mother's day

This morning, if you were to look outside from the porch, you'd see this:





And from the other end, were you to stand on the sheep shed path and look toward the porch, you'd see this:





I put these two photos up for several reasons, though not at all because either of us so much as sat down for a second on the porch today. Mainly, I want to say that to me, this is what hope looks like. I mean, remember Ocean photos from a month ago? I did not think spring would ever come. And now, it's as if those cold, flowerless, leafless months belong to another epoch. So much good can come in the space of one month. We should remember that during the drab cold days of prespring (or pre anything).


Another reason for posting many many photos of the farmhouse now is that I always think building structures set in a flowering landscape look their finest in May. The light's good, the greens are warm and not yet dusty. This is the time to go nuts with the camera. May is a very photogenic month! So much so that I have to say, it's almost unfair how ravishing the landscape is right now. I mean, come on, May -- wouldn't you like to spread your wealth onto the other months?


It's Mother's Day for me today. My little one and her fiance are here from Chicago and we're all to go out to brunch. But before we set out (and while the young ones are still sleeping) Ed and I head down to the new orchard. Now's the time to finish planting the grape vines.


 


A few hours later, we're done. The young orchard gets a proper vote of approval from the visiting urban pair. They walk the farmette land with me and we talk about future plans -- theirs, mine...






And now we're downtown at El Dorado -- the younger pair, along with my older girl and her husband...


 


... and the ever impish Ed...





And yes, there are presents (any time I dress decently, you can assume that what  I'm wearing is a a gift from daughters) and good foods and best of all, there's laughter. If I passed on anything to my girls it is the joy of sitting down together for a meal. As often as possible.


Afternoon. The kids have their various activities and Ed and I return to the farmette. I have the post-rain weeding to do and, too, we finish putting tomatoes in place.

Evening comes. Ed and I take stock.





We had started trenching a hose for the new orchard. That project needs to be completed. And, too, I still have seeds of annuals to throw on the new flower bed. Tomorrow. Or the next day. We check off one item from the list but add two new ones. The thing about living at the farmette is that the list can never be entirely without items on it. Even as the landscape is glorious now, at this very moment -- so very lush and abundant in that blush of full spring -- we cannot ever sit back and let it be. There will always be jobs to be done, improvements to be made, plants needing our attention.





And that's a good thing.

bounce around

There's been a bit of a wild spin to this year, don't you think? I can't say that I'm used to linear progressions, but the recent months have had somewhat of a crazy run. Weather, family, work and anything else I deem important, have not stayed on the calm side of the equation.

So according to that formula, if yesterday was hot and physically grueling, today should be cool and more cerebral and stationary. And it was. All of that.

Breakfast -- you're thinking maybe that it was lovely? No, it was rather disjointed. We had had a number of significant distractions in the early morning and neither of us paid attention to the time and suddenly it was late. Ed ate hurriedly...





...then I ate, somewhat pensively...





...and then it was just a question of getting things done -- working, cleaning, weekly grocery restocking, etc etc and then getting myself over to the graduation ceremonies for out law students.





Watching these "kids" sail forth is always significantly moving for me. Most of my students will disappear from my radar screen pretty quickly. Every now and then, one will morph into being a good friend. I thought of all that today as I attended the celebrations. I smiled along with all those who came to applaud the graduates' successes.





And the winds howled and the temperatures dropped some twenty degrees and I can't say that I was surprised anymore.






At home, I finished cleaning inside and I clipped some flowers -- lilacs for the kitchen table and a small bouquet of lilies of the valley. The photo of this little bunch is for my friend, a former student, yes, but definitely a friend now. Something tells me she could use a whiff of sweetness now. For you, pal.

trees and vines

Breakfast on the porch? 
Maybe we should finish working with the tomatoes first. Such a beautiful morning... Ed opens the front door. What's this? On the brick pathway, someone made an early morning delivery: the last batch of orchard trees. And a set of grape vines.

So it'll be another planting day. Good timing! I'm between grading two sets of exams. We have wood chips stacked high under the willow (we use them for weed and moisute control). The weather is brilliant. A confluence of good factors.

And yet, we're slow in getting started. We spend a lot of time looking at the magnificent burst of flowers on the old trees lining the sheep shed path. We look carefully to see if there are bees working the fruit blossoms.





I need to look for newly flowering perennials.





