late

I always complete work on my first class of the day before I even leave the farmhouse.


 


The final task before scooting off is to print the finished product.

Today, the printer stalls, then goes into overdrive, then completely malfunctions and with that little act of defiance, it nearly ruins my great desire to bike to campus.

I had not biked on any of my work days thus far this semester. Rosie has been my ride of choice. I hadn’t the time for a slower commute. But today – well, today is REALLY the last warm day of the season and I am determined.

When the printer fails, sucking up precious minutes, I curse. Loudly. Then I call in Ed to help.

(That same Ed, who has been gently and continuously scraping, priming and finally painting the grate that covers the AC unit outside.)

My printer is fixed, the lecture printed, I am off, speeding, because I am also late.

(Though not so late that I would not be able to take a photo of the goldenrod en route.)

To my surprise, Ed catches up with me by car. I think – how wonderfully sweet! Later, I find out that he was actually on his way elsewhere, but no matter: he gives me a two mile boost and with that, I can pedal my way to a timely arrival on campus.



I finish work. I have before me a late afternoon bike ride home: those are at once the best and the worst rides. The best, because the landscape is beautiful and golden and the time pressures have receded.

The worst because the last mile to the farmhouse is hilly. And I’m tired.

Ed is out biking tonight and so I eat my Nicoise alone.

And I think uncomplicated thoughts, like how warm it is today and how good it is that I got to bike on this last day of the warmest summer season ever.

fall day

A cool morning, a Rosie ride, a pause to admire and to breathe in, breathe in, so deeply, no yoga necessary, deeply, the beautiful early autumn air. I remember a day just like this slightly more than a decade ago.

Corn husks are turning yellow, soy, too, is golden now. The warm and blustery air makes me want to stay all day on the rural roads.  I look around me and think -- nothing should change, nothing should be repositioned. 

But, on this day (and on some other days too)  I have three and a half hours of lectures and believe me, there isn’t much that I can give to this world after I’m done with my time behind a podium.

I take Rosie to Paul’s for an iced tea and meet Ed there just before Paul's closes for the day. It’s funny that there, Ed should sleep and I should do more work for tomorrow, but we are in this pattern of odd cycles and it often comes to be that we aren’t in sync. As in so many small details, in matters of when to sleep or not sleep, we do not automatically key into the same patterns.

Later in the evening we play tennis. I'm hardly dressed for it but we play anyway and the game is good which only goes to show that being good is not an altogether predictable thing.

At home I scramble eggs and grill a few remaining chicken brats and toss a salad – one with many, many tomatoes –  and I say:  that’s it, I can do no more.

And then Isis starts his meowing routine again.

Cat issues. We surely have our share of them. Isis is no dummy – he’s figured out that if he meows loud and strong, he’ll get Ed to pay attention. What Isis wants is for Ed (or me, but he targets Ed) to follow him to the sheep shed and stay with him there.

I do get it. The sheep shed (not the farmhouse) is his real home. He has his food, his in and out door, his litterbox and, most importantly, he has Ed’s messy desk which abuts the corner windows and there Isis likes to recline and watch the world go by.

Yes, I get it. But it means now that not only nights but evenings, too, are interrupted by the great meowing routine. Until Ed gives in. And Ed always give in. (To Isis, not to me. We’re still “talking” about his involvement in my girl's wedding.)

Isis has considered and rejected most anything that we offer him. He leaves, the room grows still. I like still. And, for this hour at least, quiet. Farmhouse quiet.

goldenrod

Just tell them you can't help it, you’re in the middle of harvest! – a comment from Ed, as I groan about a pile of tasks and too few hours to get them all done.

breakfast

And he's right. Harvest. That means picking, washing, sorting, and storing. It takes as long (if not longer) to do this as it did to water flowers on hot hot summer days (and it’s not as if that task is over and done with – we’re rolling into a week of warm sunshine and the cosmos is already showing signs of distress).

next door farmer harvests melon, child in tow

But I’m not a farmer or even a home maker of the type who can pause with life because there is a harvest. And when I think I have caught up with what Ed has brought in, he’s there again, picking, picking...

Despite the time squeeze, I take a noon hour pause and go back to yoga class. Out there by the prairie fields.

