delightfully so

So here comes another delightfully sunny day (I can still say that, even though for many, all of this sunshine has been less than grand), still dry, still not too hot, perfect for a morning check of flowers (a touch misty eyed from the morning dew)...

 

...and a morning breakfast on the porch (here's Ed, because I like this particular photo).

 

My friends are still with us and we have the farmers pride of bringing out a big haul of ripe tomatoes – for dinner, yes and for freezing, but also for breakfast.

This is barely the beginning of the beginning... Ed says and I swear he’s beaming.

My friend and I go downtown. It's perfect. Down to the lake, along the lake path... campus at its quiet time. Not many summer classes now, not many people by the water's edge.

Then, a necessary stop at Paul’s, and a quick game of tennis with Ed, and now we're home and it's dinner time, but, almost to give meaning to the idea that summer is running out, Ed sets the big ladder against the farmhouse west wall. To finish the paint job begun last year. (Karma, my friends' dog, watches from inside, somewhat appalled.)

And finally, a dinner out on the porch...

...a walk out to our new orchard and the incredible, fantastic, over the top abundant tomato patch.

And if all this sounds terribly staid and a tad repetitive, I cannot tell you how much I like these easy days where the big decision has to do with which frozen yogurt to make – strawberry or blueberry? Let’s go with strawberry.

on the porch

Some time at night, my little one comes home. Funny how quickly I revert back to listening for her, waking at her presence in the house, falling asleep quickly, with relief, once I know she’s moving around, quietly, but I hear her anyway. When they’re home, I listen for my girls.

On Sunday morning, there are five of us on the porch. She is there, of course, as is her boyfriend, splendidly driving up from Chicago, making her ride back now that much nicer. Ed is there, Isis is there. Occasion for a bigger, better breakfast than our standard, but she wont hear of it. Just do as you always would do.

So we eat oatmeal, with fruits and honeys and we linger because – did I tell you? The storm did knock the heat wave out of the Midwest. For the first time this entire summer it;s so pleasant outside that I open windows at the farmhouse and keep them open all day long. No need for air conditioning. The breeze can move through, from one end to the other and then back again.

My girl and her guy take off. There’s always a moment of letdown when she gets going, even as her home is relatively close. Chicago. Really not far at all. Still, we had been intensely working together on this shower project and that partnership has ended and she is off and all I can send with her is a bag with a few leftover sandwiches and tomatoes from the garden.

I put away dishes, store the punch bowl (until when?) and we return the chairs to Paul’s. But we don’t linger. The air is delicately warm, breezy still – not warmer than maybe 75 and we go to the tennis court to whip the balls around some. It’s a good transition to life after the big event.

In the evening my friends from St Paul arrive for a visit and we are joined for dinner by our close close friends who live in Albuquerque and it is an unusual evening, because even though we know each other so well, the six of us (meaning with the men in our lives) have never shared a meal together. It just sort of happened that way. 

 

And so here we are, out on the porch, because for once, the evening is beautiful out there and we eat one of this summer’s favorites for me – salmon with blueberries...


 


... and the evening light, not tame, but not hot at all, is coming at us now through the screen and I think – yes, this is why I like summer.











For the lovely sunlight that sometimes hits things just right.

shower time

She stayed up late wrapping little packages of Australian chocolate candy.

 

I stayed up late baking meringues, but she stayed up later. My little girl is very exact in the ways she approaches her responsibilities. Ed retreats to the sheepshed. Too much wedding stuff... he mumbles.

But, in the middle of the night, he is back, asking before the sun breaks the horizon – what do you need me to do today?

Pick up extra chairs from Paul’s. Move the dead branches. Harvest the tomatoes... Thank you.

We sleep a few minutes more, but by 6 I’m up, still baking meringues.

What’s with the meringues, anyway? The short of it: ‘pavlovas’ (meringue with cream and macerated fruits) are the national dessert of Australia.  We’re picking up the theme of Australia for my older girl’s wedding shower because (eventually, after the fall semester) she and her (gulp) husband (that felt strange to say... but good, too... very good) will be taking a honeymoon break there.

Before things move quickly forward, I take a pause with my guys on the porch: Ed, Isis and I, eat breakfast as we always do: slowly, deliberately.

My little girl and I pick up sandwiches at a bakery downtown. That’s the easy break: I’ll make dessert, I’ll create a salad, I’ll chop fruits into a white sangria, but we’ll let someone else put in a creative touch into sandwiches.

And because it’s a bakery, we may as well pick up some back-up cookies. You can’t go wrong with extra cookies.

At home, things are at stages of near readiness. Flowers. Everywhere you look, you'll see flowers. Large and small bunches of them.

The fruits are cut, the white sangria is steeping...

I'd painted a sign. I put it out on the dirt driveway.

Okay. After weeks of tweeking and watering, the plants by the entrance path look good. Green. Welcoming, I think.

The first car load arrives, the fiancée leaves....

My girls exchange a big hug...

Ed brings over the sandwiches from the sheep shed fridge. Here's an idea: put them out in the crates we lugged back from the Languedoc. Okay!

The sangria is poured...

...and lightened by a small amount of soda water...

 

Guests arrive, settle in...

The fun begins. My little girl has planned well. There are quizzes, treats, and of course, wonderful gifts to open...

