was July 1972 and I was a nanny in New York. I’d finally gotten my driver’s license -- having taken a lesson or two from one of those outfits that advertised on the back of a book of matches.  American highways were new and exhilarating and somewhat frightening to me, but my charge had lessons and it had to be done and very quickly it became second nature to turn on the radio, roll down the windows and join the stream of cars, while the songs played on.

The seller at Whole Foods comments – you know the lyrics, but do you remember who sang it?

I don’t.

Think of a fruit. One that you didn’t buy.

Raspberries!
You got it.

Those kinds of inserts into a day – a song maybe, a fragrance sometimes – send me spinning. It’s not hard then to put yourself into your nineteen year old head. Sometimes when I think about things I did then, I’ll shake my head and mumble  – what was I thinking! At other times, like this time, I just smile gently at the recollection. 

When you’re nineteen you pretty much believe you’ve got a lot of life figured out already. Oh, there are the questions – will I marry, who will I marry, where will I live, what will my job be, will I travel? Will I travel?? But the basics – who you are and how you relate to the world – that stuff seems clear (before it becomes cloudy again, but that comes later – a life’s surprise: you never really know who you are until the next set of issues comes along, and then the next one after that, and so on).

So here I am in line, thinking back to the music played loud in the car – a yellow convertible no less – my charge’s mom liked to zip around in it during the summer months – and I remember the pleasure of hearing these songs and, too, the deep sadness, because so far, love for me had been a big waste of time. At nineteen, I was quickly losing hope. It feels so right, being with you tonight...That was someone else's lyric, not mine.

Ed and I play tennis this afternoon. (Here we are, biking to the courts.)

 

It’s been a while and so of course I’m terrible and he’s okay, but the good side to this inequality is that I chase more balls and get the better workout.

Other highlights – I’m downtown this evening, eating dinner with my daughter (the one who is getting married in exactly two months and three days).

The skies are gray all day and it’s cool outside. I miss the heat even as I know that this is not a sentiment shared by most here in the Midwest. Most certainly, I’m thrilled that the change in weather is an uplift for the farmers.

Hi Lee! Rain! -- I shout as I pedal past our resident farmer.

Yes! Yes!!

That says it all.

thunderous change

As a kid, I wasn’t as fastidious and ‘tidy’ as I tend to be right now. But every once in a while, any disorder would get to me and I would dump all my personal belongings – all those Nancy Drews and Bobbsey Twins,  scraps of paper paper, puzzles, Archie comic books, all that, right in the middle of the floor, in an effort to restore order: after the great spill, I would carefully, meticulously replace each item onto the little blue and white bookshelf that I had to store all my belongings.

Maybe I haven’t changed much since those years. Before each semester, I enter my wee office on campus and dump stacks of papers onto the floor in an attempt to eventually set things straight again.

And here I am now on Ocean, needing to shake those quilts out a bit as well.

Today I take on the sidebar. There'd been a lot of sentimental mention of blogs that once listed Ocean as a friend. Oftentimes the blogs would stay dormant for months, years even and yet I hadn't the heart to cross them off. If someone listed Ocean as a favorite, I kept them here, no matter what. An Ocean friend for life!

But it's time for an honest review of what's there and, too, of who is still writing and what I'm still  reading. The truth is, just about the only blog that I will follow til death do us part is one that falls into the category of what we bloggers once referred to as “story blogs” – places where people wrote because they cared deeply about putting something up.

And the subject that attracts me most is the depiction of the everyday. Through some combination of photos and words, posted with care and with some regularity. This is what I love to read and this is what I'd like to list here. Maybe the list will grow. Know of a good story blogger?

And so I've thrown things on the floor and picked them up again. Fresh, honest and ordered!

 

In other news – a wave of storms pushed through (quickly, violently) this morning. Rainwater ran on the surface of parched earth, but I had to believe it had an impact. Surely even just a quarter of an inch mattered!

And then, lo, in the evening the storms came at us again. No, they didn’t offer the steady drizzle of an English country rain – the type that makes flower grow and poets hunker down and do their craft, but still, we had rain!

Change. Thunderous wonderful change. I leave you with a visitor who stayed a while on the overly tall Monarda plant by the farmhouse door and then flew away, just as the rains came.

And, too, a quick look at the fields to the east,  across the road from us. The clouds are just rolling in. We all wait, hoping for some good, sustaining rains.