The meditative, stretched out peace doesn’t really spill much into the rest of the day. I imagine church may be like this for some – you go, you listen to all that good stuff about forgiving your neighbor and loving your enemy and then you step outside and you scream at your kid and curse your co-worker. Resolutions have a way of fizzing out, as if someone punctured the balloon of good thoughts the minute you turn the other way. Pfffft! Gone. But I do appreciate having a brief minute to indulge my inner peace. And mostly, I love feeling a wide range of movements again. I was never a kid who could do contortions and odd twists of the body, but I was nimble and sprite and it’s nice to reach for those motions again. So I indulge in that hour of yoga which means that I now have to stay up late and arise early to meet my work goals for the day.

At least dinner is mean and lean: yesterday’s spaghetti and shrimp sauce is fortified with some dozen more new tomatoes and garlic and all that’s very easy and it makes use of some of the newly picked bruised tomatoes so in all – life is very wonderful.

Sunday

Breakfast.  Porch. It's cool outside, but so very lovely.

Every flower that still blooms is special. Every lily is beloved.

You want to come with me and lift boulders out of the field? You may think that’s a quaint sort of invitation, maybe not up there with dinner and a movie, but I like it, because it has more to do with a quiet walk on a gorgeous morning than anything else.  It’s not about the boulders -- Ed does not ask for help with much of anything.

I hadn’t been out there, behind the barn, where Farmer Lee is preparing the soil for next year’s crops for quite a few weeks. My attention is so focused on the farmhouse that I forget about what happens out back.

When did we come to have a meadow of goldenrod??

So Ed picks boulders out and I watch the farmers to the north do their work...

..until he gets to the biggest boulder of them all...

 

... and this one he does need help with and we put all our strength behind it so that we can slide it onto a wheelbarrow and push it elsewhere...

Where? Ed asks.

Oh, by the tree where some child someday will play and maybe pretend it’s a table, to serve pretend tea, or maybe hide behind because sometimes you just have to hide when the world gets tough and mean around you...
Ed groans at the thought. Or maybe it is that he groans because the boulder is so heavy to move.

In the afternoon, I come outside as Ed untangles string and Isis looks on...

I pull him away to bike to the tennis courts and we put in a decent game there and after, I bike to yoga. A bit ambitious, all that biking, tennis playing and yoga, but it’s Sunday and how many days will we have that are this good, this bright, this delightfully energizing?

In the evening the young people come to dinner and one can’t really keep up with young people, but we try, we try...

The tomato seafood sauce – Ed asks later. All from our tomatoes?
Well of course.

He grins, proudly I think.

humbly grateful

Sometimes I think I buy into the text too much. Of a movie, of a storyline, of a yoga class – I know it is what it is and yet I let myself get all misty eyed just because a yoga instructor tells us that releasing feelings of gratitude can be really healing.

Oh dear, tearing up on a yoga mat in a crowded Saturday yoga class in Fitchburg?

I look around me. Everyone is so young! Initially I think  – my, they are all half my age. Then I reconsider: some are near thirty. Then the truth hits – that still makes them half my age!

I’m glad I went to yoga. Much of the morning had been wasted on searching for airfares. At times I wonder if the savings are worth the agonizing hours spent running through the possibilities. Still we did it and we got mostly nowhere and eventually we had the sense to put it aside and get on with the day. Or, what was left of it after I finally sorted through the tomatoes Ed picked somewhere between dawn an the airfare search.

A canvas of multicolored, variously shaped tomatoes!

And finally, a very late breakfast. With an eye to the cool but pretty day outside.

On with the day... It used to be that we would do big and bold things on weekend days. This year we use free time without great ambition. Airfare searches, tomato picking and sorting, a small cosmetic construction project out on the porch...

We play tennis too. The game isn’t as awful as ones from previous days. That’s reassuring.

And in the evening, I put up supports for toppled flowers. And I sit back and admire the remnants of the summer garden. Including a surprising interloper. See that stalk of what appears to be corn? We have no idea how it came to grow there!

And yes, yes, I let all those feelings of gratitude flow. Because the days are so good here, at the farmhouse!

Supper? Left-over broccoli soup. I was very grateful that I made enough yesterday to last us through this evening.

home

Ed is on the couch snoring lightly. We’re both wiped. Isis made no fewer than five back and forths last night and after the last one, even Ed thought that the cat was a little off his rocker.

In other words, we had a night full of interruptions.