Then, Ed is distracted by tractor photos on the Internet (he's looking for a zero turn for mowing). And I see that the daffodils need deadheading.





So now he's ready but I'm not. And then I'm ready but he's not. By the time we set out with our fruit trees, vines and shovels, the sun is more than just a pleasant caress of warm air. It is a hot slap on the back. You want summer? Happy to oblige! By early afternoon it'll be in the mid eighties, but when you're digging clay soil, it feels like it's in the nineties from the get go.

Not that we are yet digging. Walking to the new orchard, I point out how many limbs of our second giant willow are brittle. They will eventually fall to the ground, but in the meantime, they are not pretty and you could argue that they pose some hazard to anyone passing through (does anyone actually pass through here?). Ed takes out the pole with the saw and we go at it. Trimming off one branch turns into trimming off all the ones within reach. Aided now by a power saw...






 ...and then again by the pole saw.





The willow looks better, but now we need a break and that's before even one new fruit tree has been planted in the ground.

For the rest of the hot hours of the day though, we do work on the planting of our orchard. We have five new trees to put in and -- this is a new one for us -- eight grapes. No, no. Not for wine! Leave that effort to people who know what they're doing. These are going to yield munching grapes. But I do have images of a beautiful row of vines, pruned and trained, climbing artistically along a trellis...

For now, it's grueling work. The grapes, which we save 'til the end, are even worse than the baby trees because the vine roots are larger, longer, requiring bigger holes and spaces of cultivated soil. We dig, break up clumps of soil, pull out quack grass...





...and in the end, we cannot finish the job.

It's getting late and we still have pressing errands to run and our local market to visit. Ah well,  the last three grapes will have to wait.

(At the local farmers' market,  for us, it's all about the cheese curds and the asparagus...)





Alright, day is almost done. The last hours are devoted to the terribly unphotogenic run to Farm and Fleet for work gloves, hose pieces, and a broom. And Menards for more hose pieces (Ed will be running a water source toward the orchard and veggie patch -- a great relief, as right now, we have to lug buckets of water to tide things over when the rains don't come). Both of these stores are places where Ed feels at home. At Farm and Fleet he remembers that he needs a new belt and oil for his motorcycle (I can't think of another store where you can pick up at once hose parts, car oil, and a new belt for your pants). At Menrads, we spend a great deal of time staring at PVC fittings.

And so we get home rather on the late side. Past any decent hour to cook a good meal. Oh, but wait -- we have the curds, the asparagus and a baguette from the market. And chives from the garden. An easy and perfect supper. After a hard and yet perfect as well day.

repeat blooms

In glancing over the photos for this day you'll think -- is it all about flowers now?







Yes. Now is the time for flowers.

[By the way, two of the earliest bloomers are plants I wintered over in the sun room. They are not hardy and I had wondered if they would stay with me if I potted them and took them indoors and the answer is a resounding yes! Here they are,  survivors of the Wisconsin winter: a nasturtium and a gaura.]











But these flower photos -- they're surely just the visuals. Something happens to you when you spend so many hours tending to a farmette. You throw that stream of water from the hose onto a dry bed and your mind pauses for a while. You think about this or that, or not much of anything. You slow down. You unravel tight knots. You figure out the next step.






I know that I am not very adept at sticking to boring tasks, so how is it that I can spend hours (and I do!) pouring water over tender plants and feel afterwards that I accomplished something big?

It was, in so many ways, a very ordinary day. A premature wake up (some combination of Isis and early sunlight and Ed reacting to Isis and early sunlight). A predictably delightful breakfast on the porch, made special because minutes earlier, I had just finished baking a batch of granola.



 

The power company comes by and dumps a truckload of wood chips at the end of our driveway. (When they do tree trimming around power lines, they shred the limbs and look for volunteers who'll take the wood scraps -- at any time and in large quantities. We do. Happily.)





Then comes a period of settling in -- an intense time of exam reading.  Really, not much more than that for hours on end. I do hop on rosie to go to the post office, but that's a small little sidestep. Mostly, I sit on the porch and read exams.

In the evening, I'm out with the hose. Ed goes off to ride his Wednesday night bike ride, but before he sets out, we stop to admire the great old apple at the edge of the driveway. She is a prolific bloomer, even if her apples are nothing to write home about.






We do one of our arm's length shots to commemorate this perfect moment of her most perfect blooms (yes, Ed is that much taller than me).