And dinner? Well, in honor of the dampness outside, I cooked up a chicken inside: a good old fashioned home made chicken soup. Not with noodles, but with corn. In honor of summer -- you know, that season that delivers plenty of sunshine and also the occasional much needed rain.

the same but different

1.     custom

No, we do not max out at 100 degrees today, not that. It is, instead, 105 when we set out to bike to Paul’s café.

A commenter was surprised that we would want to bike in this heat. I suppose there is a bit of lethargy that comes with high temps outside. And yet, this is exactly what pushes us outdoors, too, so that we may challenge ourselves to go beyond the "comfortable."

But I should also say that, except for when we hit the hills, the heat isn’t nearly as unpleasant as it would be were we to, say, take a little walk. And if we go fast, the breeze picks up, so that we sweat, sure, that, but in a cool sort of way.

And did I mention how delightful it is to bike in skirts?

Ed asks – why do women have to wear shirts on top?

Because of custom, because they want to, or because they don’t want to but also don’t want to get arrested.

How can that be? Inequality!

Inequality is not legally objectionable if it responds to different biological imperatives, so say our courts, after all.

We continue biking.

2.     custom, revisited

Early, very early, Ed asks – are you asleep?

(Yes, we do that to each other when we’re anxious to share something.)

Not anymore.

I want you to see this clip I’ve been watching on Hulu. You’ll like it.

It’s an hour long thing, but I get hooked. There are five separate stories of people who find love (or, in most cases they find it) on line. So you think  -- ho hum, predictable. Happens all the time.

Still, I find two of the stories especially touching -- the first (the Czech one) and the last (the Avitar one). To me, they are a vivid demonstration of this simple truth – that there are many conventional paths to happiness but there are just as many unconventional paths to happiness and sometimes those less conventional (and therefore more adventurous) ones may raise eyebrows, but so what – they are oftentimes the most rewarding.

I wont spoil it for you – watch it if you have the time.

Of course, I had to think back to the days when I first started posting here, on Ocean – when so many people thought this whole concept of my daily Internet blogging was odd. As if I'm giving great significance to my very average life (I'm not), as if I believed that anything I had to say was important (it isn’t -- that's not the point). 

Just a few years later I met Ed and the Internet was absolutely central to that encounter as well. Ed is not custom bound and when we met, I, too, scorned much of what was dictated by custom. And so we proceeded in our own way and to this day, if I want to inspire horror in him, I’ll tell Ed he’s behaving like an old married man.

Ed will say – custom, culture – they’re a way to say no to people.

I don’t really agree. Ignore imperatives and you have yourself some beautiful customs to pick and choose from. I have had a Christmas tree most every year, even as I never go to church (or at least not for reasons of religion). It is customary to kiss a loved one when you greet her or say good bye (unless you’re with Ed and then it’s customary to do neither). Custom doesn’t (necessarily) punish or keep people out.

We come back to this topic again and again. It is our custom to do so.

3.     no rain in sight

I cannot take pictures of the farmlands around us. Mostly, the truck farmers don’t come to work the fields on these hot days. Nothing’s thriving. Not even the weeds.

At the famette, I continue to start and end each day with a hose in hand. In some cases, it helps, in many, it barely makes a difference.

4.     mysterious entrance

In the late afternoon, we find a little bird with a still open beak flapping inside the porch. How did he get there? We look for cracks, pores, openings – but find none. 

Maybe you let him in when you entered today?
I did not enter the porch today at all.

Neither did I.

Did he use the cat door?

Eventually we chase him out.

5.     dinner

Frozen lasagna. And believe me, it’s all I can do to put it in the microwave. Frozen seemed just fine. Did I tell you that we hit 105 today?

6.     rain in sight

At 8 p.m. it rained. I mean, not deep, meaningful rain I suppose, but I had my dance of utter joy. For the possibilities. And the hope.

100

Yeah, I like round numbers. Consider these:

100 days ago, the temperature outside, on the front porch, was 50.

100 hours from now I’ll be 59 and 3 months old.

100. Will we be having 100 days of summer? Of dry earth and thirsty bushes and trees?

We bike to Paul’s just as it hits 100 degrees.

Biking behind me, Ed shouts – you look like a character from Alice in Wonderland, billowing ahead. (The reference is, I’m sure, to my poofy sundress.)

Picture worthy?
I think so.

I’ll stop.

No, I want it from the seat of my bike.

Here it is:

Inside that envelope of fabric, there is at least a breeze, not a cool breeze, but still, a movement of air and for the minute that we coast down a hill it almost feels normal. Then we slow down and it is hot again. Parched and dry, hot, hot, hot. 100 degrees hot.

we few...

96 today, 99 tomorrow and the next day. A weather pattern that’s stuck. I can’t look the truck farmers in the eye. Each day, I feel their heaviness.