This semester I have a very set schedule: Monday is reserved for work on lectures; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are jam-packed teaching days and on Fridays I do all the work that isn’t teaching related. In other words, I sit through countless meetings until my leg gets sore and I can sit no more. After, I shop for groceries and then boom! -- it’s evening.

If you tell me this seems a tad loaded after a summer off, I'll likely shrug and say -- eh, it's predictable, it’s there, nothing will change the hours much and, on the up side, I know that I will have quiet evenings, that I will have time for yoga (though not today), that I will cook supper and enjoy a glass of wine with it.

The only thing that is unpredictable is Isis. He lends a bit of drama to the schedule and I suppose I have to be grateful that my only bit of drama these weeks is that a cat keeps ringing the doorbell to come in, then meows incessantly to go out. All night long.

In other news: Ed and I have resolved all travel related issues. One truth worth noting (and savoring if you’re on the victorious end) is that when you have two people who care for each other, yes, that, but whose interests run in different directions, then the person with the veto usually prevails.

No, I wont camp my way through Central America this winter.

No, I wont go to all events and celebrations surrounding your wonderful daughter’s wedding.

  

A cool and rainy front moved through our town today and yet it was pleasant enough that we still could do breakfast on the porch.

After, I dusted off my donkey car and rumbled off to work.

[And in case you’re not remembering why it became the 'donkey car,' well, it’s because of this:

And here's a funny bit: a few days back, my girl, noting the donkey, commented – I wouldn't have guessed you're the type to put a political sticker on your fender.

Say what? I didn't! For one thing, there is not much of a fender. When I pasted on that donkey, I was remembering the moment I bought it – in Catalan France this summer. That little animal, ensconced in gold and red stripes is a symbol of the countryside around Sorede. At the time, I didn’t remember that here, it has a different meaning! So be it.]

And now finally I am home. That path to the front (or really back) door still looks good to me. Home. Happily home.

meat

A hint: henceforth, the shortest posts will be (for the next fourteen weeks) on Thursdays. You want good writing? Not tonight, dear. Not any Thursday night.

Morning. Engage me in the morning. On the proch, maybe.





But those days are drawing to a close. The morning chill, not here yet, is a threat.

For now, I pick my pear...





...and I get going.

And then comes the part that I don't write about -- the classes, the meetings with students -- such a fine day, a day of great, wonderful progress, but one that runs in the shadows of this blog. And on Thursdays, it is a day that lunges forward without interruptions.

So I finally come home, late and I take a minute to regain the quiet that I need to make me happy. Flowers: there are still those. Hello lillies.





I creak open the farmhouse door. Hi Ed...






He invites me to dinner at the Dane Pub. Come on. We have time for the market, too.  Well, just barely. But we take the Honda and scoot out. And yes, there are a few ears left (we take them). And there are the curds and the other veggies to admire.





So we stock  up and then we do a few rounds of tennis and that's a real bummer because my game has rarely been this bad.

The sun is too strong!

I'm hungry!

I'm thirsty!

I'm tired!

Excuses offered. Surely the last one is the most accurate.

At the Pub I ask if he minds that I order a steak. It's been so long since I've eaten beef. I hadn't missed it, then I did miss it and now I really miss it.
Sure, eat that hunk of flesh.
Have you ever seen a person smile and frown all at the same time?


At home now. Tired, but that's exactly when writing doesn't flow and sleep, too, is tough to hold onto.
Isis is by the door. I can hear him -- the doorbell sounds. I peek out. Oh, Isis, gross!





He's tossing a mouse around. Eventually he drops it. As if it's a gift.

Thank you, Isis. At the end of the day, there's always the possibility of this, a mouse, delivered to my doorstep.

slouch

You don’t even know that you’re doing it: shoulder humped, chin lowered. You’re slouching. So, is this a bad thing? 

Hold on -- this isn’t what I woke up thinking. Let me go back a bit: I woke up thinking that Ed and I are in the middle of a conversation that hasn’t come to any reasonable conclusion. People do that. They dance around points that are being made and avoid reaching agreement because they know that the only way out of the stalemate is to say something like -- oh, all right! I’ll do it your way, but I wont like it! And neither wants to say it.

The question remains – who is going to say this? Him, me, both of us?

I also woke up thinking that I had wasted over an hour watering flowers last night only to find that we were due for severe storms. This is what happens when I get busy with work: I forget to check the weather report.