And after, I water flower beds and this brings me back to the beginning of this post -- how is it that watering something can be so darn satisfying??

on the porch

Out on the porch, in the late afternoon, the air is still. Warm, very warm. A tonic after the cold pre-spring. A gift, really.  No big winds today. It's like the world outside is taking a summer siesta.

If yesterday Ed and I strained to get work done out in the fields, today is different. After a delightful breakfast on the porch...










...I take rosie to campus to tidy up paper details and bring exams home. I'm giving myself three weeks and not a day more to finish grading a very hefty stack. The way to accomplish this is to plunge right in and do a big load the very first day. And so that's what I'm doing. Out on the porch. My first day of grading...

...while the daffodils keep their dance going and the buds of their neighbors are getting confident enough to keep shooting up.









I have my laptop near me and as I sit and read exams, my Skype phone rings and it is my sister and she, too, is out in the country. She's in the village house in Poland that was once my grandparents' home. It's where she and I learned to love the outdoors. Trees, flowers, growing things. I have to shake my head in wonderment at the passage of time, because when we were kids, there was no running water, no electricity, not any of it and now she tells me that in this same village she has a choice of internet providers (even though the place is remote enough that it still has no paved road running through it).

My sister and I are in cahoots to put in order my citizenship papers without the aid of the soulless bureaucrat sitting in the Polish Consulate office in Chicago. When she describes to me how, when presenting my case in Warsaw, she was aided and assisted by truly helpful office workers, I think how different and pleasant life would be if we could always turn our backs on the obstructionists and grumpy naysayers out there!

By evening, I take a grading break and I water the poor flowers that are just not sure what to expect, weatherwise. From frost, to 91 degrees, all in the space of a day. What next, they want to know. What next?





I have no answers.  We soldier on no matter what and do the best we can, no?

A supper of Thai take out. And an eye toward the rest of the week -- we're in for days of sunny skies and mild temperatures. A gift. A real gift.

after the cold

At 4 a.m. Ed asks -- should we look at the thermometer?
No, I don't want to know!
A few minutes later I change my mind: alright, I want to know!
He stumbles downstairs. Ready for it?
Tell me!
29.4 degrees.
That cannot be! Weather.com says it's 34!
Maybe it is that where they are.
Maybe our thermometer is broken! Or in an odd spot. Maybe you could move it?
He goes outside and moves it to a different spot.
It was wet with dew...

So it got confused! What is it now?
32.
You see? It's not below freezing.
Well, it just slivered down to below 30 again...

In a sense, it doesn't matter if it's 34 or 29. It's too cold for the tomatoes and the flower pots. I brought the flower pots in. The tomatoes? Well, all we can do is offer them cover: they have been huddling under blankets. Who knows to what effect.

We spend the rest of the night exchanging updates on what the temperature should be, is, will be. And, too, we attend to Isis inclinations. In. Out. In. Out.

But, soon after dawn the sun does its work well. The temperature appears to be running to get out of the cold zone. By breakfast time it passes fifty.

A celebration: pancakes for breakfast!





And now comes the job of uncovering the tomatoes and it should come as no surprise that some seem to be fine, while others appear to be dead as anything and that's a shame, but not a total disaster as we have a handful of still others to plant. The hope is, of course, that the cold did not shock the tomato productions system of even those that made it through the night. That's the hope. I'll let you know come harvest time in August.

I should note that the peas, sown from seed, have sprouted and appear to be completely unphased by this weather nonsense.


So long as we are in the back of the farmette,  Ed suggests we finish pulling up honeysuckle. After all, we may have missed some shrubs in the Great Pullout of last year.

It is at this time that I give a little tug to a vine with sprouting leaves. A small act with huge consequences. It looks as if it's one of those random vines that appears innocuous, except that by the end of the summer it manages to choke every living thing in its path. I pull it up and up and up and I see that it is connected through thick cables of roots, just below the surface. Indeed, the entire meadow is like a maze of vine growth and it is so like us to drop everything and devote all our energies to the project of eradicating the invasive vines!

At times, we just haven't the strength to pull it out on our own. We team up and heave at it together and mostly we are successful and at other times we need the shovel for help and the whole job is so intensely laborious and back breaking that I truly think we are somewhat insane to plunge into it with any degree of enthusiasm.