Our garden is surviving. Not thriving maybe, but getting by. Each morning, we think strategically where to run water. Who will benefit most? Who will welcome the relief from the endless waves of hot air?

In the afternoon, we consider an outing (at the very least, moving beyond the confines of the cool farmhouse), but somehow we cannot work up great enthusiasm of it.

...until Ed says – want to go swimming in a quarry?

Say what?

I used to swim in a hole east of here – he tells me.

Hole?
Well, you take the road east, get out of the car at the railroad tracks, walk alongside them for a while, turn in and you’ll come across these... holes with water. Once quarries. Maybe.

I have lived in Madison since 1979 and I’d never heard of these. I’m skeptical.

Devil’s Lake had warm water and parasites. And Devil’s Lake is deep! Why would these 'holes' be even safe for the likes of you and me?

We can go look.

Yes, I’m game for that.

Twenty minutes later, we park the car, by railroad tracks, there, just as Ed had remembered them...

We follow along. Five minutes, ten, twenty... I think we may have missed it, Ed mumbles. 

But we keep going. 

I mean – I know we are relying on Ed’s hazy recollection of some watering hole here decades ago, but still, you can't just let go of an idea when you've gone this far.

We find a path!

No, it's a bust. It leads nowhere.

Let's go a little more. 

This can't be right. I don't remember it being far.

We never remember things being far...

And shortly, there’s another narrow path, and this one does lead somewhere – to a quiet and secluded pond, where bugs hover and fish look at you with puzzlement and dragon flies dart, back and forth, as if it were some kind of new game that they'd invented.

It’s hot, and the water is not really swimming stuff...

... but I have to say, it is an oddly magical little spot. The kind of place you dream of going to if you’re ten and you’ve run away from home and plan on never again returning (except that deep down, you hope your family will eventually find you because at night, it seems like this could be a dark and lonely place).

We sit by the water and watch the dragon flies and these guys are too crazy quick for me to photograph on the sly. The fish are more obliging.

But as we are about to leave, my favorite elusive dragon fly sits right down in fron of me and allows himself to be photographed and truly, it’s as if he knew all about people and cameras and could tell when to mess with me and when to finally give in.

We leave and follow a path around this hole and the adjacent one and I have to ask – how is it that you ever found these?

My buddy showed me...

Buddy? Do I know him? 

No, moved to New York some time ago... His name's Gregory...

My more recent history, or at least my memories of it orbit around events in my life as they relate to having daughters. Oh, this was before they were born, oh that was when she was five and the younger one was two. And so on. Ed’s recollections are random. He can't be bothered with chronology, he wont recall a progression -- what followed and what preceded one year or the next.

And still, I sense that in that chaos of memories, he has a real sense of what counted and mattered. His long ago venture out to this watering hole created, for whatever reason, a good memory. 

Watching the fireflies do their thing now, I’m thinking – this, for us, is also a good moment. A very good moment.

We circle the "holes" and return to the car.

In the evening, after a Sunday dinner at the farmhouse with my girl and her guy, we go out to water  the tomatoes. It's Ed's turn to hold the hose.

guilt

Warm again. I don’t even look outside to check on the day. Hot and dry. It’s the way it is each day.

For us, it isn’t terrible. Yes, we’re losing some of our plantings, yes, it’s uncomfortable at midday. But it’s summer -- a time for bare feet and sprays of water from the hose. And we share that water with those who are tickled and thrilled by our random fountains. Not Isis, but birds, for example. They chase drops of water and forget for a while that we are the ones throwing it at them.

It is midday. I set out to trim Ed’s beard. We put an old wooden chair out front and I reach for the cutter. I've never done this before. Ed cowers...

...but I have that immigrant’s confidence and go right at it. I mean, is it that much different than shaving your legs?

So here he is, after the trim.

 

We engage in our own singularly guilty pleasures of working, writing, working, watering. And honestly, quite suddenly,  there's very little left of the day.

Thunder rumbles, not too far off, and yet for once, I haven't any concerns. Come on, bring that storm right over! I'll stand outside and welcome it every step of the way! But it passes us by. Spotty, worthless storms that dump no water on the fields.

And yet, for us, it is, in so many ways, a beautiful day.

You want take out Chinese for dinner?
Sure.

It seems right. Put down the hose, head over to pick up steamed this, stir-fried that.  I ask Ed to pull up when the sun seems to take one last sweep before hiding behind a cloud.

Day's over. Things I could have done? The list is long. Does it matter? No, not at all.