Thunder rumbles loudly outside. (They say it's the shout of a departing heatwave.) For a short while, it rains steadily, creating an excuse to linger... to enjoy a few minutes more, to eat the apricot-raspberry almond Pavlovas...

Evening comes. Shower’s done – both inside and out. 

 Big sister tackles her little sister in a grateful hug.

Me, I tackle the house: it needs to be brought back to its more quiet state. My little girl helps and then gets ready to join a dozen or so of their friends for an evening out...

Boundless energy. Theirs, wonderfully theirs. But it rubs off. I get to share in it, every now and then. 

They tell me that there is a custom of using shower ribbons to fashion a bouquet for the wedding rehearsal. My little girl has quickly created one today. It's ready for the late September ceremonies.

hurried

Is it okay if I don’t make dinner? My 'to do' list remains long, very long.

Of course! You want to go out?

It’s like Ed to invite me out on a night that I have no time to wipe my nose, let alone seek a supper out on the town (if you could call Fitchburg a town).

I cannot. I have to sit and watch meringues bake.

Ed microwaves cheese curds, I bring out a box of crackers. I have to say that this is probably the lowest I’ve stooped in dinner preparation. Ever.

Of course, if I can’t cook supper, I can’t write here either. In a few minutes I’ll be picking up my little girl – she’s coming up from Chicago to coordinate and orchestrate the shower for her sister tomorrow. Me, I just follow instructions.

And I clean.

And I make sure that the garden doesn’t wilt and keel over in these hot hot weeks of summer.

And I zap mosquitoes with Ed’s brilliant paddle zapper. Zap! Hisss! It’s very satisfying.

Yes, it's hot outside.  If you look out at the fields of corn, you'd think -- well, at least they're green.

...and the apples in our old orchard -- they're pink. Seemingly indifferent to the heat outside.

But don't let this fool you. All growing things are stressed by the heat and the persistant drought.

If there was a weekend when I would want the farmhouse to shine this year, it would be this weekend. And I have to say, in spite of it all, it does me proud. Thanks, old girl!

to cook

I once cooked like there was no tomorrow. And I thought -- as kids become adults and move on, with more time, I'll only cook more. Following my divorce (seven years ago), I moved to an apartment where I thought I would cook my way through an endless stream of dinner parties. It was an open space loft plan and I imagined my friends would come and I would cook. And cook. And cook.

Thinking back, I have to admit that I wasn't altogether sane. People came, I cooked. Some cooked back. Most did not. And anyone who has cooked for crowds will vouch for this: it's time consuming and expensive. Perhaps that's not reflected in my posts of those years, but money was seeping out a whole lot faster than it was seeping in. 

And then, too, along came Ed. Ed is not a dinner party kind of guy. I don’t think he understands why anyone would willingly want to sit around a table and talk into the night, unless they had something they needed to get off their chest or were looking for help figuring out how to change some pipe on a car or install a heating system into a writer’s shed.

I would say – you get together with friends -- isn't that the same?

He would retort – only when we do things together. Play tennis. Sail. Fix motorcycles.

That’s not true. Friends come over and you like that.

That’s different. 

You can't argue with "that's different."

Over the years, I have backed away from big meal preparation. When I moved to the farmhouse, a new but not too large refrigerator was purchased to meet our daily needs, with a little room to spare. But not much room to spare.

And so it was really interesting to come home today after a marathon shopping trip and look for room to stash 9 bags of greens, a dozen ears of corn, 7 tins of blueberries, 5 lbs of apricots, 8 baskets of raspberries, 8 containers of strawberries...several dozen eggs, milks of various fat content, yogurts – and that’s only to meet the needs of side dishes and desserts. It doesn’t even take into account these, from the garden:

Oh, you think that’s paltry in terms of peaches from our peach tree? Well, there are also peach parts (and there are many bowls of those) – for things that don’t quite call for a nice peach presentation (chopped off are parts pillaged by beetles before we could shake them off).

Whereas most weekends require only a brief piecing together of a Sunday family meal, this weekend is going to be different. And because it is so unusually different, I am greatly looking forward to it. As I see it, I have before me, in the space of three days a lunch for 26 (I’m getting help from my little girl on that one), a possible brunch for some unknown number, a dinner for six, a dinner for five, with some filler meals to think about in between (meaning – I can’t use all blueberries for dinner and lunch because I need some for breakfast as well). What spurs this sudden return to more serious cooking? I'll tell you as the days unfold.

In the meantime, I ask Ed to mow the lawn before the great stampede of guests  and the poor guy tries, but the John Deere balks and so he spends many days under that engine attempting to, well, according to me, rebuild it. It’s a 1969 tractor. It looks ancient. It sounds ancient. Maybe he’ll get it working by Saturday. He makes no promises.

Let's focus on the more positive aspects of farmette life. These are some of my favorite drought and freakish hot weather survival stories:

 (And once again, the rose, because she is such a trooper...)

The blooming period is over for much of what I planted. These are exceptions (cajoled by hours of watering and sweet talking). Note the grasshopper who shares my enthusiasm for the last of the lilies.

In the evening Ed and I go to the Fitchburg farmers market. You’d think I couldn’t possibly handle more produce purchases, but I need to think of dinners for the two of us for the next couple of nights. Even simple meals need – ingredients. Potatoes, green beans, tomatoes from the garden, cooked eggs, mustard dressing. Oh, and corn on the cob. Because it was there, at the market and it looked splendidly recovered from the drought.