It was cool outside when we started, but we are now hot as hell from the exertion and when we think we're done, we find new vines, hidden deeply in the quack grass and so we spend hours like this: pulling, heaving, sometimes falling back when the root gives way, sometimes cursing in frustration as it remains firmly wedged in the clay soil.

But we get the job done. We clear the back field of honey suckle and menacing vines with roots an inch thick. Yay us. (I say this with some degree of bemusement because really, in the scheme of things, does it matter?)





(Here I am admiring two more stalks of random asparagus.)



Afternoon. It is time for the final stage of planting for me. Oh, sure, there'll be adjustments and seeds to sow and weeds to pull in future days. In other words, there will be maintenance. But today is my last day of big time planting work -- to finish off the huge bed leading to the sheep shed (as best as I can on this year's budget -- the strawberries helped!) and to plant a few flowering bushes by the side of the road.



(Isis, watching it all from the sidelines)


And now the light fades and we are both so very tired that even driving for take out seems an effort. I scavenger the refrigerator for leftovers and we sit back and almost instantly Ed falls asleep while I struggle to put a post up on Ocean.

preparing

The forecast for the second night of the unusual cold just keeps getting worse. This afternoon, I read what no hasty gardener wants to read about the night air: expect frost.

Happy Mother's Day to you, too!

Farmer Lee has co-opted all generations of her family to help cover the strawberries.





Our berries aren't advanced enough to require protection. But our tomatoes!

Let's consider the upside:

Breakfast: a lovely meal, as always. 






Outside, the light is brilliant!











Ed and Isis are in high spirits...






We work. I, on my various flower beds, Ed -- digging out stumps and who knows what else out back. For example -- consider this piece of something someone left behind, buried, until today:






This is the time that Ed and I are at our most jovial, most spirited and prone to banter. (And when he is least complaining about my photos of him.)






A solid day of work outside and before you know it -- it's evening. My older girl comes with her husband for dinner. (We had decided to celebrate Mother's Day next week, when my little one and her fiancee will be passing through.)





After the meal, the light quickly fades. I walk the farmette grounds one last time, sending a good vibe (I hope) toward the tomatoes.






Such a beautiful day it was. I'm holding my breath for a gentle night.

against the cold

A blustery day. The kind you associate with the month of March. Then you'd say -- oh, this isn't so bad for March. Now, you just want to stay indoors until the Arctic air that's causing this has moved on.

Breakfast in the front room.






We tick off all that we want to accomplish outside, though neither of us is in a hurry to get started. In fact, I turn my back on the yard and go to yoga.

On the way to the practice, I pass farmer Lee's fields. I note that her strawberries are doing well. But why the straw around the plants? To ward of the cold? The chipmunks? The birds?





Most of the strawberries we planted at the farmette, by contrast, are such tiny things! They're just now throwing out a first leaf or two. One of the sets we planted was completely dead and Ed makes the trip to get a refund (of course he does), only to come back with extras. So now we have a dozen bad plants to dig up and replace and a dozen extra ones to find a home for.

But that's not the main focus of the day. After yoga, the skies clear and even though the air is brisk, it's warm enough to take out the shovel and get to work. Now that the bulk perennials have arrived (bare root hostas, astilbes, irises, daylilies -- a dozen of this, a dozen of that...) I am eager to finish up the little bed to the side of the brick path.





I have spent almost as much time on redoing this bed as I have on creating the new one leading to the sheep shed. Established flowers that really did not belong in a shady spot had to be moved out. weeds, old fabric and awful soil had to be removed. New plantings brought in. A huge effort, but one that pleases me no end because it finally will make use of flowers and plants that belong exactly in this kind of environment.

You can't spot any of my work. Planting bare root flowers means you cover them with dirt and then you wait, patiently, until the first bud breaks ground. But I know they're there and that makes me very happy.

We fuss then with the strawberries and by the time that's done, it's nearly evening and we can't put it off any longer: time to provide protection for the tomatoes. A low of 33, two nights in a row. That's ten degrees lower than what they can tolerate. The game plan: upside down plastic pots (leftover from years of purchases), covered by scraps of quilts, blankets, plastic sheets.






The wind is so strong that I'm thinking even the bricks we put down wont keep the covers from flying off. We do the best we can.





We'll come back on Monday to assess the damage.

The wild turkey watches, shakes his head and moves on.