(slouched flowers after the rains)

The key here is that I woke up early. And I thought, too – I could surely use that early morning for Yoga – there’s a class offered that goes under the label of Peaceful Flow. It’s described in this way: You'll expand your breath, open your body, and rest your mind so when you go back into your world you'll be fully aware of your inner peace.

Before breakfast, before work, before Ed fully awakens, I go to Peaceful Flow.

I ride Rosie out to the Yoga studio and yes, indeed, it is heavenly and very stretching, strengthening and soothing, all by the fields of prairie flowers...

And if I take anything with me it is the realization that I live in a position of “slouch.” At my computer, riding in on Rosie, eating a meal. And here is this morning’s yogi guy telling us that if you just lift up your chest, chin, pull back your shoulders, uplift your face into a smile, you’ll have all this positive energy flowing.

You have to put up with this sort of stuff when you have a chatty yoga instructor.

But the fact is, he isn’t altogether off base. And indeed, his stretches and poses and movements and breathing instructions are so helpful that they stay with me even as I leave the studio, even as I mount Rosie and we travel home. So exuberant and up-lifted am I that I nearly fly off Rosie, though perhaps that's just my imagination soaring.

The fields never looked so golden.

The truck farmers are tending their crops -- you can see them, here, just to the east of our crumbling barn...

It continues to be a beautiful morning.

We eat breakfast on the porch...

I grab a ripe pear to stick in my backpack...

....and I go off for a day of classes. Campus is busy in the way that it gets on school days.

And, predictably, I am tired when I get home. Ed and I have reached a travel compromise and he is the one who has packed up his ideas and put them aside, though we’ll be doing some independent trips in the interim so that neither feels as if she or he has been short changed. More on that as we actually get closer to time off. Right now, I am so far away from time off that it seems odd that I should even be thinking about it.

Ed bikes tonight and because we’re nearing the end of the grocery shopping week, I eat whatever is left, with, of course, tomatoes.

He comes home with a Subway footer and I'm tempted by that too.

You can’t feed me this stuff! I don’t need another meal after dinner!

He grins and floats the sandwich nearer to me. I take bites – one, another, and another. He laughs.

first day

Breakfast today? It’s a toss up! Lee’s flowers at the kitchen table tell me – inside!

But everything, everything else shouts – the porch!

I’m up early. Three classes today and the first one begins at 9:30. I tell myself I will not rush, but I do rush, even as I start the routines of a new semester at 4 a.m. This is the way it is and I am ready for it.

On the porch I tell Ed – a "first day of classes" picture! Take one? And he does, quickly, as if to take into account the faster pace.

And then I’m off. It’s a Rosie day, a beautiful, warm, very warm morning. And still, as I zip by, I notice that the soy is taking on that September gold tone that says we are no longer in the summer season...

I scoot by the lakes (without traffic, you can do the photo straight from Rosie’s seat)...

I turn toward campus, I park and walk up to school and the day begins.

And because it’s the first day, three classes seems like a lot, so that by mid afternoon I’m spent. Like that student outside my office window who looks like she’s not quite with her full energies yet.

In the late, late afternoon, I take Rosie to Paul’s café and Ed meets me there. This is a familiar routine and such a good one and it’s all so serene and peaceful until we speculate about future travels. Ed talks about taking it down a notch. Less predictability, more adventure. On the first day of teaching, I can’t quite wrap my mind around travel where there isn’t a water source, a light bulb, a clean sheet over a bed. And this is what happens when I'm immersed in work again and Ed stays home – I look ahead toward a lighter, saner, easier day, while he itches to infuse it with challenge.

We have to shut down our planning. It’s going nowhere and besides, it’s 95 degrees outside. 95! So the flowers need water and tomorrow’s class needs work and, too, there are the tomatoes – more of them, to sort, wash, freeze, cook.

But those are good, kind routines. I like holding that hose once more – the quiet of it, the discovery that accompanies my movement from one bed to the next. Here, did you know I still get the occasional lilies?

We end with tomato corn bisque. Reheated. Yes, throw in some fresh herbs from the garden and kernels from an ear of corn and call it a meal. 

Do you want popcorn? - he asks late at night. Every person has their own perfect plate of food to offer. Ed's is popcorn, from a bag, done just so. Shared, late at night. An important reminder -- this is what we share, this is what we love.